Focus On: International Aid to Palestine

The Trump Administration’s decision to cut aid to the Palestinians and cease USAID operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) must serve as a wake-up call for Palestinian policymakers to lay the Oslo Accords aid model to rest. Neither this model nor the masses of aid funds that have poured into Palestine – more than $35 billion since 1993 – have brought Palestinians closer to freedom, self-determination, or statehood, or provided for sustainable development. In fact, the opposite has been the case: Palestinians are forced to live in an aid-development paradox, with increased amounts of aid associated with major declines in socioeconomic and development indicators.

In this selection of pieces, Al-Shabaka policy analysts examine the effectiveness of international aid to Palestine, problematize its consequences and the harmful ramifications of aid dependency, and suggest ways forward to reform and re-invent Palestinian aid. The analysts argue that development cannot be understood as a mere technocratic, apolitical, and neutral process. Rather, it must be recognized as operating within relations of colonial dominance and rearticulated as linked to the struggle for rights, resistance, and emancipation.

The Failure of Aid

Donor Complicity in Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights

By Nora Lester Murad 

Nora Lester Murad elucidates donor practices that violate basic human rights, outlines eight questions that must be asked about aid complicity, and suggests mechanisms for oversight of the aid industry. Read more…

Persistent Failure: World Bank Policies for the Occupied Palestinian Territories

By Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildeman 

Alaa Tartir and Jeremy Wildeman assess the World Bank’s irrelevant and sometimes harmful policy recommendations and argue that until the Bank better understands the real conditions of Israeli occupation, it will continue to provide unrealistic recommendations that are based on a long-dead era of Oslo rapprochement. Read more…

Unmasking “Aid” After the Palestine Papers

By Samer Abdelnour

Samer Abdelnour examines the integral role played by the aid industry in ensuring the de-development of the Palestinian economy and argues that in the absence of accountability mechanisms the aid industry will continue to be complicit in the deliberate devastation of the people it claims to serve. Read more…

The Reinvention of Aid 

Can Oslo’s Failed Aid Model Be Laid to Rest?

By Jeremy Wildeman and Alaa Tartir 

Jeremy Wildeman and Alaa Tartir argue that donors are reinforcing failed past patterns associated with the so-called peace dividends model while making only cosmetic changes to their engagement. Read more…

Defeating Dependency, Creating a Resistance Economy

By Alaa Tartir, Sam Bahour, and Samer Abdelnour

Alaa Tartir, Sam Bahour, and Samer Abdelnour point to the need to consider how Palestinians can institutionalize and eventually create a bureaucracy around a democratic people-driven development agenda, and argue that any new Palestinian economic vision must embrace dignity in aid. Read more…

A New Model for Palestinian Development

By Samer Abdelnour

Samer Abdelnour analyzes Oslo-inspired pitfalls of Palestinian development and misguided donor attempts to promote private sector development, and argues that a Sustainable Local Enterprise Networks (SLENs) approach to development and reconstruction can work in the Palestinian context. Read more…

Sam Bahour resides in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine. He does business consulting as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the...
Samer Abdelnour is an academic and activist. He co-founded Al-Shabaka in 2009 and served as a founding board member until 2016.
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nora Lester Murad is an adjunct associate professor at Fordham University. She is also the co-founder of Dalia Association, Palestine's first community foundation;...
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Jeremy Wildeman ​is a Research Associate at the University of Bath's "Department of Social and Policy Sciences" where he is carrying out...
Alaa Tartir is Al-Shabaka's program and policy advisor. He is a senior researcher and director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Stockholm International...
(2019, September 4)

Latest Analysis

 Economics
US tech giants portray themselves as architects of a better world powered by artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and data-driven solutions. Under slogans like “AI for Good,” they promise ethical innovation and social progress. Yet in Gaza, these narratives have collapsed, alongside international norms and what remains of the so-called rules-based order. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has highlighted the role of major technology companies in enabling military operations and sustaining the occupation. Beneath the destruction lie servers, neural networks, and software built by some of the world’s most powerful corporations. As Israel weaponizes AI and data analytics to kill Palestinians and destroy their homes, the militarization of digital technologies and infrastructures is redefining accountability and exposing a governance vacuum. This policy brief traces how corporate complicity now extends to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—and calls for urgent regulation of AI militarization.
Al-Shabaka Marwa Fatafta
Marwa Fatafta· Oct 26, 2025
 Politics
In this policy lab, Leila Farsakh and Abdaljawad Omar join host Tariq Kenney-Shawa to trace the historical trajectory leading to October 7, examine how Gaza has become both a site of extermination and a catalyst for global rupture, and discuss what comes next for Palestinians.
 Politics
For two years, Israel has inflicted mass starvation, staggering death tolls, and relentless destruction on Gaza and its inhabitants. International efforts to recognize Israeli war crimes and halt the eradication of the Palestinian people continue to lag and fall short. On September 16, 2025, the UN Commission of Inquiry confirmed what Palestinians have identified since the outset: Israel is committing genocide. On September 29, US President Donald Trump unveiled a proposal that promises a ceasefire but subordinates Palestinians in Gaza to external governance, denies them self-determination, and entrenches Israeli control over the land. Framed as a peace initiative, the plan is in fact an attempt by the US to shield the Israeli regime from accountability, exemplifying Western complicity in the colonization of Palestine and the extermination of its people. In this context, Hamas’s agreement to release all Israeli captives signals its commitment to ending the ongoing violence, while simultaneously shifting the onus onto the Israeli regime and the Trump administration to clarify and operationalize their commitments to the ceasefire process. This Focus On gathers Al-Shabaka’s analyses from the past year, offering urgent context to understand the genocide and its regional impact. It traces the Israeli regime’s expansionist campaign across Gaza, the West Bank, and the wider region, exposing Western complicity not only in enabling its crimes but also in protecting it from justice. At the same time, it highlights initiatives that resist Israeli impunity while advancing accountability and genuine liberation.
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