Far from being a unifying call for prisoners’ rights, the Palestinian hunger strike campaign is exposing intra-Palestinian divides, particularly within Fatah.
Lihi Ben Shitrit is an assistant professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens. In 2013-2014, she was also a visiting assistant professor and a research associate in the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender, religion, and politics in the Middle East. Her most recent publications include her book Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right (Princeton University Press, 2015) and “Authenticating Representation: Women's Quotas and Islamist Parties in the Middle East” (in Politics & Gender, Vol. 13, 2016). Lihi has also worked extensively with civil society organizations, the U.S. Department of State, and USAID on conflict resolution and peacebuilding projects in the Israeli-Palestinian context. She holds a PhD, MPhil, and MA in Political Science from Yale University and a BA in Middle Eastern studies from Princeton University.
Far from being a unifying call for prisoners’ rights, the Palestinian hunger strike campaign is exposing intra-Palestinian divides, particularly within Fatah.
If Fatah’s upcoming internal congress excludes supporters of Mohammad Dahlan from leadership positions, it could tear the movement apart.
This year’s unprecedented Jerusalem pride parade was a political movement uniting diverse minority groups against violence rather than a celebration of selective freedoms.