UROP Project

Text Analysis, MENA, Israel, Palestine, Middle East, conflict, peace

Research Mentor: hm22o@fsu.edu Hashim Malallah,
Department, College, Affiliation: Florida State University, Social Sciences and Public Policy
Contact Email: hm22o@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: No
Number of Research Assistants: 2
Relevant Majors: political science preferred but not required

Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: Fully Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 3-5,
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link: Not participating in the Roundtable

Project Description

How has elite views toward Israel and Palestine changed over time and across states? The incidents of October 7 have had major ramifications on global views towards the most salient issue in the Middle East and North Africa. Variation in public and elite sentiment towards Israel and Palestine is not specific to the October 7 incidents but rather since the Belfour Declaration in 1917, which declared the establishment of “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. In this original dataset project, I aim to measure elite sentiments and policy positions toward Palestine and Israel using the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) debate texts. The goal of this project is to collect new data necessary to test different hypotheses in future research. Using text analysis through supervised learning on UNGA speeches, I estimate (1) general sentiment towards Israel and Palestine on separate dimensions, and (2) policy positions on different resolutions related to the Palestinian Question. I tune a model with a hand-coded training data for each separate dimension to derive estimates at the speech-year level for each country. After I derive the estimates, I move to (1) test different hypotheses for predicting sentiment and policy positions towards Israel and Palestine. (2) Examine how much convergence/divergence between elite and public sentiment on Israel-Palestine. (3) Examine how much convergence/divergence between expressed positions in speeches and actual voting record in the UNGA on the Palestinian question.

Research Tasks: Data collection, data Analysis, hand coding, Literature review.


Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Required: attention to details.
Recommended: Interest in Middle Eastern Politics.
No special requirement for any programming or coding skills.