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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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).

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/

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/.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.