Background papers
The Background Papers provide a practical, policy-oriented analysis of comparative global models. By examining the benefits and liabilities of these frameworks, the Papers help the working groups identify successful strategies that could be adapted for a Shared Homeland paradigm. This comparative foundation is essential for moving beyond theory to understand how such models might eventually be implemented in Palestine-Israel.
1 Jan 2026
English
This paper focuses on the interconnected organizations Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) and Home for Cooperation (H4C) as successful outcomes of a local bicommunal movement for peace and reconciliation. The choice for focusing on these two organizations lies in the fact that they form sustainable examples of cooperation in urban contexts that have transformed the buffer zone in the urban center of Nicosia into a space of community formation, exchange and conflict resolution from below.
Olga Demetriou & Georgina Christou
Olga Demetriou is Professor in Political Anthropology at Durham University and Director of the Durham Global Security Institute. She has a long-standing interests in borders and conflict legacies that straddle anthropology and politics/IR. Her current work focuses on activism in refugee reception sites in Spain, Italy, Greece, and Cyprus. Georgina Christou is a social anthropologist. She held postdoctoral and teaching positions at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship), the University of Cyprus and the University of Sussex. Her research interests mainly focus on social movements, gentrification, urban struggles, ethnic conflict, and youth activism in Greece, Cyprus and the broader Mediterranean region.
Background papers
1 Jan 2026
English
In regions marked by protracted conflict, healthcare systems are often among the first institutions to suffer and the last to recover. The delivery of health services in such settings is shaped not only by resource scarcity and infrastructural damage but also by deep political divisions, fragmented governance, and social distrust. Despite these challenges, various models around the world have emerged that aim to meet the urgent medical needs of affected populations. This paper aims to explore five models of healthcare systems, that differ by the circumstances in which they were built, all with some parallels to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and relevance to a future Palestinian-Israeli Union.
Yasmeen Abu Fraiha
Dr. Yasmeen Abu Fraiha is a medical doctor with a specialty in internal medicine and critical care medicine, and a public health expert. Her research focuses on the intersection between health policy and politics that create inequalities in health services and outcomes for underserved communities.
Background papers
4 Mar 2026
English
This paper reviews key rights for non-citizens established under three regional free movement regimes and examines how access to these rights functions in practice. It further identifies lessons that may inform future free movement arrangements between Israel and Palestine.
Dorothea Biaback Anong & Zoé Perko
Dr. Dorothea Biaback Anong is an interdisciplinary migration researcher at Technical University Berlin focusing on migration policymaking in global comparison. She has recently completed her PhD on regional free movement and migration regimes in West Africa, South America, and Europe at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Dr. Zoé Perko is a sociologist who completed her PhD at the Department of Social Sciences of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research focuses on migration and border regimes, regional integration, and conflicts in the implementation of free movement in Europe, West Africa, and Latin America, with particular attention to migrants’ informal, bottom-up practices.
Background papers
19 Mar 2026
English
No two conflicts are the same. While this paper concentrates on Northern Ireland, it poses the question as to whether its experience in recent decades of pursuing the formal policy of creating a more shared society bears any relevance for Israel-Palestine. This paper seeks to explore the role of planning in both places in addressing contested space. It proceeds to offer case studies of attempts to create shared space in Northern Ireland that may offer some models for greater mutual accommodation in Israel-Palestine in the spirit of reciprocal recognition and partaking in a common homeland.
Background papers
9 Mar 2026
English
In the last few decades, post-conflict cities have become focal points for political reconstruction, social reconciliation, and institutional innovation. These cities, often divided along ethnic, religious, or national lines, are where the legacies of violent conflict and exclusion visibly intersect with everyday governance. Post-conflict urban governance thus refers to the set of formal and informal institutions developed to administer cities recovering from ethnonational, sectarian, or territorial conflicts. This Background Paper explores the main institutional types developed in post-conflict cities and illustrates their operation through global examples.
Nathan Marom
Nathan Marom is an urban scholar writing on urban sustainability, political ecology, and socio-spatial inequalities. The ideas for this lexical entry were developed during his fellowship at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (2024).
Background papers
9 Mar 2026
English
Underlying – literally – the fractured and conflicted geopolitics of Israel-Palestine are the various elements of the shared natural environment, namely topography, hydrography, vegetation and natural resources. Anthropogenic climate and broader environmental changes are accelerating, exacerbating the already substantial variations of precipitation and temperature in this semi-arid to arid zone. Ensuring climate resilience and sustainability for any and all future reconstruction and development is therefore imperative.
David Simon & Joseph Rabie
David Simon is Professor of Development Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London (UK), a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and currently a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Climate Change and Cities. He has published widely in this field, as well as diverse development/environment issues, especially sustainability and resilience, and also advises the Earthna Centre in Doha on arid and semi-arid cities.
Joseph Rabie is an architect and urban planner; his work has always revolved around the notion of place: indeed, this was the subject of doctoral research conducted at the Atelier International du Grand Paris. He is currently the managing director of AMBRE, a design cooperative that promotes a bioregional approach in territorial projects.
Background papers
9 Mar 2026
English
This background paper introduces a novel typology of mobility arrangements between sovereign states distinguishing between their scale, scope and motives and examines selected cases with regard to their legal basis (conditions for cross-border mobility and corresponding entry/residence/economic-social-cultural-political rights as provided in the treaties or national legislation), institutional framework (institutions in charge of regulating, implementing, enforcing cross-border mobility regimes), and evidence on their (dis)functioning in practice. The last section reflects on the applicability of these different regimes to the Israel-Palestine context in view of a future two-state solution.
Sandra Lavenex
Sandra Lavenex is professor of European and International Politics at the University of Geneva and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe. Her research focuses on international migration governance, EU external relations and transgovernmental cooperation.
Background papers
9 Mar 2026
English
This essay asks whether and how ecological conditions can form the basis for cooperation across social, spatial, and political borders and boundaries. Using case study materials from various parts of the world, and with a particular focus on water, this paper seeks to identify the social, political, economic, and ecological conditions under which cooperative water practices might strengthen collective partnerships or shared habitability goals across political boundaries.
Diane E. Davis
Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Development and former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). Before joining Harvard in 2011, Davis served as the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where she was also Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.
Background papers