[Webinar] Palestinian Politics & Governance

Featuring: Sam Bahour (Applied Information Management), Dana El Kurd (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies), and Omar Rahman (Brookings Doha Center).

In this session we explore issues related to internal Palestinian politics, including the question of if, when and how to hold elections, political and institutional reforms, political succession (post-Abbas), and prospects for Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.

This webinar is Part 8 of an 8-part series of webinars. For recordings of the other sessions in this series, please click here.

For resources shared in this webinar, scroll down. 

Speaker Bios 

Sam Bahour is an American-Palestinian writer and management consultant living in Ramallah. Sam does business consulting as Applied Information Management (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information technology sector and start-ups. He is also the Chairman of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy. He helped establish PALTEL and the PLAZA Shopping Center. Until recently, he served on the board of trustees of Birzeit University and was the University’s treasurer.  He is also a Director at the Arab Islamic Bank and a board member at Just Vision. Bahour is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians (Olive Branch Press). He writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and his work is posted at www.epalestine.com. Follow Sam on Twitter – @SamBahour / https://twitter.com/SamBahour

Dana El Kurd received her PhD in Government from The University of Texas at Austin in June 2017. She specializes in Comparative Politics and International Relations. Dana works as a researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and as an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Theoretically, Dana is interested in the conflicts between states and their societies and the contentious politics they produce. She examines how authoritarian regimes try to implement policies and how external intervention may affect their success. Her research lies at the intersection of comparative and IR research, particularly with regards to international influence on regime development. Substantively, Dana is interested in international involvement and authoritarianism within the Arab world. Her multi-method research focuses on how authoritarian regimes in the Arab world have maintained durability, as well as the societal impact of this authoritarianism on political engagement.  Follow Dana on Twitter – @danaelkurd / https://twitter.com/danaelkurd

Omar H. Rahman is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, where he is writing a book on Palestinian fragmentation in the post-Oslo era. Rahman is a writer, analyst, and multimedia journalist specializing in Middle East politics and American foreign policy. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Lawfare, PBS NewsHour, VICE, Quartz, The National, Al Jazeera English, and World Politics Review, among others. Prior to joining Brookings, Rahman was a research analyst at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, where he focused on the geopolitics of reconstruction in Yemen, Arab Gulf foreign policy in the Horn of Africa, and the political economy of the Gulf region. As a journalist, Rahman was most recently an editor at World Politics Review in New York, where he focused on the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to that, he was the Senior Middle East Correspondent for Argus Media in Dubai, covering the energy industry in the region, as well as an editor and market reporter for Argus Media in New York. Rahman holds a Master’s degree in Politics & Global Affairs from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he was a White House Correspondents’ Association scholar and an International Fellows Program scholar. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia. Rahman has guest lectured on Palestinian identity, the Egyptian revolution, and the international relations of the Middle East at George Washington University. He spoke on panels including the United Nations Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East in Geneva and been interviewed by numerous print and television outlets for his expertise on the Middle East. Follow Omar on Twitter – @omarrahman / https://twitter.com/omarrahman

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