Jonathan Adler / Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network / New York, NY
As I’ve begun my work as an editorial intern at Al-Shabaka, I’ve continued to grapple with the readings from this past semester’s seminar and independent study. In particular, I’ve thought about how I can make use of academic scholarship to inform my editorial approach – as well as the challenges and limitations of engaging with scholarly writing in a policy-focused environment.
This was particularly pertinent last week, while I was editing an forthcoming policy brief for Al-Shabaka on the situation of Palestinian Bedouin communities in the E-1 corridor, an area east of Jerusalem that the Israeli government has been planning to annex. The policy brief outlines how Israel forcibly displaces these Bedouin communities to advance annexation – not only via home demolitions, but also by denying them basic economic and social rights. Moreover, it argues that humanitarian aid programs in E-1, backed by the US, EU, and other donor states, have not only failed to protect Palestinian Bedouins from Israeli aggression but also fueled a vicious cycle: donors help Bedouin communities rebuild after Israeli demolitions, only to have Israel destroy donor-funded projects, necessitating additional aid and leaving Bedouins more dependent on support.
As I worked on this brief, I was reminded of our seminar discussion on humanitarian aid in the so-called Third World, and how scholars have criticized the basic assumptions of humanitarianism as a force for good. I also thought about my own reading on economic development and aid in the Palestinian context, and how academics have argued that aid programs are structurally inadequate to the task of Palestinian liberation.
Yet this piece was a policy brief – in other words, it had to move beyond the realm of academic critique and offer concrete recommendations for how to secure the rights of Palestinian Bedouins in E-1. In some ways, this is a more challenging task than mere critique, especially when dealing with the topic of humanitarian aid, whose structural flaws in Palestine are blatantly clear. So it was enlightening to see how the authors of this brief navigated this tension – rather than abandon the aid framework all together, for example, they suggest that donor states should restructure their aid programs to ensure accountability, achieve buy-in from Bedouin communities, and allow international legal bodies to oversee the aid delivery process. I’m eager to develop my own skills in this type of policy writing, which doesn’t shy away from critical analysis, but also offers specific paths forward.