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Since October 2023, Israeli forces have brutally murdered over 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, injured 100,000, and displaced nearly all of the occupied area’s population. In that same time, occupation forces and settlers have collectively killed more than 600 Palestinians in the West Bank, and the Israeli regime has detained over 10,900 individuals, all while embarking on the largest invasion of the West Bank since the Second Intifada. Israel has likewise expanded its genocidal assault into Lebanon, killing well over 1,000 people and displacing more than one million. 

These numbers do little to accurately convey the immeasurable devastation that Israel has wielded over the past 12 months. Indeed, statistics alone represent, at best, only a fraction of the horrors of genocide. In addition to reducing a community to mere numbers, they likewise fall short of revealing the root causes of the genocide, the power dynamics at play, or the long-term impact of such loss on the Palestinian people as a whole.   

This Focus On highlights how Al-Shabaka has sought to respond to these gaps, drawing on Palestinian analysis from members of our policy network and guest contributors. From grounding October 7th in the broader context of Israeli settler colonialism, to interrogating Israel’s multifaceted war machine, to assessing rapidly evolving regional relations, this compilation of works represents Al-Shabaka’s ongoing effort to articulate the Palestinian condition in real time.

Framing October 7th, its Aftermath, and Future Possibilities

Al-Shabaka analysts piece together the significance of Hamas’s October 7th operation and the Israeli regime’s response. Collectively, the works below push back against the erroneous suggestion that the move was “unprovoked” and, accordingly, Israel’s reaction proportional. Rather, they locate it within the context of ongoing resistance to Zionist settler colonialism and as a moment of rupture for the partition framework, long imposed on the Palestinian people. Al-Shabaka members likewise anchor Israel’s subsequent genocide within the regime’s ultimate aim of Palestinian erasure, and put forth considerations for the future of Gaza and for the Palestinian struggle. 

Israel’s Genocide Machine

Israel continues to employ a range of sophisticated strategies to sustain its genocide machine. Over the past year, Al-Shabaka analysts have examined how Israel leverages disinformation campaigns and diplomatic maneuvers to justify and obscure the genocide, alongside such violent practices as targeted assassinations. They also highlighted Israel’s use of Gaza as a testing ground for weapons destined for global export, and the regime’s campaign to undermine UNRWA—a crucial institution providing life-saving services for Palestinian refugees. These tactics not only work to conceal Israel’s expanding aggression on Gaza but also distract from its escalating assault on the West Bank, often overlooked by the international community but part and parcel of the genocide. Collectively, the analysis below exposes the multifaceted nature of Israel’s genocidal agenda through manipulation, colonial expansion, and strategic misinformation.

Western Collusion

These pieces highlight how Western actors have played a significant role in fueling Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This includes through narratives and media coverage that perpetuate dangerous stereotypes, obscure the reality of the genocide, and deflect accountability. The works extend their critique to the West’s material complicity through arms sales to support Israel’s military operations as well as through temporary infrastructure projects, such as the US’s floating Gaza pier, which reflect broader colonial ambitions in the region. Meanwhile, Western actors are also involved in the ongoing suppression of Palestine solidarity movements across the world. Collectively, these analyses reveal the various ways in which Western actions and policies contribute to the continuing assault on Gaza and Palestine at large.

Regional Developments

Since October 2023, Al-Shabaka analysts have critically examined how the Arab world has both facilitated and resisted the Gaza genocide. In the collection below, they highlight the ways in which some Arab states have undermined Palestinian resistance and regional solidarity, and contributed to Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing. The analysis scrutinizes the complicity of these states in shaping a regional environment that favors Israeli aggression, including the implications of a looming Saudi-Israeli normalization deal. Additionally, the works address the dire situation of Palestinian genocide survivors in Egypt and the impact of escalating Iran-Israel tensions on regional geopolitics. Together, these contributions reveal how the actions of Arab states have impacted the dynamics of Israel’s genocidal policies and the broader regional response.

 

For further contextual analysis, click here to access “Grounding the Gaza Genocide,” a collection of relevant past works.

Article - Introducing Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network

Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network

Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network is an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to convene a multidisciplinary, global network of Palestinian analysts to...
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Roundtable
 Politics

Statehood Without Liberation: Europe’s Response to Genocide

Since October 2023, Israel’s assault on Gaza has produced one of the most catastrophic humanitarian crises in recent history—an unfolding genocide enabled by world powers and continuing unabated despite the sweeping global solidarity it has sparked. Alongside relentless bombardment and mass displacement, the Israeli regime is waging a deliberate campaign of starvation. In response to this Israeli-manufactured catastrophe, several European states have begun recognizing or signaling their intent to recognize the State of Palestine. Most recently, France announced its intention to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September. The UK has stated it will follow suit unless Israel abides by a ceasefire and recommits to a two-state solution. The recent wave of symbolic recognitions that began in 2024 now appears to be the only step many European powers are willing to take in the face of genocide, following nearly two years of moral, material, and diplomatic support for the Israeli regime as well as near-total impunity. This roundtable conversation with Al Shabaka policy analysts Diana Buttu, Inès Abdel Razek, and Al Shabaka’s co-director, Yara Hawari, asks: Why now? What political or strategic interests are driving this wave of recognition? And what does it mean to recognize a Palestinian state, on paper, while leaving intact the structures of occupation, apartheid, and the genocidal regime that sustains them?
Al-Shabaka Inès Abdel Razek
Al-Shabaka Yara Hawari
Al-Shabaka Diana Buttu
Inès Abdel Razek,Yara Hawari,Diana Buttu + More· Aug 14, 2025
Policy Lab
 Politics

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation: Aid as a Weapon

In March, Israel shattered the ceasefire in Gaza by resuming its bombing campaign at full force and enforcing a total blockade on humanitarian aid—ushering in a new phase of the ongoing genocide. In response to mounting international criticism, the Israeli regime introduced a tightly controlled aid scheme designed not to alleviate suffering, but to obscure its use of starvation as a weapon of collective punishment. Through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Israel has transformed humanitarian aid into a tool of control, coercion, and forced displacement. Israeli forces have additionally blocked UN and other aid agencies from accessing over 400 distribution points they once operated throughout Gaza. They consequently forced two million Palestinians to rely on just four GHF sites, most near its southern border in what appears to be a deliberate effort to push mass displacement toward Egypt. Investigations have also revealed how US-based private contractors are actively profiting from the GHF’s deadly operations. In this policy lab, Yara Asi and Alex Feagans join host Tariq Kenney-Shawa to discuss how the GHF fits into Israel’s genocidal strategy—and to expose the network of individuals and companies profiting from what has been a death trap masquerading as humanitarian assistance.
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Yara Asi,Tariq Kenney-Shawa· Aug 5, 2025
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Normalizing Israeli Impunity and Dominance: The Arab Role

​​The October 7, 2023, Al-Aqsa Flood operation aimed to revive Palestinian armed resistance and reassert the cause in Arab and global consciousness after years of marginalization. It dealt a major blow to Israel’s deterrence, rupturing its image as a secure colonial outpost entrusted with protecting Western strategic interests. It also exposed cracks in its militarized social contract that rests on the regime’s ability to protect its settler population. While the operation imposed new political realities on the Israeli regime, it has come at a staggering cost to Palestinian life: Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has unleashed one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory. Yet the anticipated wave of Arab solidarity following the operation failed to materialize or translate into concrete policy shifts. Instead, the moment laid bare the entrenched ties between Arab regimes and Israel’s settler-colonial project that are rooted in mutual interests, regime preservation, and a shared antagonism toward Palestinian resistance. This commentary argues that these alliances—sustained by repression and strategic-economic cooperation and reinforced by Western complicity—transformed a potential turning point for isolating the Israeli regime into an opening for intensified colonial expansion and regional dominance.
Al-Shabaka Tariq Dana
Tariq Dana· Jul 22, 2025

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