Media coverage
Radio Bullets (Italy) · 2025-05-24
Omar Shaban, founder and director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, says the Palestinian cause remains among Arab priorities, but its weight in Arab politics fluctuates, and that Palestinians must end divisions, reform their leadership, and restore unity through a package that includes stopping the war, elections, and a clear political plan. He adds that Gaza’s reconstruction, estimated by the World Bank at $50 billion a couple of months ago and likely higher as the war continues, cannot proceed without stability and a political process, while education and health should be top priorities.
Omar Shaban, founder and director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, says the Palestinian cause remains among Arab priorities, but its weight in Arab politics fluctuates, and that Palestinians must end divisions, reform their leadership, and restore unity through a package that includes stopping th…
### Written by Angela Gennaro on May 24, 2025
“The Palestinian question is part of Arab priorities. However, the importance of the Palestinian cause in Arab politics changes from time to time. Sometimes it increases, sometimes it decreases.”
This was explained to Radio Bullets by Omar Shaban, founder and director of Palthink for Strategic Studies.
His is one of the voices of activists, lawyers, but also journalists who fled from Gaza to Egypt and who, in the Egyptian capital, are meeting the delegation promoted by AOI, ARCI, Assopace Palestina, parliamentarians from the intergroup for peace between Palestine and Israel, Members of the European Parliament, university lecturers, and journalists traveling toward the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza to bear witness to the blockade of humanitarian aid.
“We must do our work as Palestinians to unite, reform the Palestinian leadership, and end the divisions, because some Arab countries have found excuses not to do what they were supposed to do precisely by using our divisions. Europeans do the same. Sometimes, when they are asked to do what they are supposed to do, they tell us that first we must be united.”
According to Shaban, some of the Arab countries close to Palestine, such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, are “very interested in Palestinian stability and ready to make efforts to help the Palestinians build a future.”
“It is necessary first of all to stop the war and then the Palestinian people, a Palestinian leadership, must provide a plan: elections, restoration of Palestinian unity, ending the divisions. All of this must be one single package,” he explains.
“You cannot do one thing and leave the others aside. So we cannot ask the Arabs to help us while we are not helping ourselves. Obviously, there is a responsibility on the part of Europe and the Arab world, but they are using our division as an excuse not to do the job. And we know that the Palestinian division was triggered and mediated by the Israeli prime minister.”
“The cost of reconstructing Gaza changes every day because the war continues,” the analyst explains. The World Bank estimated $50 billion a couple of months ago. “Today it could reach $60 billion. This is an enormous figure for a country, or for Gaza, which is very small. The Palestinian economy is too small. First of all, we must end the war.”
Secondly, “there will be no reconstruction without a political process and without stability. No country will be ready to invest $1 billion or $20 million in an area where it is not sure this infrastructure will remain in place, because Gaza has gone through 17 escalations and many of the structures built by the Europeans were destroyed a few months later. So we must look at the bigger problem.
Now, the priority, if we are talking about priorities—obviously we cannot do everything at the same time—but the priorities are education and health. Education is one of the main assets of the Palestinian people. Which is one of the most educated in the world. And we have no other source than human resources.
The fate of Fatah and Hamas itself?
“The Palestinian people will seek a new type of leadership because Fatah needs to reform itself. It must infuse more vital energy and better represent the Palestinian people.”
60% of young people in Palestine “are under 30 years old. These people have never voted. They came of age after 2009, 2012. They have never done it. They do not know what elections were. And they do not know this political leadership. They need a leadership that represents them,” says Omar Shaban.
Thanks to Alessandro Coltré for providing the voice-over in Italian for the interview with Omar Shaban.
Text © Radio Bullets (Italy) — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source