topicEconomics
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Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from a worsening energy crisis due to the Israeli regime’s ongoing siege. As a result, they have adopted different coping strategies, including solar energy technology to offset electricity shortages. Al-Shabaka policy analyst and 2022 Visiting Gaza Fellow Asmaa Abu Mezied examines this reality, and offers recommendations for Palestinian leadership and stakeholders to promote Palestinian economic self-determination in Gaza.
Since 2021, Israeli leaders have proposed a new series of economic policies under the approach of “shrinking the conflict.” This strategy aims to afford Palestinians more economic opportunities and so-called freedoms as a way to sustain the Israeli occupation. In this policy brief, Al-Shabaka policy analyst Walid Habbas debunks the framework and explains why Palestinians will not be pacified with economic incentives.
The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) budget disproportionately relies on clearance revenues — import taxes collected by Israel on its behalf — that the Israeli regime regularly withholds as political blackmail. As a result, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza suffer severe economic consequences.
The recent cryptocurrency crash raises doubts about its viability as an alternative to standard currencies. But are there aspects of the global phenomenon that are still useful for Palestinian economic and political resistance? Al-Shabaka policy analysts Tariq Dana and Ibrahim Shikaki debate the potential of digital and cryptocurrencies and outline technological opportunities for the Palestinian economy.
For the past two decades, the Palestinian Authority has been collaborating with expatriate Palestinian capitalists, who operate in tandem with the Israeli state, to ramp up ICT development in Palestine. Yet the sector continues to suffer. Al-Shabaka’s guest contributor, David Musleh, examines these power dynamics and offers recommendations for what the PA should do to enhance Palestinians’ economic lives.
In his new book, Palestine is Throwing a Party and the Whole World is Invited, Al-Shabaka policy analyst and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Chicago, 24449, examines how Palestinian governance shifted toward neoliberal globalization in the post-Fayyad years.
The Israeli regime has been systematically violating the rights of Palestinian workers in Israel and its illegal settlements since 1967. How have these violations been exacerbated since the COVID-19 pandemic? Al-Shabaka’s guest contributor, Ihab Maharmeh, examines Israel’s ongoing abuses of Palestinian workers’ labor and human rights. He offers recommendations for securing these rights and for holding Israel accountable.
The Palestinian Authority has withheld salary payments from thousands of Palestinian public sector employees. Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Tariq Dana, and Lamees Farraj examine the ways in which the PA has politicized and exploited public sector employment and salaries as a political tradeoff. They offer recommendations for how to remedy the situation, and bring about economic equality for Palestinians.
The Israeli occupation has crippled Palestinian productive sectors, leading to the dominance of internal trade in the Palestinian economy. Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Ibrahim Shikaki, examines how these structural distortions developed as a result of Israel’s oppressive economic policies since it occupied Palestine in 1967. He offers recommendations to the international community and aid agencies for how to support Palestinian economic self-determination.
Tourism has been critical to the Zionist enterprise since the first Zionists settled Palestine. Al-Shabaka policy analyst Halah Ahmad explores the role of tourism, and especially religious tourism, in propagating the Zionist and Israeli-state narratives, focusing on the damaging impacts of Israeli settlement tourism in illegally occupied Palestinian land. She offers recommendations for ethical tourism that promotes Palestinian rights to self-determination.
Hundreds of Palestinian, regional, and international organizations have called on the previous and current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to release the UN database of companies engaged in activities with Israel’s illegal settlements. Though the 2016 Human Rights Council resolution called for the release of the database during the 34th Human Rights Council session in March 2017, the then High Commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad Al-Hussein, failed to do so – and the current High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, continues to shirk this responsibility, despite repeated pledges that it will be fulfilled.
Media & Outreach
By failing to take action to halt it, universities and other institutions in Europe and North America are enabling the slaughter of Palestinians.
This week on Babel, Jon Alterman speaks with Amjad Iraqi, a senior editor at +972 Magazine and an associate fellow with Chatham House. He is also affiliated with Al-Shabaka, an online Palestinian policy network. Together, they discuss how Palestinian citizens of Israel have been experiencing the Gaza war, and the future of Palestinian communities in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank.
By masking support for Israel with hollow humanitarian gestures and empathy for Palestinians, Biden and Harris have diluted pressure to end the genocide.
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