typePolicy Memos
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UK arms companies have long profited from selling weapons to Israel, with licenses issued from the British government. Since 2008, these exports have totaled an estimated $740 million, continuing even amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Following the Labour Party's July 2024 election victory, which promised alignment with international law, some were cautiously optimistic that an arms embargo would be forthcoming. In September 2024, the British government suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel. Activists and human rights groups argue that this is far too limited. Accordingly, this policy memo details Britain's international legal obligations and potential governmental maneuvers regarding arms sales to Israel.
In this policy memo, Tariq Dana examines the mutually reinforcing interests of the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel that fuel the prospective agreement. He interrogates Saudi's feigned solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and situates the normalization deal within shifting regional dynamics.
To date, 2023 is the deadliest year on record for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, largely due to the Israeli regime’s violent operations in Jenin and Nablus to suppress Palestinian mobilization and armed resistance. While the Palestinian Authority (PA) was largely absent during the Israeli army’s raids, it quickly sought to re-establish the guise of control following their conclusion.
In March 2023, after months of protests over Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial judicial overhaul, Israel gave far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir the go-ahead to establish a national guard. The force, to be composed of an initial 1,800 officers and with an operating budget of one billion NIS ($273 million), will primarily assist Israeli police during “security” emergencies.
The Unity Intifada of May 2021 emphasized the centrality of Palestinian popular mobilization in the struggle against Israel’s settler-colonial apartheid regime. It is imperative that discussions of an anti-apartheid movement in Palestine remain true to the Unity Intifada’s decolonial praxis: to confront Zionism’s “racist settler colonialism in all of Palestine” and to challenge Israel’s fragmentation of the Palestinian people as a tool of domination.
Through its participation in the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) and other international forums, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to promote a state-centric approach to climate change that ultimately blocks legitimate climate and environmental justice in Palestine. In effect, Palestinian leadership has reduced the Palestinian liberation struggle - inherently a struggle for climate and environmental justice - to a failed state-building project since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
In October 2021, the Palestinian Civil Society Team for Enhancing Public Budget Transparency revealed that the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) security sector continues to receive the largest portion of the PA’s budget. During the first half of 2021, more than 50 million Israeli shekels (~$16 million) were spent on the reform of the PA security forces (PASF). The PASF also received 1,675 million shekels (~$538 million) - over 22% of the PA’s total budget - of which 88% were allocated to salaries; this was an increase of 115 million shekels (~$37 million) in comparison with the first six months of 2020.
Following the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014, the Palestinian and Israeli governments, and with international sponsorship, formed a temporary arrangement through which large quantities of “dual-use” items were allowed to enter Gaza for the purpose of reconstruction. This mechanism is known as the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM), and is considered by many Palestinians to be corrupt and unjust, as it legitimizes the Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza since 2006, and effectively impedes the reconstruction process. The GRM gives Israel the right to completely control what is allowed to enter Gaza, including necessary materials for reconstruction.
In 2013, the UNDP warned of the increasing occurrence of dangerous heatwaves in Palestine over the coming years as a result of climate change. Indeed, at the end of August 2020, the Palestine Meteorological Office issued a warning about an impending heatwave, where the temperature ranged between five to nine degrees above its yearly average.
The disastrous explosion that struck Beirut’s port on August 4, 2020, greatly exacerbated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which followed on the heels of the severe financial crisis that had led to massive popular protests in late 2019. The Lebanese economy is now in almost total collapse with the value of the national currency plummeting by 80% and more than half the population living under the poverty line. This policy memo discusses the effect of this multilayered crisis on the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the oldest refugee community in the country. Specifically, it examines their coping strategies and addresses the question of responsibility to mitigate the consequences of this crisis on refugees.
Many mainstream political ideas about the future of Palestine are primarily concerned with the containment of indigenous Palestinians and security for the Israeli settler state. The most recent manifestation of this was the Trump administration’s “Vision for Peace, Prosperity and a Brighter Future for Israel and the Palestinian People.” This “vision” proposed nothing less than Palestinian capitulation in which Palestinians in the West Bank would be encased in a series of Bantustans and the Gaza Strip would remain a besieged enclave while the rights of Palestinians in exile, including those of refugees, would be forsaken.
Media & Outreach
The Makdisi Street podcast speaks with Palestinian analyst Tareq Baconi, author of Hamas Contained (Stanford University Press, 2018) and president of the board of Al-Shabaka. One year into the Gaza genocide, they discuss the emergence Hamas and its role in the Palestinian political polity, its sweeping victory in Gaza in 2006 as well as its subsequent governance in Gaza and attempts to contain its growth through blockade. They explore how October 7th upended the entire strategic alignment of the Western imperialist powers that are part of Israeli apartheid structure, and recentered Palestine.
US law prohibits military assistance to allies blocking Gaza humanitarian aid, but Washington says no assessment on Israel.
By failing to take action to halt it, universities and other institutions in Europe and North America are enabling the slaughter of Palestinians.
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