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This study aims to explore the effect of mental health in terms of depression, anxiety, stress, fear of COVID-19 and quality of life (QoL) on the reluctance to be vaccinated in a population of Palestinian adults living in occupied Palestinian territories and Israel.

The authors recruited 1,122 Palestinian adults who consented to participate in the study; 722 were females, and the mean age of the sample was 40.83 (SD 8.8). Depression, anxiety, and stress scale (DASS), World Health Organization QoL-BREF, FCov-19 and reluctance to the vaccine scale were administered; hierarchical regression analysis was applied to test vaccine reluctance as a dependent variable, and mental health, fear of COVID-19 and QoL as independent variables. This study hypothesized influence of such variables on the vaccine choice with differences due to the participants’ geographical locations.

Findings showed an effect of mental health, particularly depression, QoL and fear of COVID on vaccine reluctance, with depression and fear of COVID in the West Bank and Gaza, while in Israel, QoL played a role in vaccination choices.

The future needs to be comprehended more thoroughly to discover mutations and fluctuations over time in vaccine hesitancy and the increasing role of psychological distress, diminished QoL and fear of Covid-19. Online recruitment might not have allowed the study to include the most disadvantaged strips of the Palestinian population.

Human rights perspectives must be considered in public health and public mental health policies to ensure the QoL and well-being for the Palestinian population during and following the pandemic.

The crumbling of the Palestinian health-care system exacerbated the sense of dread among the population and made them less likely to vaccinate. The pandemic-like spread of Covid-19 prompts a plea for the global community to actively advocate for the urgent re-establishment of equity, autonomy and durability of the medical infrastructure in the occupied territories and equal entitlements for the Palestinians in Israel.

The results demonstrated the importance for public mental health to consider the multiple levels implied in the vaccine refusal in Palestine and Israel among the Palestinian population.

The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which a transnational pedagogical training affected university teachers' approaches to teaching, as well as their efficacy beliefs and cultural perceptions, and to examine how such training could stimulate teachers' pedagogical-development processes beyond the specific context.

An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was adopted for the study. Quantitative data were collected through an online self-reported questionnaire from two-independent samples, both before (n = 119) and after (n = 110) the training. Qualitative data were collected after the training through episodic narrative interviews with five teachers.

The quantitative and qualitative findings indicate contradictory aspects of the teaching approach and perceived culture. While the questionnaire responses highlighted the dominance of teacher-centred teaching approaches and an individualistic culture, a thematic analysis of the interview data showed that teachers experienced pedagogical development as (1) increasing student engagement, (2) improving their own teaching practices, (3) a community activity and (4) an institutionalised process.

The design of the current research may have limited the authors’ potential to deeply investigate the effect of the transnational pedagogical training, as only snapshots of the teachers' perceptions were elicited. Future studies might consider a within-subject longitudinal design to thoroughly follow teachers' trajectories in learning and development over time.

The research findings suggest that transnational pedagogical training initiatives are to be promoted amidst these uncertain times. Even though the focus of the study was not to explore the teachers' perceptions of teaching development during the pandemic, the current results imply that the mentioned training helped teachers in tailoring their pedagogical practices to suit the unexpected online teaching settings.

The study adds to the relatively new literature on the perceived effect of transnational pedagogical training initiatives. This study’s findings contribute to the body of knowledge related to pedagogical development in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

This article explores the effect of entrepreneurial orientation (EO), governance and geographic location on the performance of Palestinian family-owned businesses.

This quantitative study uses data collected in the fall of 2022 from 180 Palestinian-owned family companies – 90 were located in Palestine and the other 90 were located in the USA. Using R software, multiple regression analysis was employed to examine the relationships between the constructs that formed the study's conceptual framework.

The results indicate that (1) the risk-taking, innovation and proactiveness dimensions of EO have a significant positive impact on the performance of Palestinian family-owned businesses; (2) Governance moderates the EO dimensions of risk-taking and proactiveness on the performance of Palestinian family-owned companies and (3) geographic location does not moderate the relationship between the EO and performance of Palestinian-owned family businesses.

The current intensified conflict in Palestine warrants exploring the role Palestinian family-owned businesses worldwide can play in rebuilding the local economies of Gaza and the West Bank. The following years will be crucial in determining how proactive risk-taking and innovation will support regional recovery and augment the entrepreneurial and reinvestment capacity of diasporic and home country-based Palestinian family-owned firms. Thus, our study into factors that might enhance these businesses' performance and growth potential is pertinent. A further contribution of this study is new insight into the particularities of Palestinian family-owned businesses, augmenting general theories associated with ethnic and diasporic entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this study is to examine mediating role of public sector governance in the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth in the Palestinian context during the years 2005–2020.

The necessary data were collected from the World Bank website and the annual financial reports of the Palestinian Monetary Authority. To achieve the study’s objectives, the researcher used content analysis method and regression model.

There is an effect of some dimensions of entrepreneurship (starting a business, obtaining credit, women starting a business) and public sector governance with dimensions (voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, effectiveness of government performance, organizational quality, the rule of law and control of corruption) on economic growth. In addition, there is no mediating effect of public sector governance in the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth.

The study helps in enhancing the elements of entrepreneurship by evaluating public governance in Palestine. It also offers future researchers a comprehensive vision that encourages Palestinian economic growth.

The paper contributes to showing the reality of public governance indicators for the Palestinian context and the amount of support for entrepreneurial activities indicators that affect economic growth.

Trying to activate cooperation mechanisms between government institutions and entrepreneurial institutions to adopt creative projects and ideas, especially for women, needs to focus on activating the principles of public sector governance in addition to facilitating administrative and financial procedures to start commercial projects in a way that enhances economic growth with the need to achieve the highest level of public sector governance indicators.

Nowadays, transportation authorities in various countries are in tension as to whether to invest in railroads or roads. There are arguments for each side, and in the end, each transportation authority reaches a kind of balance between the investments. This study aims to anticipate how autonomous vehicles will influence this decision.

The roads' capacity in the era of autonomous vehicles is assessed and research has concluded that the anticipated increase in road capacity will encourage transportation authorities to invest much more in roads than in railroads.

The appearance of the autonomous vehicles will significantly change the balance in favor of the roads, because the roads' capacity will be increased substantially so the roads will be able to accommodate many more vehicles.

Currently, autonomous vehicles are still very rare.

The impact of autonomous vehicles on the decision whether to build more roads is explained.

The study explained why the transportation authorities in the various countries will be more inclined to switch to road construction and why the transition to more roads and fewer railroads will likely be done gradually as more autonomous vehicles enter service.

During a pandemic, risk and uncertainty are the most important factors affecting consumer behavior. Near Eastern marketplaces are undergoing dramatic change during the COVID-19 global pandemic. As a result, this paper aims to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on food shopping habits in four countries of the Near East sub-region, namely, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Oman and Qatar.

The research is based on an online survey conducted on 1,456 subjects using a snowball sampling technique. The questionnaire consisted of 24 different questions (multiple-choice, one option) regarding the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on food habits such as food shopping, preparation, eating and food waste.

The findings show that consumers’ shopping habits and food sourcing in the region changed due to the risk and uncertainty connected with the COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly, respondents decreased their shopping frequency and, as a result, increased the amount of food purchased each trip. Secondly, because of food safety concerns, respondents boosted their purchases of local products. Thirdly, the data revealed an increase in online food shopping, mainly in high-income countries, namely, Qatar and Oman. Fourthly, the findings revealed significant disparities in food stockpiling behavior across the countries investigated.

The major limitation of this study is the survey bias. The survey respondents were randomly hired. The questionnaire was completed by volunteers who were not rewarded. Only those motivated by a personal interest in the topic took part in the study. The sample had a high number of educated individuals, which does not represent the overall populations of the studied countries. In this case, generalizing the findings is inaccurate. A segment of the population with lower accessibility, such as individuals who are not web-literate, as well as the elderly, poor households and informal workers, especially in the Near East and North African (NENA) region, is often underrepresented in online surveys.

The findings provide insight into how consumers’ food shopping habits have changed due to the pandemic. This and other research will help governments and other organizations better prepare for future disasters and pandemics. The study’s results will also be useful in formulating evidence-based policies for the four countries studied and the NENA area as a whole throughout the post-pandemic recovery phase. The findings, for example, emphasized the necessity of encouraging online shopping by upgrading information and communication technology infrastructure and internet speed, particularly in middle-income and developing countries like Lebanon. Furthermore, in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, the findings provide insights to international organizations (both humanitarian and development ones) to pay more attention to issues of food and nutrition security to avoid the financial and political crises combined with the COVID-19 health crisis, become a humanitarian crisis for locals as well as the hundreds of thousands of refugees (primarily Syrians in Lebanon). Finally, the pandemic’s long-term impact on food activities and food security must be mitigated by including agricultural and food systems in recovery efforts. Several issues are posing a threat to food systems. Addressing them successfully involves developing cross-disciplinary research that innovates at their intersections to provide different solutions that address the social, economic, technological and policy components of these issues.

The paper’s findings indicate that the pandemic’s consequences will most certainly differ from country to country, based not just on the epidemiologic condition but also, inter alia, on the level of pre-COVID socioeconomic development.

This paper aims to critique the rationalist theoretical framework of international mediation, which ignores emotions in analyzing the decision by conflict parties to pursue a negotiated settlement or continue fighting, and to present an alternative framework that integrates emotions.

The paper draws on psychology research on emotions and conflict to develop an emotionally informed framework for analyzing conflict parties’ decision-making regarding a settlement. It demonstrates the framework’s validity and value through a case study of the 2000 Camp David mediation to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

A rationalist approach to mediation does not have adequate explanatory and predictive power theoretically. In practice, it can reduce the prospect of success.

The paper highlights the necessity for mediation researchers to study the effects of emotion, draw on psychology studies on conflict and explore the emotional implications of different mediation strategies and tactics.

The framework highlights the challenge of designing and conducting mediation in a way that cultivates emotions favorable to a settlement and lessens emotions unfavorable to a settlement.

This is the first study, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to critique the rationalist framework of international mediation studies and develop an alternative framework that integrates emotions.

This paper aims to examine the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, reflecting upon the nuclear challenge between Iran and Israel and Iran's expanding activities in the region.

To prove the central argument, the study uses a conceptual framework that centers on deterrence as the main approach used by states to consolidate their influence in the Middle East region.

Iran's nuclear progress and influence in the region has strengthened Israel’s security and fostered an unprecedented open rapprochement led by USA efforts with the Gulf regimes.

The paper draws particular attention to the Iran–Israel nuclear competency, and the Israeli preferred policy options regarding Iranian activities in the region amid turbulent Middle East. In addition, the paper offers insight to the regional dynamics that further consolidated Israel’s national security in the region while maintaining a status of Arab vulnerability and backwardness.

With the aim to provide a global view of factors affecting mark-up size on construction projects, this study performs a meta-analytical review of the relevant studies over the past 20 years.

The analytical process involved the identification and evaluation of the importance of critical factors affecting mark-up size on construction projects, and the assessment of the generalisability of findings of the meta-analysis. A random-effects model was adopted in the statistical meta-analysis.

The results show that there are 23 critical factors, and the top five factors are: (1) competitiveness of other bidders; (2) number of bidders; (3) relationship and past experience with client; (4) experience on similar project; and (5) project size. A heterogeneity test further shows that there is no statistically significant heterogeneity across the studies, reinforcing the generalisability of the findings to a global context.

The list of critical factors from a global perspective should form a good basis for future efforts in bidding model development.

The research findings have practical implications to both construction clients and contractors in formulating their contracting practices and strategies.

This is the first meta-analysis of a sizeable collection of replicated studies on factors affecting mark-up size on construction projects in the literature.