Article - Gaza: Stuck in the Status Quo

For years, Palestinians have decried the devastating conditions in Gaza, only to see those conditions continue to worsen. What’s prevented real change from happening on the ground, and what ramifications has this had on Palestinians in Gaza and the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation?

In this policy lab, analysts Tareq Baconi and Yasmeen El-Khoudary weigh in on these questions and more.

Yasmeen El Khoudary is a researcher, writer, and communications professional specializing in Palestinian archaeology, cultural heritage, and storytelling for social change. She holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies from University College London. The daughter of Jawdat Khoudary, founder of Almathaf — Gaza’s first museum of archaeology — she has a deep-rooted connection to preserving Gaza’s cultural legacy, and since 2022 has led fieldwork for the Gaza Maritime Archaeology Project (GAZAMAP). She is currently Associate Partner at Stronger Stories and has published on Gaza’s history and heritage in the Guardian, CNN, and Al-Jazeera English.

Tareq Baconi serves as the president of the board of Al-Shabaka. He was Al-Shabaka’s US Policy Fellow from 2016 – 2017. Tareq is the former senior analyst for Israel/Palestine and Economics of Conflict at the International Crisis Group, based in Ramallah, and the author of Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance (Stanford University Press, 2018). Tareq’s writing has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, the Washington Post, among others, and he is a frequent commentator in regional and international media. He is the book review editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies.

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