Manbat: A Bold New Civil Society Research Platform Takes Root in Jerusalem

Two Palestinian women shared a conviction that they needed to do something for professionals in the city they cherish—Jerusalem.

Hiba Salah al-Din Eselah and Tharaa Kirresh joined forces to launch Manbat, a research platform for Palestinian professionals. in January 2024, with no funding or institutional backing, they founded a project that is “dedicated to promoting advanced research and professional development (capacity building) to drive social change in Jerusalem—with a particular focus on East Jerusalem.”1

Their vision was to spark a thriving, data-driven civil society in Jerusalem. Their extensive experience in institutional work exposed them to the great shortage in data on fundamental issues concerning Palestinian Jerusalemites, such as education and employment capacities. They thus set out to create a multisectoral platform for local Palestinian professionals and scholars to share their research and findings.

With no clear picture of what lay ahead or how (and if) it would evolve into something tangible, Hiba and Tharaa set out on a journey to realize their vision for Jerusalem along with a team of dedicated professionals and volunteers. By the end of 2025, less than two years later, Manbat has demonstrated its importance in Jerusalem, drawing widespread interest and consistent attendance.

Hiba and Tharaa, two busy professionals in their 30s with a long list of family responsibilities and commitments, were driven to contribute to Palestinian civil society. A lecturer and group facilitator, Hiba is an expert in program development, career guidance, capacity building, and strategic planning. Tharaa is an architect, urban planner, and placemaker; she specializes in public space activation and community-driven urban development in conflict zones. Her work bridges research and practice, fostering coordination for inclusive and sustainable cities.

With their combined expertise, unique skills, and shared vision, Hiba and Tharaa decided to create a platform for civil society in their hometown. “There is a remarkable lack of resources and data,” notes Tharaa.2

“There is definitely a need for a community hub, which doesn’t exist in Jerusalem,” adds Hiba.3

The two cofounders highlight that these shortcomings have become especially pronounced since October 7, 2023. As they describe it, the repercussions of the war in Gaza in terms of oppressive Israeli policies have fragmented and devastated Palestinian society in Jerusalem in unprecedented ways.

“Most [Palestinian] organizations were fully shut down by January 2024,” Hiba says, “but it must be noted that difficut times empower us,” she stresses. “The movement restrictions and discriminatory Israeli practices aimed at breaking Palestinians often achieve the opposite: They strengthen our sense of belonging and reinforce our identity.”

Tharaa adds that in the face of hardship and injustice, people look for different ways to cope. For Tharaa, coping involves actively asserting her agency. She would see, for example, countless Palestinian Jerusalemites too afraid to speak Arabic while walking in public, too scared to use public transportation or visit Israeli hospitals in Jerusalem out of fear of being attacked. Her ability to navigate both Palestinian and Israeli society thus led her to offer assistance to Palestinians in Israeli spaces.

While doing so, she would gather demographic data: “I’d find myself digging through Excel sheets and maps, identifying important data,” she notes. “It’s deeply concerning that critical decisions are made on a country level on data that is fundamentally inaccurate,” she stresses. “Technically speaking, there is no data; simply estimates gathered from either the Palestinian or Israeli central bureaus of statistics, both of which are built on a superficial ground and lack an empirical basis.”

This lack of data, combined with the absence of community hubs for Jerusalemite Palestinians, inspired Tharaa and Hiba to take action to reduce the knowledge gap, promote public space, enhance culture, and empower individual Palestinians and civil society organizations to achieve sustainable social change in Jerusalem.

With busy programs as full-time professionals, they decided in early 2024 that they would dedicate every Monday to brainstorming sessions and meetings for their initiative. Nearly two years in, their Mondays are still booked for Manbat, and their to-do list grows by the day.

The Arabic word manbat (root: n-b-t) refers to the place from which something sprouts. While a plant (nabta), sharing the same root as manbat, is the most literal association, a manbat is also the abstract birthplace or origin of ideas and thoughts.

The seed, in this respect, is Jerusalem—the city that unites not only the local communities of Jerusalem but also the Palestinians of 1948, the rest of the West Bank, the region, and beyond.

The first step in 2024 was to identify individuals and civil society organizations on the ground. Tharaa and Hiba sent out a call for papers to acquaint themselves with the city’s professionals and researchers. They did not limit the papers to any theme, which, while disadvantageous for applying for funds, freed them from donors’ political agendas.

“We know we are different,” says Hiba. “We are not a priviledged, rich, academic, or elite Palestinian institution that has access to foreign funding.” She adds that their career backgrounds may at first have raised some questions. Tharaa earned her bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering from An-Najah National University in Nablus, her master’s in urban and regional planning from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is currently an instructor at the Hebrew University and Birzeit University. This combination of universities is undoubtedly intriguing. Meanwhile, Hiba has held high positions in Israeli institutions, including Bank Leumi, the Municipality of Jerusalem, and the Israeli Tax Authority. “Our knowledge of Israel made some people question us, from both sides,” Hiba explains, “but we are neither for normalization nor for isolation.”

Many of the external governmental agencies that fund programs for Palestinians do so problematically, often joining the funding bandwagon to promote trends such as “democracy,” “youth engagement,” “women’s empowerment,” and “gender.” The way Hiba describes it, such programs often have a superiority complex, “raising awareness in developing and uncivilized communities,” she says, “but we already have great capacity and so much potential.” She explains that many Palestinians, especially mid-level professionals, have tremendous in-depth knowledge and much to offer, yet they have limited opportunities and no social platforms to push them forward.

“We are here to find what’s appropriate for us and to represent the majority of Palestinians in Jerusalem,” she adds. “We realize the situation on the ground and see the need for a nurturing environment, which at the moment does not exist.”

With this in mind, Manbat’s approach is grounded in actionable goals that guide effective community development, enhancing professional skills across sectors and fostering networks that connect professionals and organizations to encourage collaboration and long-term impact. Its mission thereby centers conducting rigorous research on critical issues affecting Jerusalem, advancing evidence-based solutions, and developing the capacities of mid-level professionals so they can play an active role in bringing about positive social change.4

Manbat stresses research, capacity building, and development. Ultimately, through building a comprehensive research base and developing professional capacities, Manbat seeks to shed light on the challenges faced by Jerusalem’s Palestinians in order to contribute to influencing public policies and improving social and economic conditions.

Since its founding, Manbat has offered a range of activities, including tours and workshops, bringing together professionals and activists toward promoting cultural identity and developing public spaces in sustainable and communal ways.

After its initial call for papers, Manbat held the first East Jerusalem Annual Research Conference (EJ-ARC) in September 2024. The entire process, as Hiba and Tharaa describe it, was quite challenging, as they were only formally registered a few days prior. With no funding, no academic committee, no specific theme, and with some raised eyebrows about who they were, the pair nevertheless received assistance from a few volunteers, all of whom worked hard to make the first conference happen.

While the conference may not have been exceptionally organized, it allowed Hiba and Tharaa to network and showed them that people were thirsty for such settings. Most importantly, they realized that they had more work to do.

Their persistent efforts yielded great results the following year during the second EJ-ARC, held in October 2025. This time around, the team had established solid contacts in the community, including the support of distinguished and respected intellectuals for the review and evaluation committee for the second call for papers, which adhered to global professional standards.

The members of the review and evaluation committee for the 2025 conference included prominent Palestinian intellectuals, among them Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Dr. Nazmi Jubeh, Dr. Maisa Totry, Dr. Abeer Shqirat, and Dr. Rana Abbas. And paper topics for the 2025 conference covered public health, infrastructure, tourism, architecture, culture, heritage, education, spatial injustices, and history.

Despite the diversity of fields of study, all the papers had one thing in common: Jerusalem.

The event was held at the Palestine Heritage Museum at Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi in Sheikh Jarrah on October 20, 2025. More than 130 researchers, professionals, and civil society representatives attended.

The conference’s four main sessions featured a total of 14 works:

Session One: Voices of the City: Women, Markets and Public Health in the History of Jerusalem. This panel included three presentations:

Dr. Najwa Abu Elhija, “Women’s Narratives in the Covenant of Omar: Voices of Women during the Islamic Conquest of Jerusalem”

Qusay Fakhri Abbas, “The Problematic of Enhancing Suq al-Qattanin for Tourism Development”

Ahmad Mahmoud al-Hroub, “Between the Hills and Valleys of Jerusalem: Public Health and Infrastructure in Jerusalem during the Jordanian Period”

Session Two: Voices and Experiences, which featured eight presentations:

Ahmad Nofal, “From Ramallah to Jerusalem—Mental Mapping of a Divided Road”

Mais Laham, “The City Should Be All Yours: Spatial Injustices in East Jerusalem”

Amal Assaf, Majd Maria, and Sima Salman, “Patriarch’s Pool—A Journey through Time and Culture”

Fadi Kabha, “Association between Social Determinants of Health and Well-Being—Jerusalem”

Lina Gheith, “The Effect of Family Unification Procedures on Palestinian Women Married to Jerusalem ID Holders in the Kafr ‘Aqab Area”

Duha Abu Dalu, “Palestinian Identity at the Hebrew University”

Mohammad Wafeq al-Aqha, “Energy Justice in Jerusalem—Navigating Access, Sustainability”

Dr. Abeer Shqirat, “The Role of E-Leadership in the Management of Educational Crises: Perspectives of Secondary School Teachers in East Jerusalem”

Session Three: Research Posters and Networking, which delved into the presentation of Duaa Abu Sa’da, “If Tiles Could Speak—Tracing Hidden Urban Narratives”

Session Four: Creativity and Identity: Perspectives from Jerusalem’s Schools. Here, Dr. Abeer Shqirat gave further insight on her presentation, “The Role of E-Leadership in Managing Educational Crises from the Perspective of Secondary School Teachers in East Jerusalem.” And Dr. Mirvat Abu Asab shared her presentation on “The Impact of the Israelization of Educational Curricula on National Identity—East Jerusalem.”

During the conference, Hiba and Tharaa emphasized Manbat’s mission to build a multidisciplinary research community, address research gaps in health, education, and planning, and generate new data that support evidence-based policy solutions for Jerusalem. They also encouraged attendants to produce content, not only for Manbat but also for other outlets, such as the Jerusalem Quarterly, to strengthen Palestinian academic presence.

Hiba and Tharaa explain that Palestinian Jerusalemite researchers do not have a space to share their works with local communities in an accessable way and in Arabic. As they put it, the greatest highlight of the conference was seeing Palestinian intellectuals and academics share their research and connect with other Palestinians, and all in their mother tongue: Arabic. Manbat thus offered a stage for Palestinian Jerusalemites to articulate their findings to an audience that shares their unique reality.

The team at Manbat offered conference presenters assistance while they were bringing their presentations to life. They even helped them with their posters and organizing their sessions—a form of capacity building in practice.

The event underscored the need to translate research findings into practical steps that reinforce community resilience and protect Palestinian identity in Jerusalem. It also spoke to Manbat’s aim to build a vibrant, inclusive, and connected community that supports learning, collaboration, and empowerment.

Speaking with both Hiba and Tharaa, it is evident that much work is already in preparation for Manbat 2026. They hope to receive more support to continue building Palestinian civil society in Jerusalem through data-driven solutions and effective leadership.