Description:

Please join the Comparative Politics Workshop as they host Mkhaimar Abusada, Associate Professor of Political Science at Al-Azhar University-Gaza.

Abstract: Since its inception in the mid 1960s, the Palestinian national movement has experienced many successes. These successes were transcribed in the form of Arab League recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1974 as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and also the United Nations invited PLO chairman Yasser Arafat to address the UN General Assembly in the same year. The Palestinian national movement also succeeded in gaining recognition of a total of 145 states of Palestine as a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly I 2012. However, the Palestinians have faced a number of setbacks, e.g. their exile from Jordan 1970-1971, and Lebanon in 1982. But the most serious setback was the political divide between the nationalist and Islamists in 2007, which resulted in the creation of two Palestinian political entities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 and the current Israeli war on Gaza, is also a major setback for Palestinian nationalism. The presentation will focus on those successes and setbacks between 1964-2023.

About the Speaker: Mkhaimar Abusada is a U.S.-educated expert on Palestinian political attitudes. He received his PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1996 and is an associate professor at Al-Azhar University of Gaza and the former chair of the university's political science department. He has authored one book, and many academic articles in local and internationally recognized academic journals. He has also written for Project Syndicate, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy.