Article - Palestinian Narrative: How Do We Build A Strategy?

Why is a collective narrative important to the Palestinian liberation struggle? What challenges do the Palestinian people face in promoting their narrative, and who has legitimacy to promulgate it?

Al-Shabaka analysts Tamara Ben-Halim and Hazem Jamjoum weigh in on these questions and more in this month’s Palestine Policy Lab, facilitated by Amjad Iraqi.

Tamara Ben-Halim is a co-founder, trustee, and former director of Makan, a Palestinian-led nonprofit based in the UK that works to strengthen voices for Palestinian rights through educational and capacity-building programs. She also co-founded Cycling4Gaza, an initiative that has raised over $1.2 million for vulnerable Palestinian communities in Gaza since 2009. She holds an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and an MA in Modern European Languages from the University of Edinburgh.

Hazem Jamjoum is a Palestinian cultural historian, archivist, and editor based in London. He is an editor at Safarjal Press and curator of the British Library’s early twentieth century audio recordings relevant to Arab and Gulf history. His translation of Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine (1804 Books) won the 2024 Palestine Book Award, and his translation of Maya Abu al-Hayyat’s No One Knows Their Blood Type was published by the CSU Poetry Center in 2024.

Amjad Iraqi is a senior Israel/Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group. He was previously a senior editor at +972 Magazine, an associate fellow with Chatham House’s MENA Programme, and an advocacy coordinator at Adalah. Among other outlets, he has written for the London Review of BooksThe New York Review of BooksThe Nation, and The Guardian, and has appeared on various podcasts including “The Ezra Klein Show”. Amjad has an MA in Public Policy from King’s College London, and an Hon. BA in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Toronto.

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