Zaha Hassan

Zaha Hassan is a human rights attorney, policy analyst, and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research centers on Palestine–Israel, the use of international legal mechanisms by political movements, and the interplay between U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics as it relates to the U.S.–Palestinian bilateral relationship. She recently co-edited and was contributing author for Suppressing Dissent: Shrinking Civic Space, Transnational Repression and Palestine-Israel (Oneworld Academic/Simon & Schuster, 2024), which presciently set out the clash between U.S. foreign policy in Israel/Palestine and constitutional freedoms and the right of Americans to dissent.

She holds a JD from the University of California at Berkeley, School of Law, and a BA in political science and Near East languages and civilizations from the University of Washington at Seattle. Previously, Hassan was the coordinator and senior legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team as well as a member of the Palestinian delegation to Quartet-sponsored exploratory talks between 2011 and 2012. She is a regular commentator on TV and in print news media.