Article - Strategizing Anti-Normalization from the Gulf to Capitol Hill

With the recent US congressional push for normalization deals between Arab states and the Israeli regime under the Abraham Accords, the voices of US and Arab dissenters from the streets of San Francisco, Washington, DC, Manama, Dubai, and beyond, have been largely silenced in mainstream media outlets. What do these deals signify for the Arab residents of normalizing states? How can their voices be amplified within the context of increasingly authoritarian rule? What does a transnational anti-normalization campaign from the halls of the US Congress to the streets of Manama look like?

To reflect on these questions and more, Al-Shabaka’s Commissioning Editor, Nadim Bawalsa, is joined by anti-normalization activists, Nadya Tannous and Sumaya Almajdoub, in the latest installment of Al-Shabaka’s policy lab series.

Nadim Bawalsa is Associate Editor with the Journal of Palestine Studies. From 2020-2023, Nadim served as Al-Shabaka’s commissioning editor. He is a historian of modern...
Nadya Tannous was Al-Shabaka's summer 2021 visiting US policy fellow. She is a passionate community organizer, born and raised in the Bay Area (Ohlone Territory)....
With: Sumaya Almajdoub

Latest Analysis

 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
 Civil Society
The global reckoning that followed October 7, 2023, marked a profound rupture in how Palestine is understood worldwide. The Gaza genocide exposed how Israeli mass violence is not exceptional or reactive, but foundational to the Zionist project. What was once framed as a “conflict” to be managed is now widely recognized as a system of domination to be dismantled. It ushered in a shift away from the technocratic language of peace processes and toward an honest confrontation with the structural realities Palestinians have long named: settler colonialism, apartheid, and the ongoing Nakba. The commentary argues that the Israeli genocidal campaign in Gaza has radicalized the world. When crowds march through global capitals demanding a free Palestine, they simultaneously articulate demands for the abolition of racial capitalism, extractive regimes, climate injustice, and all forms of contemporary fascism. In this moment of radical clarity, Palestine becomes a lens through which the underlying architecture of global domination is laid bare—and through which new horizons of collective freedom emerge.
Tareq Baconi· Dec 21, 2025
 Politics
Inès Abdel Razek and Munir Nuseibah joined Al-Shabaka for a conversation on the politics behind the UNSC resolution, the implementability of the US-Israeli plan, and the scenarios now being advanced for Gaza and for Palestine more broadly.