Sanctions policy lab

As the Israeli regime escalates its apartheid and settler colonial practices in Palestine, calls for sanctions against it have likewise increased. Still, sanctions remain controversial – both in terms of their ethics and efficacy. Indeed, many have argued that sanctions have rarely achieved their intended goals.

What might sanctions look like in the context of efforts to hold the Israeli regime accountable for its human rights violations? Would sanctions be effective, or are they too little too late? And what lessons may be drawn from the South African experience and others? To answer these questions and more, join host Tariq Kenney-Shawa in conversation with Nada Elia and Khaled Elgindy for our latest policy lab!

Tariq Kenney-Shawa is Al-Shabaka's US Policy Fellow and co-host of Al-Shabaka's Policy Lab series. He holds a Masters degree in International Affairs from Columbia University....
Nada Elia teaches ethnic and cultural Studies at Western Washington University. She is the author of Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism,...
Khaled Elgindy is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, where he also directs MEI’s Program on Palestine and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs. He is the...

Latest Analysis

 Politics
“We’re all going to end up in Jordan,” remarked a young man from Al-Jiftlik, a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley. His comment reflects growing despair in the West Bank countryside, where Israeli settler-colonial expansion has intensified to unprecedented levels. This is particularly true in the Jordan Valley, the agricultural heartland along the West Bank’s eastern frontier with Jordan. Once known among Palestinians as the “bride of the Jordan Valley,” Al-Jiftlik now illustrates the gravity of Israeli state-sponsored settler expansion on Palestinian land, having transformed from a prosperous agricultural community into one under siege and facing sustained displacement pressure. Since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, land seizure in the West Bank has shifted from creeping settler encroachment to a vicious military-backed campaign of territorial theft. This commentary shows how the Israeli regime’s land appropriation policy in the West Bank, once justified through bureaucratic-legal land seizure orders, has now increasingly shifted toward direct settler takeovers. This shift does not indicate a change in objectives but rather an escalation of existing settlement expansion mechanisms, signaling the growing power and influence of the settler movement over Israeli policy.
Al-Shabaka Fathi Nimer
Fathi Nimer· Feb 3, 2026
 Politics
The announcement of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a 15-member technocratic body chaired by Ali Shaath, signals a shift toward depoliticized governance in Gaza amid ongoing genocide. Shaath, a Palestinian civil engineer and former deputy minister of planning and international cooperation, will lead an interim governing structure tasked with managing reconstruction and service provision under external oversight. While presented as a neutral technocratic governing structure, the NCAG is more likely to function as a managerial apparatus that stabilizes conditions that enable genocide rather than challenging them. This policy memo argues that technocratic governance in Gaza—particularly under US oversight, given its role as a co-perpetrator in the genocide—should be understood not as a pathway to recovery or sovereignty, but as part of a broader strategy of genocide management.
Al-Shabaka Yara Hawari
Yara Hawari· Jan 26, 2026
 Civil Society
This policy brief introduces de-healthification as a framework for understanding Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian healthcare infrastructure, particularly in Gaza. Rather than viewing the collapse of Gaza’s health system as a secondary outcome of the genocide, the brief argues that it is the product of long-standing policies of blockade, occupation, and structural neglect intended to render Palestinian life unhealable and perishable. By tracing the historical evolution of de-healthification, this brief argues that naming the process is essential for accountability. Because intent is revealed through patterns of destruction rather than explicit declarations, the framework of de-healthification equips policymakers, legal bodies, and advocates to identify healthcare destruction and denial as a core mechanism of settler-colonial control.
Layth Malhis· Jan 11, 2026