Al-Shabaka Logo
Al-Shabaka Logo
Al-Shabaka Logo
Al-Shabaka Logo
Al-Shabaka Logo
Al-Shabaka Logo
Donate Sign Up
  • العربية
  • English
  • Policy Analysis
    • Civil Society
    • Economics
    • Politics
    • Refugees
    • Scenario Matrix
  • Policy Insights
    • Policy Focus
    • Policy Labs
    • Podcasts
  • Policy Network
    • Members
    • Contributors
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Who We Are
    • Internship Program
    • Contact
    • Donate
    • Privacy & Terms of Use
  • Media & Outreach
    • Op-Eds & Articles
    • In the Media
    • Events
    • Press Releases
    • Press Contacts
Al-Shabaka Logo
Al-Shabaka Logo

Members

Policy Members are Al-Shabaka’s foundation of expertise, talent and commitment. They may contribute to Al-Shabaka’s work by writing policy briefs, position papers, commentaries, blog entries, and Op-Eds and disseminating Al-Shabaka’s policy advice and opinions.

Inès Abdel Razek

Inès Abdel Razek is Advocacy Director for the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD), an independent Palestinian organization. Prior to joining the PIPD, Inès held advisory positions in the executive offices of the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona, the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi and the Palestinian Prime Minister's Office in Ramallah, where she focused on international governance and development cooperation policies. Inès is also an advisory board member of the social enterprise BuildPalestine. She holds a Master's degree in Public Affairs from Sciences-Po, Paris. Twitter: @InesAbdelrazek

Ali Abdel-Wahab

Ali Abdel-Wahab works as a data analyst and evaluation and follow-up assistant at the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Gaza. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, and is interested in the world of data, big data, and computer social sciences. He has worked as a research assistant in several Palestinian and European institutes and has written several articles and scientific papers. He is also a member of the political youth forum in Gaza's Masarat Center. His research focuses on issues of political economy, digital transformation, and the social network, with particular focus on Palestine.

Photo of Samer Abdelnour
Samer Abdelnour

Samer Abdelnour is an academic and activist. He co-founded Al-Shabaka in 2009 and served as a founding board member until 2016.

Ramy Abdu

Ramy Abdu is an academic, financial expert and human rights advocate. He is an assistant professor of law and finance, as well as the founder and Chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Ramy previously served as a project and investment coordinator for the World Bank. He holds an MBA in Finance from Jordan University as well as an MReS and PhD in Law and Finance from Manchester Metropolitan University (UK).

Kifah Abdul Halim

Kifah Abdul Halim is a Palestinian journalist, translator, and activist. She began her career as a political and media advisor and worked with several NGOs, serving inter-alia as the Director of the Occupied Territories Department at Physicians for Human Rights. In recent years, she has focused her career on journalism, leading context and investigative reports for newspapers and digital platforms as well as for feature documentaries. She is the Editor of "Alasa'a" - an independent critical electronic magazine - and works with various Palestinian cultural institutions, producing festivals, concerts, writers’ and artists’ residencies, and other programs.

Ayman Abdul Majeed

Ayman Abdul Majeed is Researcher and Survey Unit coordinator for the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University. He has spent nearly 20 years in community research and programs focused on marginalized groups including women, youth, people with disability, children, and Palestinian refugees in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. He is a member of the National Committee for Women Employment’s (2010-2013). His publications include: women with disability and access to justice (Center for Development Studies, BZU 2013, and Low youth participation in the labor market in Palestine: Reasons and limitations from a gender perspective 2011, Population Council, Cairo. He took his MA in Gender and Development at Birzeit University in 2006.

Rabab Abdulhadi

Rabab Abdulhadi is Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Associate Professor of Race and Resistance Studies, and Senior Scholar, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative at San Francisco State University. She is a long-time feminist activist and scholar who has contributed to the struggle for Palestinian self-determination and the well-being of Palestinian women. From 1982 to 1988, she was the Director of Political and International Relations at the Middle East Research Center in New York.

Wassim F. Abdullah

Wassim F. Abdullah  is a veteran engineer in electronics and telecommunications who has worked on diverse projects and policies to encourage multi-media and an information-based economy in Palestine. These include TV and radio stations, the Palestine Media Center, the Palestinian Legislative Council video-conference system between Ramallah and Gaza and its integration with the voting system, and the audio and lighting systems of Ramallah festivals. He also participated in the design of the IT strategy for Palestine and has consulted for Palestinian governmental as well as international organizations.

Shatha Abdulsamad

Shatha Abdulsamad is pursuing her MA in International Human Rights Law and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo. She previously worked as a political officer for the British Consulate General in Jerusalem and as programme manager at the German think-tank Friedrich-Ebert Foundation. Her field of expertise includes political analysis, human rights, and strategic political communication. She holds a higher diploma in Strategic and Political Communication from Birzeit University, a master’s degree in Business Management from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and a bachelor's degree in Public Administration from Birzeit University.

Photo of Oroub El-Abed
Oroub el-Abed

Oroub El-Abed is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for British Research in the Levant (British Academy grant). She holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies, and has consulted and written in the area of political economy of development and forced migration, particularly Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. She is the author of Unprotected: Palestinians in Egypt since 1948 (Washington, DC, and Ottawa, CA: Institute for Palestine Studies and the International Development Research Centre, 2009).

Hazem Abu Helal

Hazem Abu Helal is a political, social and human rights activist. He holds a BA in law from the University of Jerusalem and a higher diploma in NGO Management from Birzeit University. Hazem has contributed to founding a number of Palestinian civil institutions, youth groups and campaigns involved in political and social issues in Palestine and the Arab world. He has worked with several civil institutions on youth and education issues in Palestine and as a facilitator and trainer on gender, human rights, advocacy, and life skills for youth.

Asmaa Abu Mezied

Asmaa Abu Mezied is an economic development and social inclusion specialist working with Oxfam to address issues of gender, development, and climate change in the agriculture sector. Her research interests focus on the care economy, women’s collectives organizing in economic sectors, the private sector’s social accountability, and the intersection of Palestinian political, agricultural, and environmental identities. She was an Atlas Corps Fellow in partnership with President Obama Emerging Global Leaders, a Gaza Hub-Global Shaper (an initiative of World Economic Forum), and a 2021 Mozilla Foundation Wrangler at "Tech for Social Activism" space. 

Mai Abu Moghli

Mai Abu Moghli is senior researcher and Co-Principle Investigator in the Education in Emergencies Program at the Centre for Lebanese Studies. She received a PhD in human rights education from UCL’s Institute of Education and an MA in human rights from the University of Essex. Her work focuses on critical approaches to human rights education, teacher professional development, refugee education, and decolonizing research and higher education. She has worked in a number of academic institutions in the UK, Lebanon, and Palestine, and has published on the legal status of Syrian Palestinian refugees, Palestinian teachers’ activism, the professional development of teachers in the context of mass displacement, and on decolonial research ethics and methods.  

Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud

Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at Coastal Carolina University, Conway, South Carolina. She has been a visiting assistant professor at Harvey Mudd College, a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at Pomona College, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Prior to this she worked as an Israeli Knesset member adviser. Daoud has published four volumes of Arabic poetry and literature, and her academic book, Palestinian Women and Politics in Israel, was published in 2009 by the University of Florida Press. 

Talal Ahmad Abu Rokbeh

Talal Ahmad Abu Rokbeh, is a Palestinian residing in Gaza. He is a political researcher and holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Carthage in Tunis. He works as a political analyst and editor-in-chief of the magazine Tasamoh, and he is a member of the Arab Network for Tolerance. He has conducted several research projects, as well as political and legal studies. He is a trainer specialized in Palestinian political affairs, and has written many books on the Palestinian political system. He participated in many regional and local conferences on various political and human rights issues. He is a political analyst for several local and Arab satellite channels, a writer for media and research sites, and a trainer specialized in issues of democracy, human rights, and critical thinking skills for Palestinian civil society institutions. He is also a community activist, advocating for youth issues.

Photo of Mjriam Abu Samra
Mjriam Abu Samra

Mjriam Abu Samra is a doctoral researcher in International Relations at the University of Oxford, UK. Her work focuses on Palestinian Transnational Student Movements and their contribution to the broader Liberation Movement through different political periods. She had previously completed her Masters in Middle East Politics at SOAS in London. Recently, Mjriam has been based in Amman, Jordan, where she is completing her research. She has lectured at the University of Jordan Faculty of Politics and International Studies. Mjriam has been a co-founder of the Palestinian Youth Association “Wael Zuaiter” in Rome, Italy, and of the transnational Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).

Mohammad Abu Zaineh

Mohammad Abu Zaineh is Adjunct Professor of Economics at Aix-Marseille Université School of Economics and École des hautes études en santé publique in Paris. He has worked with UNAIDS in Geneva, the Palestine Economic Policy Institute in Ramallah and the Department of Economics as well as the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University, Palestine. His main areas of research include measurement and explanation of socioeconomic inequality; public economics and policies (applied mainly to health and the health care sector) and economic development.

Wajjeh Abu Zarifa

Wajjeh Abu Zarifa is a journalist, researcher and professor of political science in Gaza, and a fellow at the University of Chicago. He holds a PhD from the Cairo-based Institute of Arab Research and Studies in political science, and a master's degree in Israeli studies from the University of Jerusalem. Abu Zarifa has participated in numerous international conferences and seminars, and published scientific papers and research as well as political articles and opinion pieces. He has worked in the press for 30 years with local and international media outlets including most recently NBC News. Abu Zarifa served in a number of community posts, including director of the PLO's national office for the defense of land and resistance of settlement, and a member of the Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate.

Refqa Abu-Remaileh

Refqa Abu-Remaileh is professor of Modern Arabic Literature and Film at the Freie Universität Berlin’s Arabic Department, specializing in Palestinian literature and film. She is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) project “PalREAD – Country of Words: Reading and Reception of Palestinian Literature from 1948 to the Present” (2018-2023). She received her MSt in modern Middle Eastern Studies and DPhil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford (2004, 2010).

Caroline Abu-Sada

Caroline Abu-Sada is Director of the Research Unit of Medecins Sans Frontieres Switzerland, and an Honorary Lecturer at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester. She has worked on food security, agriculture and health issues, and coordinated programs in the Middle East for Oxfam GB, the United Nations and MSF Switzerland. Dr Abu-Sada works include "ONG palestiniennes et construction étatique, l’expérience de Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) dans les Territoires occupés palestiniens, 1983- 2005", IFPO, Beirut, 2005; and “Dilemmas, Challenges, and Ethics of Humanitarian Action”, Mc Gill-Queen's University Press, 2012. She has taught political science at New York University, Paris and at Sciences Po, Lille.

Ayah Abubasheer

Ayah Abubasheer holds a Master’s degree in Global Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She has published articles at Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, Mondoweiss and Middle East Eye.

Nadi Abusaada

Nadi Abusaada is an architect, urbanist and a historian. He is currently an Aga Khan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. Nadi's PhD at the University of Cambridge examined the history of urban planning and urban governance in late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine. Nadi is also the co-founder of Arab Urbanism, a global network dedicated to historical and contemporary urban issues in the Arab region. His writings have been featured in a number of international publications including The Architectural Review, The International Journal of Islamic Architecture, and the Jerusalem Quarterly among others.

Jehad Abusalim

Jehad Abusalim is currently a PhD student in the History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies joint program at New York University. His main area of research is Palestinian and Arab perceptions of the Zionist project and the Jewish question before 1948. He also studies the political and social history of the Gaza Strip and the impacts of the Palestinian Nakba, and how it radically impacted the political, social, demographic, and economic realities of Gaza.

Hashem Abushama

Hashem Abushama graduated from Earlham College with a BA in Peace and Global Studies. In 2015, Abushama became a Youth Representative of Palestine Refugees at the United Nations. He was appointed as a Youth Ambassador to the [email protected] Conference in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. At Earlham, Abushama served as the President of the Earlham Student Body. Recently, he has been selected as one of first two Rhodes Scholars from Palestine. While at the University of Oxford, Abushama hopes to pursue his graduate studies in International Development with a particular focus on Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.

Zena Agha

Zena Agha served as Al-Shabaka's US Policy Fellow from 2017 - 2019. Her areas of expertise include Israeli settlement-building in the occupied Palestinian territory with a special focus on Jerusalem, modern Middle Eastern history, and spatial practices. She has previously worked at the Economist, the Iraqi Embassy in Paris, and the Palestinian delegation at UNESCO. In addition to opinion pieces in The Independent, and The Nation, Zena’s media credits include the BBC World Service, BBC Arabic and El Pais. Zena was awarded the Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard University, completing her Master’s in Middle Eastern Studies.

Halah Ahmad

Halah Ahmad completed her Master’s in Public Policy at Cambridge University as the Lionel de Jersey Harvard Scholar at Emmanuel College. She has conducted strategic policy research for government agencies and NGOs in Greece, Albania, Berlin, the West Bank, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston. She currently leads policy and public relations work at the Jain Family Institute, an applied social science research institute based in New York City. Her own research covers topics of equitable development and social welfare, ranging from urban planning and tourism, to displacement, housing, and economic justice. Halah completed her undergraduate degree with honors in comparative religion and sociology at Harvard.

Photo of Amal Ahmad
Amal Ahmad

Amal Ahmad is a Palestinian economic researcher. Amal interned at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah before completing a Master’s degree in development economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her work focuses on fiscal and monetary relations between Israel and Palestine; she is also interested in the political economy of development in the broader Middle East.

Abdullah Al-Arian

Abdullah Al-Arian is an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, where he specializes in the modern Middle East and the study of Islamic social movements. He is the author of Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat's Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2014). He is also co-editor of the Critical Currents in Islam page on the Jadaliyya e-zine. Twitter: @anhistorian

Mariam Al-Mozian

Al-Shabaka policy member Mariam Al-Mozian lives in Gaza and holds a PhD in Political Science from the Institute of Arab Research and Studies. She previously worked as media officer at the General Union of Palestinian Women and as an adjunct professor at Al-Quds Open University in Rafah. Her work specializes in assessing civil society institutions' programs and their suitability for the Palestinian context, including research on the role of civil society institutions in empowering young women leaders.

Mohammed Al-Rozzi

Mohammed Alruzzi is a Lecturer in Childhood Studies at the University of Bristol, the UK. He earned his PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Before that, he completed his Master’s degree in Childhood Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Alruzzi has worked with many international non-governmental organisations and UN agencies, including Mercy Corps, Terre des Hommes, the Norwegian Refugee Council, World Vision and UNICEF. Through his work experience, Mohammed has developed extensive multidisciplinary expertise in children issues. His research interests include child labour, child detention and education policy.

Samer Alatout

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Samer Alatout is an associate professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published extensively on water and environmental politics in historic Palestine (1900-2010) and is now working on a book on the subject. Alatout has also published on the politics of occupation (water, the apartheid wall). Most recently, he's been researching the state building process in Palestine. He is on the Executive Council of the International Water History Association and sits on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals, including Political Geography and Resilience.

Zarefa Ali

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zarefa Ali received her MA degree from Birzeit University in International Studies with a concentration in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies.

Photo of Nijmeh Ali
Nijmeh Ali

Dr. Nijmeh Ali is a Fellow at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPCS), University of Otago and a lecturer in the GDCR program at Otago Polytechnic. Her research focuses on resistance and activism within oppressed groups, particularly among Palestinian activists in Israel. Her research provides a critical perspective on studying resistance and revolution in non-western societies and challenges the classic liberal framework of citizenship. It also deals with exposing strategies used by oppressed and marginalized groups in resisting their subjugation; therefore, it applies to women, minorities, refugees, and migrants.

Maureen Ali

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Maureen Ali, former cultural editor of The Middle East magazine, is a writer and film-maker based in Beirut. She is the editor of the book “A Lost Summer,” a compilation of blogs, texts and other writings about the 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon and wrote the texts for “Watercolors,” a campaigning book by photographer Mazen Jannoun about the state of the Lebanese coast. She is an active member of Inaash, Association for the Development of Palestinian Camps, Beirut.

Hanna Alshaikh

Al-Shabaka Member Hanna Alshaikh is an adjunct professor at DePaul University, teaching courses on political Islam, the intersections of religion and politics in the Middle East, and Islamic thought. Hanna is also a research fellow at the American Friends Service Committee, working on an oral history project on the Palestinian diasporic narrative, activism, immigration, and intergenerational issues. She holds a BA from DePaul University, where she double majored in Islamic World Studies and Arabic, and earned her MA from the University of Chicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). Her research focused on social and intellectual history in the late Ottoman Palestine.

Ahmad Amara

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Ahmad Amara is a human rights advocate and a graduate of the joint PhD program in History and Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University. Before pursuing his PhD degree, Amara served for three years as a clinical instructor and global advocacy fellow with Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program. Amara holds an LLB and LLM from Tel-Aviv University, and a second master’s degree in international human rights law from Essex University in the United Kingdom. Amara has a number of publications, including the co-edited volume “Indigenous (In)Justice: Human Rights Law and Bedouin Arabs in the Naqab/Negev” by Harvard University Press.

Photo of Sabrien Amrov
Sabrien Amrov

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Sabrien Amrov is pursuing her Ph.D. in Human Geography at the University of Toronto. In 2013, she earned her master’s degree in International Relations, with Honours, from the University of Ottawa. Her MA thesis on the Security Sector Reform in the West Bank was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2011, she earned her Honours Bachelors in Conflict Studies and Human Rights with a Minor in Arabic Language and Culture from the same university.  Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Middle East Monitor, Rabble and TRT World.

Nur Arafeh

Nur Arafeh is a Fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, in Washington DC, where her work focuses on the political economy of the MENA region, business-state relations, peacebuilding strategies, the development-security nexus and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She previously served as Al-Shabaka's Palestine Policy Fellow between 2015 and 2017, worked as an Associate Researcher at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), and as a Visiting Lecturer of Economics at Al-Quds Bard College. Nur has also consulted for several Palestinian and international organizations, on issues related to development policies, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and socio-economic policy analysis. Her commentaries have appeared in English, Arabic and French in The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al-Jazeera, and Al-Akhbar, among other outlets. Nur holds a doctorate in International Development as a Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oxford, a Master’s in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, and a dual-BA degree in Political Science and Economics from Sciences Po Paris and Columbia University.”

Photo Naseer Aruri
Naseer Aruri (1934 – 2015)

Naseer Aruri was Chancellor Professor (Emeritus) of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. He was a founder, former chair, and  member-at-large of the Board of Directors of the Trans-Arab Research Institute (Boston), and a member of the Advisory Board of Directors of the International Institute for Criminal Investigations (The Hague). Dr. Aruri was the author of several books, including Dishonest Broker: the U.S. Role in Israel and Palestine (South End Press).

Yara Asi

Dr. Yara M. Asi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Central Florida in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics. Her research agenda focuses on global health, human rights, and development in fragile populations. She is a Non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, a 2020-2021 Fulbright US Scholar to the West Bank, the Fall 2021 US Fellow at Al Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network, and the co-chair of the Palestine Health Justice Working Group in the American Public Health Association. Along with working at one of the first accountable care organizations in the United States, she has also worked with Amnesty International USA and the Palestinian American Research Center on policy and outreach issues. She has presented at multiple national and international conferences on topics related to global health, food security, health informatics, and women in healthcare, and has published extensively on health and well-being in fragile and conflict-affected populations in journal articles and book chapters. Her work has also been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, +972 Magazine, The Conversation, Al Jazeera, The World, and other outlets. Her forthcoming book with Johns Hopkins University Press will examine war as a public health crisis.

Nada Awad

Al-Shabaka policy member Nada Awad holds a master’s degree in International Relations and International Security from Sciences Pro Paris. She works on human rights violations in the Arab region as the international advocacy officer at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). She was previously responsible for the Advocacy unit at Al-Quds University’s Community Action Center, where she focused on the issue of forcible transfer of Palestinians from Jerusalem. She also worked as an archival researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut.

Mark Muhannad Ayyash 

Mark Muhannad Ayyash was born and raised in Silwan, Al-Quds, before immigrating to Canada, where he is now Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University. He is the author of A Hermeneutics of Violence (UTP, 2019). He has published several articles in journals such as Interventions, the European Journal of International Relations, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and the European Journal of Social Theory. He has written opinion pieces for Al-Jazeera, The Baffler, Middle East Eye, Mondoweiss, The Breach, and Middle East Monitor. He is currently writing a book on settler colonial sovereignty in Palestine/Israel.

Valentina Azarova

Valentina Azarova is an international legal academic and practitioner working at the intersection of power, law, and violence, with over 15 years of experience advising social and liberation movements, NGOs, international and inter-governmental organisations and governments, primarily in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. She holds a PhD in law from NUI Galway’s Irish Centre for Human Rights and currently teaches transnational lawyering and human rights practice at different universities and is also a Research Fellow at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester. Valentina's current research concerns practices and processes reproduction of (ir)responsibility in/by international law, and the relation between social justice struggles, accountability practices and the law.

Fateh Azzam

Fateh Azzam is the Director of the newly established Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University in Beirut, and Senior Policy Fellow at AUB’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy. Previously, he directed al-Haq (1987-1995), was Human Rights Officer at the Ford Foundation (1996-2003), Director of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo (2003-2006) and Middle East regional Representative of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights until July 2012. He is co-founder and former Board Chair of the Arab Human Rights Fund.

Tareq Baconi

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.

Cecilia Baeza

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Cecilia Baeza is lecturer at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, Brazil. She is co-founder of RIMAAL, a network of researchers on the links between Latin America and the Middle East. She holds a doctorate in international relations from Sciences Po-Paris.

Sam Bahour

Sam Bahour resides in Al-Bireh/Ramallah, Palestine. He does business consulting as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information technology sector and start-ups. Bahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Centers (APSC). He is Co-founder & Emeritus Member of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy (A4VPE). He currently is an independent Director at the Arab Islamic Bank PLC and a board member at Just Vision. He writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and has been widely published in leading outlets. He is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians (Olive Branch Press, 1993), tweets at @SamBahour, and blogs at epalestine.ps.

Sami al-Banna

Sami al-Banna is Director and Chief Technology Officer, NPS Office of Innovation, North American Public Sector at CSC. He was previously director of knowledge systems at McKinsey and Company.

Linah al-Banna

Linah al-Banna is a Child Psychologist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute.

Salem Barahmeh

Al-Shabaka policy member Salem Barahmeh is the Executive Director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy. He is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the US Middle East Project and previously worked as an international affairs advisor to Dr. Hanan Ashrawi at the PLO and the Palestine Investment Fund. He has also worked at Portland Communications in London, as a Policy and Public Affairs Advisor to Gulf governments, and for the Palestinian Embassy to the United States. Salem received a BA in Government from Lawrence University and an MA in Law and Politics from King’s College London.

Rana Barakat

Rana Barakat is an assistant professor of history and contemporary Arab studies at Birzeit University in Palestine. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago writing about popular politics and resistance in early twentieth century Palestine. Her research interests include the social history of Jerusalem, colonialism, and revolutionary social movements.

Ahmad Barclay

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Ahmad Barclay is an architect and environmental designer presently based in Beirut. He is co-founder of arenaofspeculation.org, and also works on Visualizing Palestine and #3awda. Ahmad previously worked with DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency) on the “Laboratory of Returns” project, investigating architectural models for the return of Palestinian refugees. His academic research has focused on the potentials of architecture and planning as tools of 'spatial resistance' in the Palestinian struggle.

Omar Barghouti

Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian human rights defender and co-founder of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights. He is a co-recipient of the 2017 Gandhi Peace Award. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University, NY, and is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy (ethics) at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of, BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket: 2011). His commentaries and views have appeared in many mainstream outlets including the New York Times, the Guardian, MSNBC, CNN, Le Monde, among others.

Mariam Barghouti

Mariam Barghouti is a Palestinian writer and researcher based in Ramallah. She earned a BA in English Language and Literature from Birzeit University, and an MSc in Sociology and Global Change from the University of Edinburgh. She worked as a journalist and reporter with a focus on the Levant, and published various sociopolitical commentaries from Palestine. She has undertaken monitoring and evaluation missions of humanitarian and development aid in Jordan, Palestine, and Lebanon for various governmental and non-governmental organizations. Her reporting and analysis have been featured in Al-Jazeera English, the New York Times, the Guardian, BBC, and Middle East Eye, amongst others.

Nadia Barhoum

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nadia Barhoum is a research associate at UC Berkeley where she works on issues of political ecology and climate adaptability, data visualization, structural inequality, and spatial politics within marginalized communities. She previously worked as the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch and as an Advocacy Officer with a local NGO in East Jerusalem. She completed her BA in Political Economy at UC Berkeley and her MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. Nadia has been active in youth organizing within transnational Palestinian communities and is a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Mussa’ab Bashir

Al-Shabaka Member Mussa’ab Bashir is an interpreter and translator, he holds a B.A. in French and Pedagogy from Al-Aqsa University, Gaza. He worked with international NGOs in the Gaza Strip until 2006. He has also worked as a TV reporter for Spanish-speaking media, as well as an analyst of Israeli and military affairs in the Middle East. 

Samar Batrawi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Samar Batrawi is a Dutch-Palestinian PhD candidate and teaching assistant in international relations theory at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She is interested in identity politics and social movements in the Middle East, specifically those that interact with the question of Palestine. Her doctoral research explores how the Salafi-jihadi movement has framed Palestinian grievances and the question of Palestine more generally. She has previously worked for the Clingendael Institute for International Relations in The Hague and the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling in Ramallah. Her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs and Strife Journal.

Hatem Bazian

Hatem Bazian is a senior lecturer in the Departments of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.  He has taught at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and is also a visiting Professor in Religious Studies at Saint Mary's College of California and adviser to Berkeley’s Religion, Politics and Globalization Center as well as Academic Affairs Chair at Zaytuna College of California. He also founded Berkeley’s Center for the Study and Documentation of Islamophobia, a research unit dedicated to the systematic study of Othering Islam and Muslims.  He is also Chairman of the Board of American Muslims for Palestine.

Tamara Ben-Halim

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Tamara Ben-Halim holds an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and an MA in Modern European Languages from the University of Edinburgh. Tamara has worked in non-profit and civil society for over 6 years, focusing on creative solutions to problems of social injustice, community mobilisation, and communication and outreach. She co-founded and led the international effort, Cycling4Gaza, for many years. She has produced several short films, including her documentary film Ain El Hilweh, which was nominated for an award at the California Arab Film Festival in 2011.

Nael Bitarie

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nael Bitarie is a Palestinian Syrian. Since 2004, Nael has been working with refugees from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and refugees in Sweden where he currently lives. He is a Co-founder of Sawa for Development and Aid in Lebanon where he was the programmes manager. Currently he is a consultant and board member at Jafra Foundation. His work focuses on community mobilization, capacity building, and development. Currently Nael works with a number of initiatives in relation to Al-Yarmouk camp crisis.

Samia al-Botmeh

Samia al-Botmeh is an assistant professor in economics and researcher at the Centre for Development Studies at Birzeit University in Palestine. She has completed her PhD at the School of African and Oriental Studies- University of London, in labour economics, the title of her thesis: “Palestinian Women's Labour Supply: Towards an Explanation of Low and Fluctuating Female Labour Force Participation”. Previously, al-Botmeh worked as Senior Researcher and Coordinator of Research at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) in Ramallah and has published extensively on contemporary Palestinian economics, labor markets, gender differentials, and political economy of development under colonialism.

Kamal Boullata (1942-2019)

Kamal Boullata was a visual artist and writer. He was the author of Recovery of Place: A Study of Contemporary Palestinian Art (in Arabic, 2000) and Palestinian Art: Discontinuities and Resistance, 1845-2005. He co-edited If Only the Sea Could Sleep (with Mirene Ghossein, 2003) and We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon (with Kathy Engel, 2007).

Zaki Boulos

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zaki Boulos, born to Palestinian parents, has embarked on several careers, from sound engineering (10 years), to maintaining websites and editing content. He is also active on most issues concerning Palestine, providing technical/editorial assistance. He has helped set up communications at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (Beirut), and most recently he has been involved with Al-Shabaka on editing assignments.

Diana Buttu

Diana Buttu is a lawyer who previously served as a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team and was part of the team that assisted in the successful litigation of the Wall before the International Court of Justice.  She frequently comments on Palestine for international news media outlets such as CNN and BBC; is a political analyst for Al Jazeera International and is a regular contributor to The Middle East magazine.  She maintains a law practice in Palestine, focusing on international human rights law.

Photo of Irene Calis
Irene Calis

Irene Calis is a de-colonial scholar, educator, and organizer in the department of Critical Race, Gender, & Culture Studies at American University, DC, where she is also the Director of Arab World Studies. Her research and activism, grounded in the Palestinian liberation struggle, focuses on emancipatory politics from the perspective of everyday life. Her current work on emancipatory futures situates the Palestinian struggle in a wider conversation with the global South, and in particular with indigenous-settler experience and intellectual thought. Calis holds a PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics & Political Science.

Muna Dajani

Dr. Muna Dajani holds a PhD from the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her research focuses on documenting water struggles in agricultural communities under settler colonialism. She is a Senior Research Associate at the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) where she works on a project entitled “Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability” (T2GS), exploring grassroots initiatives of intergenerational holistic groundwater governance. She has contributed to numerous studies on the hydropolitics of the Jordan and Yarmouk River Basins. She also co-led a collaboration project documenting the story of the occupation of the Syrian Golan through developing an online knowledge portal featuring collective memories of the popular struggle that took place there.

Rawan Damen

Al-Shabaka Member Rawan Damen has produced and directed more than 25 hours of TV documentaries, translated into multiple languages, including the award-winning Al Nakba series. Rawan worked as a senior commissioning producer at Al Jazeera Media Network from 2008 to 2016, where she supervised 250 hours of documentaries. She has founded and led teams on multiple digital platforms, notably the innovative project Palestine Remix and was awarded the Media Creativity Award from the Arab Thought Foundation in December 2015. Rawan holds an MA in Communications Studies from Leeds University, UK, and a BA in Media and Sociology from Berziet University, Palestine.

Tariq Dana

Tariq Dana is Assistant Professor of Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University in Qatar. He served as the director of the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University and as a senior research fellow at the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, and the School of Oriental and African Studies. 

Ahmad Diab

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Ahmad Diab is a Palestinian writer and Fulbright scholar. He is currently working on his PhD at New York University. His interests lie in the intersection between literature, film, and power structures.

Beshara Doumani

Beshara Doumani is Professor of Middle East History at the University of California, Berkeley. He writes on the social history of the family, gender and law in Ottoman times, academic freedom, and Palestinian affairs.He is author of Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900. He has been a fellow at Washington D.C.’s Woodrow Wilson Institute, Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Studies, and Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. Doumani serves on the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies as well as the Board of the Palestinian American Research Center. He is helping to establish the Palestinian Museum.

Rabea Eghbariah

Rabea Eghbariah is an attorney completing his doctoral studies at Harvard Law School. He worked as an appellate public defender and later joined the Haifa-based Adalah Legal Center, where he continues to argue Palestinian civil and political rights cases. Rabea published on various subjects relating to Palestinians and Israeli law, including the censorship of online speech, the legal land regime, and the criminalization of Palestinian foragers. His writings appeared in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, the Law and Political Economy Project, and the Journal of Palestine Studies, among others. Rabea previously served as an executive article editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal and currently serves as an editorial member of Jadaliyya's Palestine page.

Haidar Eid

Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza's al-Aqsa University. He has written widely on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including articles published at Znet, Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, and Open Democracy. He has published papers on cultural Studies  and literature in a number of journals, including Nebula, Journal of American Studies in Turkey, Cultural Logic, and the Journal of Comparative Literature. Haidar is the author of Worlding Postmodernism: Interpretive Possibilities of Critical Theory  and Countering The Palestinian Nakba: One State For All.

Yasmeen El Khoudary

Al-Shabaka Member Yasmeen El Khoudary is an independent London-based researcher and writer specialised in Palestinian archaeology and cultural heritage, with a focus on Gaza. She holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies from University College London. Prior to moving to London, she co-founded Diwan Ghazza, an independent, voluntary cultural initiative based in Gaza. She has published extensively on several topics in the Guardian, CNN, and Al-Jazeera English, among others. Twitter handle: @yelkhoudary | Blog: yelkhoudary.blogspot.com. 

Dana El Kurd

Al-Shabaka Member Dana El Kurd received her PhD in Government from The University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in Comparative Politics and International Relations. Her dissertation explores how international patrons affect authoritarian consolidation in the Palestinian territories. Dana writes regularly for publications such as Al-Araby al-Jadeed, The Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog, and Foreign Affairs. She currently works as a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and its sister institution, the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

Rayya El Zein

Al-Shabaka Member Rayya El Zein is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research concerns performance, media, popular culture, the political economy of leisure, and spectatorship in urban Arab contexts and diasporas.

Ahmad El-Atrash

Al-Shabaka Member Ahmad El-Atrash is a Palestinian spatial planner and urban development specialist. He has extensive experience working with think-tanks, academic institutions, NGOs, and UN agencies in issues related to geo-political and strategic planning, governance reform, resilience, and sustainable development within the Palestinian context. Ahmad has a PhD in Spatial Planning from TU-Dortmund University in Germany.

Noura Erakat

Noura Erakat is an assistant professor at George Mason University where she teaches in the legal studies, international studies, and human rights/social justice studies concentrations. An attorney and human rights advocate, she previously served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives and as an advisor on Middle East affairs for Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Noura comments regularly on US foreign policy and international law matters. She has appeared on Al Jazeera International, NBC's "Politically Incorrect," and Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor." Her writings have appeared in The Huffington Post, Berkeley Law School's Journal for Middle East and Islamic Law, Counterpunch, Al-Majdal, and the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP).

Raed Eshnaiwer

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Raed Eshnaiwer is a PhD candidate at Universite Libre de Bruxelles, in Political Science, European Studies and Area Studies. Raed’s research focuses on the impact of forced migration on the identity of the state: Syrian refugees in Jordan as a case study.

Basem Ezbidi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Basem Ezbidi currently teaches at the Honors Program and the Department of International Affairs at Qatar University. He previously worked at Birzeit University as part of the department of Political Science and the Master program of Democracy and Human Rights. Ezbidi holds a Ph.D. in political theory from the University of Cincinnati in the United States. He has written on Hamas, state-building, and the West and the Moslem World. Among his publications, The Muslim World and the West – A Muslim Perspective; Coauthor of “Palestinian National Authority and the Future of State Formation”, and ‘Hamas and Palestinian Statehood’; Co-editor of "Popular Protest In The New Middle East: Islamism and Post-Islamist Politics''.

Randa Farah

Randa Farah is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Anthropology Department. Dr. Farah has written on Palestinian popular memory and reconstructions of identity based on her fieldwork in a refugee camp in Jordan. She was a Research Associate at the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain (CERMOC), in Jordan, where she conducted research on Palestinian refugees and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). She held different positions as Visiting Fellow and an Associate Researcher at the Refugee Studies Center (RSC) at the University of Oxford.

Hani Faris

Hani Faris is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He previously served at various universities, including Kuwait, Harvard, McGill, and Simon Fraser. He has written many academic articles and his books include Beyond the Lebanese Civil War. He has written more than twenty book chapters and over forty academic articles on such topics as Arab nationalism, the Middle East in world politics, Zionism, Lebanese politics, history of the Palestinian issue, and Third World development. Faris serves on the editorial board of Contemporary Arab Affairs and is president of the Board of Trans Arab Research Institute, (TARI).

Dana Farraj

Dana Farraj is a legal researcher and has been a certified lawyer at the Palestinian Bar Association since 2019. She obtained her master’s degree in International Humanitarian Law from Aix-Marseille University and her bachelor’s degree in law from Birzeit University. Her research interests include refugee law, human rights law and international criminal law. 

Basil Farraj

Basil Farraj completed his PhD in Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. Basil’s work focuses on political prisoners, carceral violence, and prisoners’ confrontation practices with carceral regimes. His research addresses the intersections of memory, resistance, and art by prisoners and others subjected to violence. Basil has conducted fieldwork in a number of countries including Chile, Colombia, and Palestine.

Leila Farsakh

Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Leila Farsakh, is Associate Professor and Chair of the political science department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the author of Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (Routledge, 2012), and of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-determination beyond Partition (California University Press, 2022). She has worked with a number of organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and MAS in Ramallah, and she has been a senior research fellow at Birzeit University since 2008. In 2001, she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission.  

Marwa Fatafta

Marwa is a Palestinian writer, researcher and policy analyst based in Berlin. She leads Access Now’s work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa region as the MENA Policy Manager. She is also an advisory board member of the Palestinian digital rights organization 7amleh. Previously, she worked as the MENA Regional Advisor for Transparency International Secretariat. Marwa was a Fulbright scholar to the US, and holds an MA in International Relations from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She holds a second MA in Development and Governance from University of Duisburg-Essen.

Ibrahim Fraihat

Al-Shabaka Member Ibrahim Fraihat is a professor of international conflict resolution at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and Affiliate Scholar at Georgetown University. He previously served as Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and taught international conflict resolution at George Washington University and George Mason University. His latest book is Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring​ (Yale University Press, 2016). He is the recipient of George Mason University's Distinguished Alumni Award (2014) for his achievements in the field of conflict resolution. ​Fraihat can be followed on Twitter @i_farihat.

As’ad Ghanem

As'ad Ghanem is a senior lecturer at the School of Political Sciences, University of Haifa. Ghanem's theoretical work has explored the legal, institutional and political conditions in ethnic states. He has covered issues such as Palestinian political orientations, the establishment and political structure of the Palestinian Authority, and majority-minority politics in a comparative perspective. His books include Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement (Indiana Series in Middle East Studies). Ghanem has initiated several empowerment programs for Palestinians in Israel.

Walid Habbas

Walid Habbas is a researcher at the Palestinian Forum for Israeli Studies (MADAR) and a PhD candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently working on the West Bank-Israeli economic relationships with an emphasis on the multiple modes of interaction between Palestinian class-sectoral actors and the colonial structures: border and permit regimes. He is researching activities such as smuggling, labor migration, labor brokerage networks, logistic routes, and colonial economic interventions. 

Toufic Haddad

Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American writer based in Jerusalem. He is the co-author and editor of Between the Lines: Readings in Israel, the Palesinians, and the U.S. 'War on Terror'. (Haymarket Books, 2007, co-written with Israeli author Tikva Honig-Parnass) and Towards a New Internationalism: Readings in Globalization, the Global Justice Movement and Palestinian Liberation (Muwatin: Ramallah 2006, [Arabic] co- written with Ala el Azzeh.) His writings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been featured in The National, Al Jazeera English (web), Journal of Palestine Studies, Monthly Review Zine, Znet, Counterpunch, International Socialist Review, and Socialist Worker.

Laila el-Haddad

Laila el-Haddad is a Maryland-based freelance journalist, author, political analyst, and parent-of-two from Gaza. From 2003-2007, she was Gaza correspondent for the Al-Jazeera English website and a regular contributor to the BBC World Service. She is the author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between, named for the award-winning blog she has authored since 2004, and was a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books January 2011) and author of the forthcoming Gaza Kitchen. She has been published in The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, and has been a guest on WUNC, WBUR and CNN. She is also a columnist for the Guardian's Comment is Free. She is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Yassmine Hamayel

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Yassmine Saleh Hamayel is working on gender and security in Ramallah, and is active in the Palestinian youth movement. Her areas of interest include democratization, development, youth, and refugees.

Awad Hamdan

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Awad Hamdan is National Programs Director for American Muslims for Palestine.

Weeam Hammoudeh

Dr. Weeam Hammoudeh is Assistant Professor at Birzeit University’s Institute of Community and Public Health. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from Brown University, and an MPH in Community and Public Health from Birzeit University. Her work focuses on understanding how political and social transformations impact health, psychosocial wellbeing, health and social systems, and population processes, particularly in Palestine. She has been involved in research projects on different topics, including youth mental health and wellbeing, adolescent refugee girls' health, deprivation, and mental health, and health system preparedness in the COVID-19 response. 

Dyala Hamzah

Al-Shabaka policy member Dyala Hamzah is an associate professor of Arab History at the University of Montreal. She served as editor of the 2013 Routledge volume The Making of the Arab Intellectual and is author of the forthcoming text, Muhammad Rashid Rida ou le Tournant Salafiste (CNRS Éditions, 2019). Dyala has published with Princeton and Oxford University Presses, as well as in academic journals including CSAAME, REMMM and Égypte-Monde Arabe. She is currently conducting a project on Mandate Palestine and Arab Nationalism. Her upcoming Palestine. Le Sionisme est-il réformable? is under contract with Presses de l’Université de Montréal (PUM, 2020).

Layth Hanbali

Layth Hanbali is a freelance consultant focusing on health policy. He has also worked as a researcher, public health practitioner, and doctor, volunteered as a civil society organiser, and taught on several Global Health programmes. He earned a Master’s degree in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics and Political Science and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a medical degree and a bachelor’s degree in Global Health from University College London.

Fajr Harb

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Fajr Harb is a Palestinian political activist. He is currently the Assistant Director of The Carter Center Field Office in Ramallah. In addition to his experience in advocacy and fundraising, he has an academic background and training in the United States in both engineering and economic development.

Anaheed Al-Hardan

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Anaheed Al-Hardan is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut. She is an advisory board member of the Palestinian Oral History Archive. Her research on right of return movement activism, critical research methods in Palestine studies and Palestinian intellectual history has appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Qualitative Inquiry and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. She is the author of Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities (Columbia University Press, 2016). She is currently undertaking a new book-based research project on Palestinian and Arab decolonial theory within the context of south-south philosophies of liberation and decolonization.

Zaha Hassan

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on Palestine-Israel peace, the use of international legal mechanisms by political movements, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. She previously served as coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership from 2010-2012. She received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and an LLM in Transnational & International Law from Willamette University.

Thayer Hastings

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Thayer Hastings is a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City where he is studying anthropology of the Arab world. He holds an M.A. degree from the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. After completing a B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle, he returned to Palestine, where he carried out research and advocacy in law and human rights. Thayer worked with Palestinian and international non-governmental organizations, including BADIL Resource Center and the American Friends Service Committee. His research and writing continue to be informed by a commitment to community-led initiatives and decolonizing methodologies.

Yara Hawari

Yara Hawari is the Senior Analyst of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, where she taught various undergraduate courses and continues to be an honorary research fellow. In addition to her academic work, which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera English.

Nadia Hijab

Nadia Hijab is co-founder and honorary president of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She served as Board President from 2010-2021 and as Executive Director between 2011 and March 2018. A writer, public speaker and media commentator, Hijab’s first book, Womanpower: The Arab Debate on Women at Work was published by Cambridge University Press and she co-authored Citizens Apart: A Portrait of Palestinians in Israel (I. B. Tauris). She was Editor-in-Chief of the London-based Middle East Magazine before serving at the United Nations in New York. She is a co-founder and former co-chair of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and now serves on its advisory board. She continues to serve Al-Shabaka in an advisory capacity and support its mission.

Saleh Hijazi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Saleh Hijazi is a human rights activist and researcher presently living in London where he works at Amnesty International. He is advisor to Al-Quds University Human Rights Clinic where he worked as academic coordinator and lecturer. Saleh holds a master's degree in human rights from the University of Essex and a bachelor degree in philosophy and political science from Lawrence University. His interests are social movements and caricature.

Jamil Hilal

Jamil Hilal is an independent Palestinian sociologist and writer, and has published many books and numerous articles on Palestinian society, the Arab-Israeli Conflict, and Middle East issues.  Hilal has held, and holds, associate senior research fellowship at a number of Palestinian research institutions.  His recent publications include works on poverty, Palestinian political parties, and the political system after Oslo.  He edited Where Now for Palestine: The Demise of the Two-State Solution (Z Books, 2007), and with Ilan Pappe edited Across the Wall (I.B. Tauris, 2010).

Khalil Hindi

Khalil Hindi is President of Bir Zeit University. He was formerly Professor and Associate Dean at Olayan School of Business, American University of Beirut. He held professorships in both engineering and management science in Britain and AUB. He writes occasionally on Palestinian issues.

Ata Hindi

Al-Shabaka member Ata Hindi is currently a PhD in Law candidate at Tilburg University and holds an Advanced LLM in Public International Law from Leiden University. He has previously worked with a number of international NGOs focused on international law, especially in Palestine and the Arab World.

Sara Husseini

Sara Husseini is the Director of the British Palestinian Committee, an independent voice on British policy towards Palestine. In previous roles, Sara has served as an advisor to senior Palestinian officials across a number of offices, including the Secretary-General of the PLO and the Palestinian Ambassador to Germany. She has supported the work of several civil society organizations, both in Palestine and in the Diaspora, and currently sits on the boards of BuildPalestine, the Britain Palestine Media Centre, and The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy. Sara holds a BA in German Studies and European History, a master's in Islamic Studies, and a Ph.D. in early Christian-Muslim relations, all from the University of Birmingham.

Anas Iqtait

Al-Shabaka Member Anas Iqtait is a research scholar at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University. His research focuses on the political economy dynamics shaping governance and fiscal policy of the Palestinian Authority, political rentierism, aid effectiveness, and the political economy of the wider region. He has previously worked in Palestine with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Oxfam, and the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and served as a Research Fellow at Birzeit University in 2017. He also holds a master’s degree in international development policy from Seoul National University.

Amjad Iraqi

Al-Shabaka Member Amjad Iraqi is an editor and writer at +972 Magazine, based in Haifa. He was previously an advocacy coordinator at Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. In addition to +972, his writings have appeared in the London Review of Books, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, and The Hill, among others. 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.

Zaina Jallad

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zaina Jallad is a Palestinian lawyer and lecturer, currently pursuing an J.S.D at Columbia Law School. Zeina completed her law degree in 2004 at the University of Jordan and is admitted to practice law in Palestine. She has served as the Faculty of Law and Public Administration at Birzeit University - the first woman lecturer-in-law. In 2009, she managed the project to develop the Palestinian Bar Association for the European Union. She rejoined Columbia University in 2012 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, where she was affiliated with the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. In the Spring of 2013, she co-taught a course titled "Occupation: Law, Politics, Morality.

Hazem Jamjoum

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Hazem Jamjoum is a graduate student in Modern Middle East History at New York University. His writing has focused on political-economy approaches to Israeli colonialism and Palestinian elite formation, and critiques of partition-based conflict management "solutions," among other areas.

Muhammad Jaradat

Muhammad Jaradat is a founding member of BADIL Resource Center, the global Palestine Right-of-Return Coalition and of the BDS Movement. As coordinator of the BADIL Refugee Rights Campaign, he works with Palestinian refugee and internally displaced community organizations in the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory, Israel and the Palestinian exile, as well as with the international solidarity movement, in order to enhance knowledge and campaigning skills and facilitate effective community-based campaigns for respect of the fundamental rights of Palestinian refugees and IDPs.

Ingrid Jaradat Gassner

Ingrid Jaradat Gassner is a co-founder and former director of Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (Badil). She has worked extensively in the fields of international law and advocacy, including innovative research on Palestinian refugees, the right to return, Israeli colonialism and apartheid and related third-state responsibilities. She has also coordinated research for a Palestinian civic initiative seeking to register exiled Palestinians as voters and campaign for direct PNC elections and carried out advocacy with the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem. She currently works as an independent consultant.

Mousa Jiryis

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mousa Jiryis is a Palestinian from Galilee. He holds a Masters in International Relations from the University of Westminster (with Merit), part of which consisted of a research grant from the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue. He also holds a Bachelors degree in Economics and Economic History from the London School of Economics. He is a skilled proposal writer, researcher and documentation specialist. His varied career has included donor fundraising, documentation quality assurance and business development for organizations in Palestine, Israel and the UK.

Nour Joudah

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nour Joudah holds MA degree in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and wrote her MA thesis on the role and perception of exile politics within the Palestinian liberation struggle, in particular among politically active Palestinian youth living in the United States and Occupied Palestine. She has taught at American University and is currently Associate Producer of Status Hour and Grants Officer for the Hassib Sabbagh Foundation. Nour is pursuing a PhD in Geography with a research focus on the spatial relations of decolonization in former settler colonies.

Safa Joudeh

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Safa Joudeh is an Egypt-based political and security analyst working for an international strategic advisory consulting firm. She advises government and private sector clients on security, political and geopolitical developments affecting investments and operations in Egypt and the MENA region. She is also a multimedia journalist with experience covering Egypt and Palestine focusing on conflict, security and governance. She holds a Masters in Public Policy from Stony Brook University in New York.

Jamal Juma’

Jamal Juma' is a founding member of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange and the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network. Since 2002, he has been the coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. He has been invited to address numerous civil society and United Nations conferences. His articles and interviews are widely disseminated and translated into several languages.

Andrew Kadi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Andrew Kadi is a human rights activist and occasional contributor to the Guardian's Comment is Free, The Electronic Intifada, MondoWeiss, Left Turn, and other publications.

Remi Kanazi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and editor. He is the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine and the editor of Poets For Palestine. His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including Al Jazeera English, GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and BBC Radio. He is a recurring writer in residence and advisory board member for the Palestine Writing Workshop and he is on the organizing committee of USACBI (the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).

Salma Karmi-Ayyoub

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Salma Karmi-Ayyoub is a barrister specialising in criminal law. She provides legal consultancy and advice services to individuals, non-governmental organizations and solicitors’ firms on issues related to criminal and human rights law. From 2009 until 2012 she headed an international litigation project at the Palestinian human rights organisation Al Haq where she is currently a legal consultant focusing on issues related to corporate responsibility for human rights violations. Salma is Chair of the legal charity, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. Her articles have appeared in  the London Review of Books, The Huffington Post and The Nation, among other publications.

Victor Kashkoush

Victor Kashkoush (d. 2012) served on the first Board of Al-Shabaka, which he joined in 2010 soon after the organization was founded. He brought a wealth of institution-building skills and continued to provide advice and support even when his health was failing due to his long battle with cancer. Victor was director general of the Welfare Association from 1994 to 2000, when he opened his own consulting business, and served as a member of the Board of Trustees from 2005 until his death. He will be remembered for his unfailing commitment to justice, his sharp intelligence, and his generosity. His passing is a great loss to all those who loved him and to the Palestinian people.

Anis Kassim

Dr. Anis Kassim is an international lawyer based in Amman. He is the chief editor of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law. He helped make the Palestinian case before the International Court of Justice, resulting in its July 9, 2004 Advisory Opinion affirming the illegality of Israel's separation wall and its associated regime.

Victor Kattan

Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. He previously served as Al-Shabaka's Program Director and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore. He is the author of From Coexistence to Conquest: International Law and the Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1891-1949 (London: Pluto Books, 2009) and The Palestine Question in International Law (London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2008). He was a legal adviser to the Palestinian Negotiations Support Project from 2012-2013 and a Teaching Fellow at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) from 2008-2011 where he obtained his PhD in 2012.  He worked for the British Institute of International and Comparative Law from 2006-2008, Arab Media Watch from 2004-2006, and the BADIL Resource Centre for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights from 2003-2004.

Majd Kayyal

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Majd Kayyal was born in Haifa in 1990 to a displaced family from Barwa village. He studied philosophy and political science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Kayyal writes for Al-Safir's supplement printed in Beirut. He has published political and literary articles in several publications and newspapers, and has maintained a personal blog since 2010. His first novel, "The Tragedy of Mr. Matar," won the Abdel Mohsin Al-Qattan Foundation's Young Writer Award for 2015.

Tariq Kenney-Shawa

Tariq Kenney-Shawa is Al-Shabaka's US Policy Fellow. He holds a Masters degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and a Bachelors degree in Political Science and Middle East Studies from Rutgers University. Tariq's research has focused on a range of topics, from the role of narrative in both perpetuating and resisting occupation to analysis of Palestinian liberation strategies. His work has appeared in +972 Magazine, Newlines Magazine, the Carnegie Council, and the New Politics Journal, among others. Follow Tariq on Twitter @tksshawa and visit his website at https://www.tkshawa.com/ for more of his writing and photography. 

Mohammed al-Khaldi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mohammed Al-Khaldi is from the Gaza Strip and holds a Master of Health policy and Management from Al-Quds University-Abu Dis in 2012. He has been in Switzerland working on his PhD in Health Policy and Research at the Swiss TPH since September 2014. He previously worked as a lecturer and researcher at colleges and research institutes in Palestine and Switzerland and is also a consultant on different programs in development and relief, and training and research projects for the governmental, NGO and international agencies sectors.

Aziza Khalidi

Aziza Khalidi serves on the board of the Najdeh Association and is a founding member of the Forum of Palestinian women in Lebanon, a network of non-governmental organizations promoting the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. She is also affiliated to the faculty of economics and business administration at the Islamic University of Lebanon. She works as a freelance research consultant in areas pertaining to health and development for refugees in general, gender issues, and elderly. Contributed to design, implementation and report write up of several field surveys.

Rashid Khalidi

Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies in the Department of History at Columbia University. He is past President of the Middle East Studies Association, was an advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the 1991-1993 Arab-Israeli peace negotiations, and is the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Khalidi is the author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. has Undermined Peace in the Middle East (2013); Sowing Crisis: American Dominance and the Cold War in the Middle East (2009); The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006); Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America’s Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004); Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997); Under Siege: PLO Decision-making during the 1982 War (1986); and British Policy towards Syria and Palestine, 1906-1914 (1980). He has written over ninety articles on aspects of Middle Eastern history.

Ahmad Samih Khalidi

Ahmad Samih Khalidi is Associate Fellow at the Center for Security Policy, Geneva, and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Palestine Studies, Beirut. A Palestinian from Jerusalem educated at Oxford and London Universities, Khalidi has been a Senior Associate Member at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and co-editor of the Arabic edition of the Journal of Palestine Studies. He served as advisor to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid/Washington peace talks between 1991 and 1993, as senior advisor on security in the 1993 Cairo-Taba PLO-Israeli talks, and as advisor to Presidents Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Khalidi has written widely in both English and Arabic in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, the New Yorker, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, The Guardian, the Cairo Review, Prospect, and OpenDemocracy, among others. He is author of three books: Syria and Iran: Rivalry and Cooperation, (Chatham House, 1995), Track-2 Diplomacy; Lessons from the Middle East (MIT Press, 2003), and A Palestinian National Security Framework (Chatham House, 2006).

Ismail Khalidi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Ismail Khalidi's writing on Palestinian history, culture and politics range from plays and poetry to op-eds and commentary. He holds an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and authored the award-winning play Tennis in Nablus, which explores the Palestinians' 1936-39 revolt against British Colonial rule. His work has been produced and read at theatres and Universities around the country including Atlanta's Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre, which premiered Tennis in Nablus, and the Culture Project, which will produce the New York premiere in 2013. Khalidi's writing has also appeared in The Daily Beast, American Theatre Magazine, The Nation, and The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Osamah Khalil

Osamah Khalil is a co-founder of Al-Shabaka. He is an Associate Professor of History at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Khalil is the author of America’s Dream Palace: Middle East Expertise and the Rise of the National Security State (Harvard University Press, 2016).

Asem Khalil

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Asem Khalil is a professor of Public Law and the H.H. Shaikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Constitutional and International Law, Birzeit University. He is the former Vice President for Community Affairs (2016-2020), Dean of the Faculty of Law and Public Administration (2012-2015), and of the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies (2010-2012). Dr. Khalil holds a Ph.D. in Public Law, Fribourg University, Switzerland, a Masters in Public Administration from the National School of Administration, France, and a doctorate in Utriusque Juris, Lateran University, Italy. He was a visiting researcher at the NYU School of Law (2009-2010 and 2015-2016) and at the Max Planck Institute, Germany (Summer of 2015). A full list of his publications is available at: https://asemkhalil.com/

Abir Kopty

Al-Shabaka policy member Abir Kopty, holds an MA in Political Communication from the City University, London, and is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include power dynamics in online communities and the use of social media networks for social and political activism.

Nora Lester Murad

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nora Lester Murad is an adjunct associate professor at Fordham University. She is also the co-founder of Dalia Association, Palestine's first community foundation; and Aid Watch Palestine, a community-driven aid accountability initiative. She has published widely on the subjects of international aid and community philanthropy, including in The Guardian, Aljazeera, Huffington Post, OpenDemocracy, Counterpunch, and Mondoweiss, and on her blog: www.noralestermurad.com. Her first book, Rest in My Shade (November, 2018), is a poem about displacement featuring 18 Palestinian artists around the world.

Ihab Maharmeh

Ihab Maharmeh is a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, and the editorial secretary of Siyasat Arabiya. He has worked at Birzeit University, where he earned his BA in public Administration and his MA in International Studies from the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Center for International Studies. He also holds an MA in Public Policy and International Cooperation from the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. He has published several research papers in peer reviewed journals on settler colonialism, forced displacement, Palestinian workers in Israel and its settlements, and everyday Palestinian resistance.

Ghada Majadli

Ghada Majadli is a human rights activist and the director of the department of The Occupied Palestinian Territory at Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI). She holds a master’s degree in Human Rights and Transitional Justice from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her work focuses on policy and humanitarian work in Palestine, with special attention to the Israeli regime's multilayered system of control and management of Palestinians’ health, including access to medical care, socio-political determinants of health, and health infrastructure. 

Photo of Ameer Makhoul
Ameer Makhoul

Ameer Makhoul has served for many years as General Director of ittijah – Union of Arab Community Based Associations, the largest coalition of civil society organizations among the Palestinian citizens of Israel. He has also chaired the National committee for the Protection of Political Freedoms, and served as coordinator of the Coordinating Committee of Palestinian Civil Society in the Homeland and Diaspora. He writes frequently on human rights issues and his political analysis is widely circulated.

Camille Mansour

Camille Mansour is member of the Institute of Palestine Studies' Board of Trustees and chairman of its research committee. He was professor of international relations at Paris University from 1984 to 2004. He also taught at Birzeit University where he founded and headed the Institute of Law (1994-2000)  and established al-Muqtafi, the Palestine Judicial and Legislative Databank, and was the dean of its Faculty of Law and Public Administration (2007-2009).

Noura Mansour

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Noura Mansour is a Palestinian educator, writer, activist and community organizer, from Acre city. She studied Political Science and Education and received masters in International Relations from Haifa University. Noura has been involved in development and community work with NGOs in Jerusalem, West Bank and Palestine 48. She has worked with international NGOs and solidarity movements in Korea and Australia where she is now based and works in the Education sector. Noura is also a debate trainer and has taught and trained in many international forums in Asia, Middle East, Europe and Australia.

Hani al-Masri

Hani Al-Masri is Director General of Masarat, the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies. He founded and was director general of the Palestinian Media, Research and Studies Centre, Badael, between 2005 and 2011. He has published hundreds of articles, research and policy papers in Palestinian and Arab magazines and newspapers including Al-Ayyam and Al-Safir. He previously served as General Manager of the Printing & Publication Department at the Ministry of Information and as a member of the Committee on Government in the Commission of Dialogue held in Cairo in 2009. He is a member of the board of trustees at the Yasser Arafat Foundation.

Mazen Masri

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mazen Masri is a Senior Lecturer in law at the City Law School, City University London. His areas of research are constitutional law and public international law, and has published a number of articles and book chapters in these areas. Mazen holds degrees from the York University (Canada), the University of Toronto, and the Hebrew University. He is a qualified lawyer and has served in the past as legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Dina Matar

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Dina Matar is senior lecturer in political communication at the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She works on the relationship between culture, communication and politics, with a special focus on Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. She is the author of “What it Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood” (Tauris, 2010); co-editor of “Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communication Practices in Palestine and Lebanon” (Taruis, 2013) and co-author of “The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication” (Hurst, 2014). Matar is also co-founding editor of the “The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication.”

Sami Miaari

Al-Shabaka Member Sami Miaari is a lecturer at the Department of Labor Studies at Tel-Aviv University, and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A degrees in Economics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with research focuses on labour economics, economic causes and consequences of conflict, including on the economic costs of political instability and the relationship between economic shocks and conflict, discrimination against ethnic minorities, economic inequality, and applied econometrics. Sami has served as an economic consultant for the World Bank, IMF and other international organizations, and founded the Arab Economic Forum in Israel in 2010.

Faysal Mikdadi

Faysal Mikdadi (d. 2021) was an author and educational consultant based in the United Kingdom. He wrote extensively on education, literature and Palestine.  Faysal was the author of the novels Return and Tamra and a book of poetry, A Return: The Siege of Beirut, as well as two historical bibliographies on Gamal Abdel Nasser and Margaret Thatcher.

Salwa Mikdadi

Salwa Mikdadi is Associate Professor of Art History at NYU Abu Dhabi. She is the author and editor of several books and essays on Arab and Palestinian art and was the curator of the first Palestinian Pavilion for 2009 Venice Biennial. Mikdadi helped establish several art and culture programs in the US, the UAE and in Palestine and the first professional development programs for museum professionals in the UAE and was lecturer at Paris Sorbonne Abu Dhabi. She is a founding member of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey.

Rania Muhareb

Rania Muhareb is an Irish Research Council and Hardiman PhD Scholar at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her PhD research examines the relevance of the apartheid framework to the Palestinian struggle for decolonization. Between 2017 and 2020, she worked as a legal researcher and advocacy officer with the Palestinian human right organization Al-Haq. Rania holds an LLM in international human rights and humanitarian law from the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) and an undergraduate degree from Sciences Po Paris.

Tahani Mustafa

Tahani Mustafa is the Palestine analyst at the International Crisis Group, where she works on issues including security, and socio-political and legal governance in the West bank. She holds a PhD in politics and international studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She is based between the UK, Jordan, and Palestine.

Raya Naamneh

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Raya Naamneh is a Palestinian student and activist from Arraba village in the Galilee. She is working on her B.A. in English Language and Literature at Haifa University and is deeply interested in colonial and post-colonial literature as well as intersectional politics as regards the experiences of women and the LGBTQ community around the world, with special focus on Palestinian society. She is an active member of al-Qaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society. She recently started working at Baladna – Association for Arab Youth in Haifa as a resources and project development coordinator.

Nadine Naber

Al-Shabaka policy member Nadine Naber is Associate Professor in the Gender and Women's Studies Program and the Global Asian Studies Program, and the founding faculty director of the Arab American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Nadine is author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics, and Activism (NYU Press, 2012). She is co-editor of the books Race and Arab Americans (Syracuse University Press, 2008); Arab and Arab American Feminisms, winner of the Arab American Book Award 2012 (Syracuse University Press, 2010); and The Color of Violence (South End Press, 2006). She has worked with groups like the Rasmea Odeh Defense Team, USACBI, AROC, and INCITE! Women of Color against Violence. She is currently an editorial board member of the Journal of Palestine Studies; the Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, and series within the University of Nebraska and the University of Washington Press. For more information, see: https://nadinenaber.com/.

Razi Nabulse

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Razi Nabulse is a political and social activist on Palestinian issues. He holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Haifa, and has worked in the field of journalism and media. Nabulse was editor of Israeli and international affairs, and has published a number of articles and policy papers on the Zionist project and the Palestinian national project in several journals and for different research institutions. He is currently a researcher and coordinator of the "Zionist Project" study program at the Palestinian Center for Policy Research and Strategic Studies (Masarat). He is an expert commentator on Israeli politics as well as the developments and transformations in the settler-colonial project.

Isra Namey

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Isra Namey is a journalist based in the Gaza Strip. Namey graduated from the Islamic university of Gaza in 2015, obtaining a degree in English Literature. She reports from Gaza and writes for Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, and al Jazeera English.

Nadim Nashif

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nadim Nashif is the executive director and co-founder of 7amleh: The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media. Nadim is a committed Digital Rights Defender and long time community organizer, who has worked on youth and community development issues for over 20 years. Nadim founded and previously served as director of Baladna, The Association for Arab Youth. He founded and coordinated the youth wing of the Balad political party before becoming Director at the Committee for Educational Guidance for Arab students. He is also the co-founder of Wusol Digital Academy, a digital marketing educational center.

Fadi Nicholas Nassar

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Fadi Nicholas Nassar is a PhD candidate in the War Studies Department at King's College London and a Doctoral Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. His research aims to unpack the expertise behind UN mediation, explain the impact the particular envoy has on the process of mediation, and assess the limitations and possibilities of these efforts. At different capacities, Fadi has worked with UNDP in Lebanon as well as in Peru, the Holy See’s Mission to the UN in Geneva, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Lebanon. He also holds degrees from Georgetown and Columbia University.  

Maha Nassar

Al-Shabaka Member Maha Nassar is an assistant professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Her book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017) examines how Palestinian intellectuals in Israel have connected to global decolonization movements through literary and journalistic writings. Nassar is also a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. Her pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Conversation, Middle East Report and elsewhere.

Photo of Basel Natsheh
Basel Natsheh

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Basel Natsheh is an economist and the Head of Business administration department at Khawarizmi International Collage, UAE. He was the Dean of the Finance and Management Faculty at Hebron University. His main interests lie in developmental, labor, political and spatial economics. He is the author of several research papers about the informal economy and Palestinian labor.

Amal Nazzal

Dr. Amal Nazzal is Assistant Professor at the Business and Economics Faculty at Birzeit University, Palestine. She received her PhD from the University of Exeter, where she studied the relevance of Bourdieu’s theory of practice for relationally capturing various practices, mechanisms, and dynamics in socio-cultural organizations. In particular, she focused on politically-motivated social movements. She has also researched social capital, social networking theory, digital ethnography, and social media content analysis. She has worked closely with the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) and 7amleh - the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media.

Mary Nazzal-Batayneh

Mary Nazzal-Batayneh is a UK barrister with vast experience campaigning for human rights. She has worked with several civil society organizations including the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. In her capacity as the Chair of the Palestine Legal Aid Fund, she is part of a legal movement to hold Israel accountable for crimes committed against the Palestinian people. She holds degrees from Columbia University, SOAS University of London, the College of Law, and Inns of Court School of Law. Mary is also the President of Landmark Hotels.

Munir Nuseibah

Munir Nuseibah is a human rights lawyer and academic based in Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Palestine. He is an assistant professor at Al-Quds University's faculty of law; the director (and co-founder) of Al-Quds Human Rights Clinic, the first accredited clinical legal education program in the Arab World; and the director of the Community Action Center in Jerusalem. He holds an LL.M in International Legal Studies from the Washington College of Law of the American University in Washington DC and a PhD degree from the University of Westminster in London, UK, where his thesis dealt with Forced Displacement in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, International Law, and Transitional Justice.

Moien Odeh

Moien Oded is an international human rights lawyer, a research and teaching assistant, and PhD student at George Mason University, Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. While living in Jerusalem, Moien represented Palestinians in leading public interest cases in Israeli courts. His resume includes: Political and IHL advisor for diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah; founder and manager of the legal clinic in East Jerusalem neighborhoods behind the Wall;  US State Department “young leader” and participant in the State Department’s “Leaders for Democracy Fellowship” on theme of conflict resolution; fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; fellow, University of Virginia Center for Politics and Global Perspectives on Democracy; member, Al Shabaka, Palestinian Policy Network; member, European Academy of Diplomacy; “young legal leaders” of the International Bar Association;  LLB,  BA(Accounting), Hebrew University;  LL.M from University of Pittsburgh; commentator and author Middle Eastern media (Al-Jazeera; Al Quds Newspaper; JURIST Legal News and Research) and US media.

Karam Omar

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Karam Omar is a legal researcher at the Institute of Law at Birzeit University. He has a masters in law from the University of Essex. Karam was also called to the English Bar by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple in 2016.

Dina Omar

Dina Omar is a writer and a graduate student studying Anthropology at Yale. She is a founding member of Students for Justice in Palestine-National and serves on the National Executive Board of the Palestine Youth Movement.

Dena Qaddumi

Dena Qaddumi is an architect and urbanist currently based in Doha. Her research interests are primarily concerned with how social movements engage with urban space and how this process creates new avenues for citizenship formation.

Mezna Qato

Mezna Qato is completing her DPhil in History from St. Antony’s College, Oxford, on the history of educational regimes for Palestinians.

Najwa al-Qattan

Najwa al-Qattan is associate professor of history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.  She is a graduate of the American University of Beirut, Georgetown and Harvard Universities.  She has published on the Ottoman Muslim court, Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and the Great War.

Photo of Fadi Quran
Fadi Quran

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Fadi Quran is a Senior Campaigner at Avaaz and a Popular Struggle community organizer. He previously served as UN Advocacy Officer with Al-Haq’s legal research and advocacy unit. Apart from his work in advocacy and international law, Fadi is also an entrepreneur in the alternative energy field, where he has founded two companies bringing wind and solar energy to Palestine and other countries in the region. Fadi holds degrees in Physics and International Relations from Stanford University.

Loubna Qutami

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Loubna Qutami is a Presidents Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a PhD from the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Qutami is also the former Executive Director of the Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC) in San Francisco as well as a founder, member, and the former International General Coordinator for the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).     

Kareem Rabie

Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Kareem Rabie, is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His research focuses on privatization, urban development, and the state-building project in the West Bank, which culminated in his first book, Palestine is Throwing a Party and the Whole World is Invited (Duke University Press, 2021). Rabie's new work examines the political economy and human geographies of Palestine/China trade. Previously, he was Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC, Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago, and Marie Curie Fellow/Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS).

Fadia Rafeedie Khoury

Fadia Rafeedie Khoury is a Palestinian living in Los Angeles, originally from El-Bireh and Birzeit. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Yale Law School, where she was engaged in activism promoting Palestinian and Arab causes.

Oraib Rantawi

Oraib Rantawi is the founder and director general of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies and an established writer and columnist. He has authored and edited several strategic studies and organized and participated in seminars and conferences in Jordan and internationally. He is also a frequent commentator and analyst on television and has produced his own show “Qadaya wa Ahdath” (Issues and Events.)

Nadim Rouhana

Nadim N. Rouhana is Professor of International Negotiation and Conflict Studies at The Fletcher School, Graduate School of International Affairs, Tufts University. His current research includes work on the dynamics of protracted social conflict, collective identity and democratic citizenship in multiethnic states, the questions of reconciliation and multicultural citizenship, transitional justice, and international negotiations. His research and writing focused on the Arab-Israeli conflict and on Israeli and Palestinian societies. He is also the Founding Director of “Mada al-Carmel -- The Arab Center for Applied Social Research” in Haifa. The center focuses on issues of identity, citizenship and democracy, and the future relationship between Palestinians and Israelis.

Samah Sabawi

Samah Sabawi is a political commentator, author and playwright. She is a member of the board of directors for the National Council on Canada Arab Relations (NCCAR). Sabawi wrote and produced Cries from the Land (Canada 2003), Three Wishes (Canada 2008) andTales of a City by the Sea (Palestine & Australia 2014).  Her past work includes being public advocate for Australians for Palestine, Executive Director for the National Council on Canada Arab Relations (NCCAR) and Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the Canadian Foreign Service Institute’s Centre for Intercultural Learning.

Tareq Sadeq

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Tareq Sadeq is a Palestinian refugee from the village of Majdal Sadeq near Jaffa and currently lives in Ramallah. Tareq holds a Ph.D in economics from the University of Evry Val d’Essonne in France, where he was engaged in the Palestine solidarity movement and served as head of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS). Currently, Tareq is assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Birzeit University. He has published on monetary policy, macroeconomics, econometrics, labour economics, income inequalities, and entrepreneurship. He is also a researcher in Palestine’s Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).

Grace Said

Grace Said is a long-time advocate of Palestinian human rights. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Friends of Sabeel, North America and treasurer of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace. She has in the past served on the boards of Trans-Arab Research Institute and the Arab-American University Graduates. In 2009 she was a co-founder of Al-Shabaka and also organized a major Sabeel conference in Washington, DC.

Abaher El-Sakka

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Abaher El-Sakka is a sociologist with a PhD degree in Sociology, University of Nantes with distinction, 2005. He was a Researcher and lecturer at the University of Nantes from 1998 to 2006 and is currently a professor at Birzeit University at the department of social and behavioural sciences. He is also visiting professor at several universities in France and Belgium. His current research interest focuses on the social history and the historiography of the social sciences. He is currently writing on social history of Gaza under British colonisation.

Yasser Salah

Al-Shabaka Member Yasser Salah is a lawyer and researcher with a master's degree in democracy and human rights from Birzeit University. He has been a lawyer since 2004 as well as a legal consultant to Palestinian human rights organizations. Salah has worked with the Independent Commission for Human Rights since 2009. He served at the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, and took part with the Carter Center in monitoring Tunisian elections in 2011 and the Egyptian presidential elections in 2012. Salah is a trainer in the field of human rights, public freedoms and legislation.

Jamil Salem

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Jamil Salem is a legal scholar and the Director of the Institute of Law at Birzeit University. He gained his legal experience at different Austrian and international organizations, becoming fluent in English as well as his mother tongues of Arabic and German. He was recruited by Birzeit University in January 2005, where he started as an academic researcher and as the programs manager of the Institute of Law, before becoming director in August 2012. His research interests include the history of law, human rights, legal theory, socio-legal studies, law and politics, and rule of law studies and technologies of imperialism.

Zachariah Sammour

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zachariah Sammour completed his undergraduate studies in law at the London School of Economics in 2012 and received his master's degree from Oxford University in 2013. He is particularly interested in international law, constitutional law, and constitutional theory.

Maxim Sansour

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Maxim Sansour is an elections specialist with a focus on electoral communications and media relations. Over the last nine years he has regularly advised election commissions in Palestine, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. He also frequently works on media reform initiatives in the Middle East and most recently has been a communications advisor to the Libyan Constitutional Drafting Assembly. Maxim lives in London and holds an MBA from Baruch College in New York and an MA in Global Politics from the London School of Economics (LSE).

Jacqueline Sansour

Al-Shabaka Policy Member and Commissioning Editor Jacqueline Sansour is a writer and editor with extensive knowledge of the history, politics, and current affairs of the Middle East and North Africa. She has spent extended periods of time in the Arab world, including Palestine, Libya and Tunisia. Jacqueline holds an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS in London.

Sherene Seikaly

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the editor of the Arab Studies Journal, co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya e-zine, and a member of the Journal of Palestine Studies Editorial Committee. Seikaly's Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016) explores how Palestinian capitalists and British colonial officials used economy to shape territory, nationalism, the home, and the body. She has published in academic journals such as International Journal of Middle East Studies and Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies as well as in online venues including Jadaliyya, Mada Masr, and 7iber.

May Seikaly

May Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University in the Department of Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Near Eastern Studies). Her work has focused on the social history of Arab society, specifically Palestinian and Arabian Gulf societies.  May Seikaly has been involved in the collection and archiving of Palestinian memory through the use of Oral documentation for recording, archiving and historicizing oral collections, including her book Haifa: Transformation of an Arab society 1918-1939.  She is currently working on a study of Gulf Social History through the eyes of its women, and in essence again utilizing oral history as a major tool.

Photo of Omar Shaban
Omar Shaban

Omar Shaban is the Founder and Director of the Gaza-based PalThink for Strategic Studies an independent think tank with no political affiliation. He is an analyst of the political-economy of the Middle East and is a regular writer and commentator for the Arab and international media. Omar is a founder of Palestinian groups for Amnesty International, the deputy head of the board of Asala, an association promoting microfinance for women, and a member of the Institute of Good Governance.

Khalil Shaheen

Khalil Shaheen is a Palestinian Journalist, media expert, researcher, and well-known political and media analyst. He is currently the director of research and policies and board member at Masarat - The Palestine Center for Policy Research and Strategic studies in Ramallah. Since 1981, he has served as a journalist, editor and researcher at several institutions, newspapers and magazines in Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Jordan and Palestine, since 1981. His articles and policy studies are widely published.

Photo of Aimee Shalan
Aimee Shalan

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Aimee Shalan is Chief Executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). She was formerly Director of Fobzu (Friends of Birzeit University), a UK-based charity supporting the right to education for Palestinians, and Co-founder and Director of Pressure Cooker Arts, a not-for-profit arts and advocacy organisation. Before that she was Director of Advocacy at MAP and Head of Education at the Council for Arab British Understanding. She has been a regular contributor to the Guardian and has written for a variety of media outlets. She taught at City University and Queen Mary, University of London, and has a doctorate in the Politics of Palestinian Literature.

Refqa Nabil Shaqour

Al-Shabaka Member Refqa Nabil Shaqour is a Belgium-based political scientist and writer. Born in Nablus, she holds a BA in political science, a master's degree in planning and political development from An-Najah National University in Palestine, and a master's degree in media and public relations from Cairo University. In addition to publishing political and cultural research papers in Arabic periodicals, her book "The Influence of Hezbollah in the Evolution of Resistance Ideology and Methods in the Arab Region" was published in 2010. She is a regular contributor to Al-Arab newspaper and Al-Jadid cultural magazine, and is a member of PEN International, the Flemish Branch in Belgium, as well as a researcher at the Egyptian Institute for Political and Strategic Studies in Turkey. Shaqour is currently pursuing her doctorate degree.

Omar Yousef Shehabi:

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Omar Yousef Shehabi is the founder of Palestine Works, a nonprofit organization which produces alternative and effective advocacy for Palestinian rights. He has served as a legal officer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team, and an adjunct lecturer in international law at Birzeit University. Previously, he worked as a labor lawyer in the United States, representing labor unions and employees. His current research interests include historical and contemporary Palestinian diplomatic and consular practice.

Photo of Ibrahim Shikaki
Ibrahim Shikaki

Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Ibrahim Shikaki, is assistant professor of economics at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. He earned his PhD from the New School for Social Research (NSSR) in New York, and held teaching positions at NSSR, The International University College of Turin, Birzeit, and Al-Quds universities. He also held research positions at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) in Ramallah and Diakonia’s IHL Research Center in East Jerusalem. His recent writings include an upcoming chapter on the political economy of dependency and class formation in Palestine, and a brief on the economic aspects of Kushner’s Bahrain Plan.

Halla Shoaibi

Halla Shoaibi is an S.J.D candidate at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, DC. Prior to that, she served as an Associate for two years at Kamal & Associates, Attorneys and Counselors at Law in Ramallah. Halla holds a masters degree in law from University of Michigan and an LL.B from Birzeit University. Her areas of interest are international criminal law and women’s rights.

Photo of Belal Shobaki
Belal Shobaki

Belal Shobaki is the Head of the Department of Political Science at Hebron University, Palestine. He is a Policy Member at the Palestinian Policy Network. He is the founder and coordinator of the Double Master’s degree program in Public and cultural Diplomacy at Hebron University with University of Siena, Italy. He has published on Political Islam, identity, democratization and Palestinian issue. He is also leading Hebron University team of a 3 years project:  Strengthening of National Research Capacity on Policy, Conflict Resolution, and Reconciliation, funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union. He has previously taught at An-Najah National University, Palestine and at IIUM, Malaysia. 

Maisa Shquier

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Maisa Shquier is an activist and D.Phil candidate at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex/UK. Her ethnographic research investigates the intersection between gender, sexuality, nation, body politics and embodiment. Specifically, it examines the gendered and sexualized representations of Palestine, through a discourse analysis of the “New Historians” and the visual images of Palestine. She has 10 years of development experience with local and International NGOs in monitoring and evaluating projects in gender, disability, health, food security, water and sanitation and civil society. She has worked on policy formation on gender, disability, sexuality, masculinity, and women’s political participation in the Middle East.

Zaid Shuaibi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zaid Shuaibi is the Arab World and Palestine Coordinator for the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He holds an MA in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where his research focused on China and East Asia relations with Israel and its effect on the region, as well as a BA in Public Administration from Birzeit University. Zaid previously served as the BDS National Committee Outreach Officer in Palestine and the Arab World.     

Nidal Sliman

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nidal Sliman has more than 15 years of experience in international law, human rights, and international trade and development. He received his LL.B and LL.M degrees in law from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996 and 1999, and completed a PhD in law summa cum laude from Notre Dame University in 2008. He worked as a legal advisor at the Negotiations Support Unit and advised UNESCO and the Palestinian Authority on legislative reforms to protect Palestinian cultural heritage. He is the Policy Reform Team Leader on the Palestinian Investment Climate Improvement Project focusing on business-enabling environment and trade reforms.

Springer head shot
Joanna Springer

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Joanna Springer is a researcher on development policy and governance reform in the Middle East.  She has carried out research and worked for local organizations in Morocco, Qatar and the West Bank.  Currently, Joanna is research advisor for a rule of law advancement project in the Arab Gulf.  She holds a Master’s of Public Policy and Administration from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with a focus in economic development.

Photo of Mayssun Succarie
Mayssun Succarie

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mayssun Succarie is a postdoctoral scholar in the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University. Her research covers the Political Culture of Development in the Global South with a focus on the Arab region. She taught for three years at the American University of Beirut in the departments of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies as well as the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies. In 2012, she was the ARCAPITA visiting Professor at the Middle East, South Asia and African Studies-MESAAS at Columbia University. Mayssun has a doctorate in Anthropology and Education from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jaber Suleiman

Jaber Suleiman is an independent researcher/consultant in Refugee Studies. Since 2011, he has been working as a consultant and coordinator for the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Forum at the Common Space Initiative, UNDP Support Project on Consensus Building, and Civil Peace in Lebanon. Between 2007 and 2010, he worked as a consultant for the Palestinian program of UNICEF in Palestinian refugee camps of Lebanon. He was a Visiting Study Fellow at the Refugee Studies Program, University of Oxford. He is also a co-founder of Aidoun Group & the Centre for Refugee Rights/Aidoun, and has written several studies dealing with Palestinian refugees and the right of return.

Salim Tamari

Salim Tamari is a senior fellow and director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies which is affiliated with the Institute for Palestine Studies. He is editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds. He is professor of sociology at Birzeit University and has authored several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the Eastern Mediterranean. He has served as visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Eric Lane Fellow at Cambridge University among other posts.

Tamara Tamimi

Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Tamara Tamimi, is a Palestinian born in Jerusalem. She holds an MA in Human Rights Law from SOAS, University of London, and is currently a student at Queen’s University Belfast School of Law where she is pursuing a PhD in international law and the Palestine question. Tamimi provides consulting services to Palestinian and international organizations around research, advocacy, political economy analysis, as well as program development and evaluation in the fields of gender equality, international law and human rights. Her particular focus is on the right to education, residency rights, cultural heritage, democratization, and social policy.

Osama Tanous

Al-Shabaka Member Osama Tanous is a specialized pediatrician based in Haifa. He is currently pursuing a Masters in Public Health and is a researcher for the Galilee Society: The Arab National Society for Health, Research and Services. Osama is a 2020 candidate for the Fulbright Hubert Humphrey fellowship in public health and health policies. His research interests include structural violence and health disparities.

Alaa Tartir

Alaa Tartir is Program and Policy Advisor to Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. Tartir is also a Senior Researcher and Academic Coordinator at the Geneva Graduate Institute (GGI), a Research Associate at the GGI’s Centre on Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding (CCDP), and a Global Fellow at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Tartir earned his PhD degree in International Development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Tartir is co-editor of Resisting Domination in Palestine: New Techniques of Control, Coloniality and Settler Colonialism (I. B. Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2023), Political Economy of Palestine: Critical, Interdisciplinary, and Decolonial Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and Palestine and Rule of Power: Local Dissent vs. International Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Tartir can be followed on Twitter (@alaatartir), and his publications can be accessed at www.alaatartir.com

Lana Tatour

Lana Tatour is a Lecturer in Development at the School of Social Sciences, UNSW Sydney. She works on settler colonialism, indigeneity, race, citizenship, human rights, and the Middle East with a focus on Palestine and Israel. Prior to joining the School of Social Sciences, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University, and held visiting fellowships at the Palestinian-American Research Center, the Australian Human Rights Centre, UNSW Faculty of Law and UNSW School of Social Sciences. She is on the board of The Australian Journal of Human Rights. She is currently working on her manuscript Ambivalent Resistance: Palestinians in Israel and the Liberal Politics of Settler Colonialism and Human Rights, and on an edited volume together with Dr Ronit Lentin on Race and the Question of Palestine.

Hala Turjman

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Hala Turjman holds a BA in Political Science from Birzeit University and Sciences Po Rennes, and an MA degree in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies from the College of Europe, specialized in Security and Justice. Her dissertation was a critique of EU development aid policy, gender mainstreaming and the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in Palestine. Hala was a Schuman Fellow at the European Parliament in the Middle East Unit. She is currently a researcher at the European Institute of Peace, focusing on situations of conflict in the MENA region, mainly in Syria and Libya. In past years Hala has also taken part in a number of grassroots campaigns and community initiatives in Palestine.

Randa Wahbe

Al-Shabaka Member Randa Wahbe is a graduate student in anthropology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on how Palestinian dead bodies are exploited by the Israeli state to facilitate its settler-colonial expansion. She also holds an M.P.H. in Epidemiology from the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a B.A. in International Development from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a founder of Students for Justice in Palestine at both universities.

Jeremy Wildeman

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Jeremy Wildeman ​is a Research Associate at the University of Bath's "Department of Social and Policy Sciences" where he is carrying out research on donor policy towards the Palestinians. Previously he completed a PhD on Canadian and foreign development aid towards the Palestinians, and has collaborated on a number of past research projects on Palestinian development, economy and NGOs. He also has substantial past experience with the Palestinian NGO sector, including co-founding the Nablus-based youth ​development charity ​"Project Hope​.​"

Dalal Yassine

Dalal Yassine is a lawyer and advocate for gender and human rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Dalal has previously worked with several Palestinian NGOs in Lebanon and formerly served as coordinator for The Right to Work Campaign for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon. She is the co-author of The Legal Status of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon (2007) and completed a multi-site study titled The Empowerment of Women in Refugee Camps in Lebanon.

Will Youmans

Will Youmans is a writer and activist. He is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan and holds a degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He has written on Arab-American issues and US policy in the Middle East.

Mona N. Younis

Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Mona N. Younis is an independent strategic planning and organizational development consultant who specializes in human rights. She has extensive experience in research, teaching, philanthropy and non-profit organizations. Mona co-founded the Fund for Global Human Rights (Washington, DC) and the Arab Human Rights Fund (Beirut, Lebanon). She has published on social movements, community development, philanthropy and human rights, and is the author of Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

Issam Younis

Issam Younis is the Director of Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights in Gaza. He is the Commissioner General of The Palestinian Independent Commission for Hunan Rights (ICHR). He is the president of the Arab Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ANNHRI). He is also a member of the Palestinian Higher Education Council.

Antoine Zahlan (1928-2020)

Antoine Zahlan was a former professor and chairman of the Physics Department at the American University of Beirut and former director of the Royal Scientific Society, Amman, Jordan. He initiated the Arab Project and Development Institute in Lebanon and was a founding member of other Arab institutions such as the Arab Physical Society and the Center for Arab Unity Studies. He published extensively on a broad range of topics from agricultural and educational policies to manpower planning and institution-building.

Photo of Rena Zuabi
Rena Zuabi

Al-Shabaka Policy Member Rena Zuabi previously designed and managed development programs throughout historic Palestine focused on sustainable agriculture, rural livelihoods, and inclusive market systems for a range of community organizations, as well as international agencies and charities. Bridging her experiences in the private, public, and civil society sectors around the world, she now advocates for the researching and prototyping of social enterprise models and advocacy initiatives that create new trajectories towards durable community self-sufficiency and self-determination in local development. Rena holds an MBA, Cambridge University and a BA, UC San Diego.

  • Policy Analysis
    • Civil Society
    • Economics
    • Politics
    • Refugees
    • Scenario Matrix
  • Policy Insights
    • Policy Focus
    • Policy Labs
    • Podcasts
  • Policy Network
    • Members
    • Contributors
  • About Us
    • Who We Are
    • Internship Program
    • Contact
    • Donate
    • Privacy & Terms of Use
  • Media & Outreach
    • Op-Eds & Articles
    • In the Media
    • Events
    • Press Releases
    • Press Contacts
  • Contact
    • Contact al-Shabaka by email at:
      [email protected]
    • Or by mail:
      Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network
      P.O. Box 8533
      New York, NY 10150

© 2010-2023 Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. All rights reserved.

×