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.
From this author
A quarter of a century since the signing of the Oslo Accords, an independent and sovereign Palestinian state has become little more than a myth as Israel continues to expand its settler colonial project and military occupation. Oslo’s structure and framework are to blame for this reality, as the Accords were not a peace agreement but a security arrangement between colonizer and colonized.
Pope Francis’ September 2015 visit to the US will doubtless reinforce his reach to the new audiences he has attracted beyond the Catholic Church with his strong positions on such issues as the environment, poverty, migrants – and Palestinian rights to freedom and equality.
Technical solutions shorn of political context have contributed to a failed state in Palestine and harmed the collective Palestinian struggle for freedom, transforming the Palestinian Authority into an NGO-like body.
