MEI/FMEP 2023 Briefing Series: Israel/Palestine – Key Issues for the 118th Congress
Part Five: Internal Palestinian Politics
This session — featuring: Dr. Dana El Kurd (University of Richmond), Salem Barahmeh, and Khaled AL-Hroub (Northwest University – Qatar) — looked at the state of Palestinian politics and political institutions as well as the future of the Palestinian national movement, including the effects of the ongoing political division between Fatah & Hamas, the question of if, when and how to hold elections, prospects for internal political and institutional reforms, and the likely challenges of political succession (post-Abbas).
Recorded March 10, 2023
Listen to this webinar as a podcast
Participant Biographies
Khaled AL-Hroub is professor in residence of the faculty of liberal arts at Northwestern University in Qatar. His focus is Middle Eastern studies and politics with particular interest on Islam and politics, Arab-Israeli conflict and Arab media studies. Hroub is also a research associate at the Centre of Islamic Studies of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge, where he was the founder and director of Cambridge Arab Media Project (CAMP) until 2012. He authored Hamas: A Beginners Guide (2006/2010), Hamas: Political Thought and Practice (2000), and edited Political Islam: Context versus Ideology (2011) and Religious Broadcasting in the Middle East (2012). In Arabic he published Fragility of Ideology and Might of Politics (2010), In Praise of Revolution (2012), The Anxious Intellectual versus the Certain Intellectual (2018). Hroub also published in prose and poetry, and his publications in this area include Tattoo of Cities (prose, 2008), Enchantress of Poetry (poems, 2008), Ink of the Sun (prose, 2016), and I Slap the Face of the Sky and Go on (Poems, 2017). Between 2000 and 2007 he was the host of a weekly book review program on Al Jazeera.
Salem Barahmeh is the Executive Director of UnCivilized Media. Salem previously served as the Executive Director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy (PIPD). 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.
Dana El Kurd is an assistant professor at the University of Richmond, a non resident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington, and non resident fellow at the Middle East Institute in the Palestine program. Her work focuses on authoritarianism, international intervention, and state-society relations in the Arab world. Her book, Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine, was released in January 2020 with Oxford University Press.
Resources
Follow our panelists on Twitter to stay up to date:
- Salem Barahmeh → @Barahmeh / https://twitter.com/Barahmeh
- Dana El Kurd → @danaelkurd / https://twitter.com/danaelkurd
From Dana
- “Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine” (2019)
- “Elections can’t fix the Palestinian Authority”
- The Palestinian Cause at a Moment of Transition
From Salem
- Talking about Israeli Apartheid (Recorded 2/18/2022)
- The Palestinian Cause at a Moment of Transition
From Khaled
- Khaled Hroub’s book, “Hamas: A Beginner’s Guide” (2010, 2nd edition)
- ‘Hamas: Political Thought and Practice” (2000)
On Topics Discussed:
- A report by Al-Shabaka—“Reviving a Palestinian Power: The Diaspora and the Diplomatic Corps”
- Nizar Banat: https://fmep.org/resource/occupied-thoughts-rising-up/
- For more on Palestinian protests against the PA: https://fmep.org/event/palestinian-grassroots-protests-the-violent-repression-by-the-palestinian-authority/
- Reconstituting the PLO: Any Place for Hamas and Islamic Jihad? (9/14/2022) / https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/reconstituting-the-plo-any-place-for-hamas-and-islamic-jihad/
- Khaled Elgindy (5/21/2021): By defending Jerusalem, Hamas stakes its claim to Palestinian national leadership
- Webinar recording – “A new era of Palestinian unity?” (2021)
- Khaled Elgindy: “Why Security Cooperation with Israel is a Lose-Lose for Abbas“
- The PA’s revenue structure and Israel’s containment strategy (2/15/2023)—https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/the-pas-revenue-structure-and-israels-containment-strategy/
- Check out this matrix from Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network recently produced a matrix that explores various scenarios for the future of Palestinian politics, the PA, the death of Abbas, and more: https://al-shabaka.org/scenario-matrix/
- For more on Abbas: The Legacy of Mahmoud Abbas (1/09/2023)—https://al-shabaka.org/roundtables/the-legacy-of-mahmoud-abbas/
- For more on Palestinian elections—Palestinian Representation: Elections vs Consensus-Building (4/07/2022) https://al-shabaka.org/commentaries/the-question-of-palestinian-representation-elections-vs-consensus-building-2/