Collective development projects in Palestine: Propagation of the neoliberal vulgate and normalisation of domination (original) (raw)
Related papers
This article explores perceived shifts in roles for NGOs and religious actors after the creation of the Palestinian National Authority with the 1993 Oslo Accords, using original data from a survey of more than 1,000 community members in the West Bank and Gaza. The survey data show a centralisation of requests for assistance from the Palestinian National Authority, with a decrease in requests from local government, NGOs, and religious actors after the creation of the Palestinian National Authority. The support the empirical findings lend to theories of government and voluntary failure is discussed. Cet article traite de l’évolution perçue des rôles pour les ONG et les acteurs religieux après la création de l'Autorité nationale palestinienne avec les Accord d'Oslo de 1993, en utilisant des données originales tirées d'une enquête menée auprès de plus de 1 000 membres de communautés de Cisjordanie et de Gaza. Les données de cette enquête montrent une centralisation des demandes d'aide émanant de l'Autorité nationale palestinienne, et une diminution des demandes émanant des entités gouvernementales locales, des ONG et des acteurs religieux après la création de l'Autorité nationale palestinienne. Le fait que ces résultats empiriques soutiennent les théories concernant l’échec des gouvernements et des entités volontaires fait l'objet d'une discussion. Con base en información original aportada por una encuesta aplicada a más de mil habitantes de Cisjordania y de Gaza, el presente artículo examina los cambios que estos perciben en el rol desempeñado por las ong y los actores religiosos tras la creación de la anp a partir de los Acuerdos de Oslo de 1993. En este sentido, la información obtenida revela que, una vez formada la anp, las solicitudes de asistencia se centralizaron en esta, produciéndose, al mismo tiempo, el decremento de solicitudes provenientes del gobierno local, de las ong y de los actores religiosos. Al respecto, el artículo examina hasta qué punto los hallazgos empíricos apoyan las teorías de gobierno y del fracaso voluntario.
Foreword by Center of Development Studies This book comprises a number of papers that are part of a four-year research program on “Alternatives to Neo-liberal Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” that was carried out by Birzeit University’s Center for Development Studies (CDS) with the support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Regional Office Palestine (RLS). The idea of this research project originated in 2010, when the CDS hosted an international conference on aid interventions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). One crucial theme that the conference could not tackle, was how to envisage ways forward, define new strategies for dealing with aid interventions in Palestine and map alternatives to donor driven aid paradigms and neoliberal approaches to development. The difficulty of articulating alternatives without first defining particular visions and new concrete ways of understandings “development, became apparent. As a result, this research project was articulated to think about what is required to begin the process of imagining a ‘beyond’ and envisaging new types of interventions, collaborations, relationships between local and international actors, and new visions of developments, that move away from the debilitating effects of the aid regime in Palestine, and the disenfranchisement caused by neoliberal economic policies. Given this perspective, the objective of the research project and these studies is to initiate a critical public dialogue about the rationale behind policy formulation. The research project and papers attempt to achieve this aim by creating debate and generating consensus around pressing areas with an eye towards advancing possibilities for change. In addition, the papers in this volume explore the ways that developmental alternatives may be achieved in practice, through the participation of different actors from the international to the national and local levels. This book, hence, adds to our knowledge in development through examining the devastating impact of neo-liberal development policies under colonialism by exploring how these policies operate to emphasize individualism and separate the economic from the political under colonial conditions. It provides an alternative way to think about development and tackle policy interventions. It also examines how Palestinians have previously contested colonialism and what lessons can be learned from these past experiences on the path to rebuild an economic and developmental framework that reconnects the struggle for autonomous development to national liberation. On behalf of CDS, I would like to thank the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Regional Office Palestine for its support, which made this publication possible. Dr. Samia Al-Botmeh Center of Development Studies August 2015
The emergence of a Palestinian globalized elite: donors, international organizations and local NGO's
… -Palestinian Institute for the Study of …
The process of Intifada is an attempt to overturn the existing order and to create a new order, but because this process cannot be completely controlled it therefore reflects both crisis and potential as complex forces and inherent contradictions come into play (De Certeau, 1998: 4). 2 There are more than 230 foreign donors actively assisting Palestinian NGOs today; the majority do so through established local contacts in Palestine. Most donors represent Western governments and Northern and international organizations. However, there are a few Arab and Islamic donor organizations that are very active. 14 agenda. This raises further questions: how does one conceptualize and explain the relationship between NGOs, INGOs and donors, what are the overriding structural relations between them, and how have they been shaped by historically contingent factors? This study looks at the paradoxes illuminated during the uprising as well as during the transition period that began with the Oslo Accords. Based on empirical research and interviews conducted prior to and after the outbreak of the second Intifada, the study analyzes the relationship between Palestinian NGOs (PNGOs), INGOs and donors, as determined by the processes within Palestinian society, as well as by mechanisms and structural relations within the aid community. This introduction presents our understanding of the multifaceted dynamics that frame NGO, donor, and international NGO relations within the context of recent Palestinian history. The first section analyzes the uprising in order to unravel and define the problematic of NGOs in Palestine. The introduction then goes on to describe the conceptual framework of the book, and content of the chapters. Realizing Independence: All Efforts for Supporting the Popular Intifada for the Independence," was circulated for signature among NGOs and political parties. The petition, however, requested the endorsement of individual leaders rather than organizations. This reinforces the argument that these leaders do not view the NGOs as institutions which should have a leadership role in national issues. An additional example elucidates further contradictions. On June 19, 2002, a petition was published in al-Quds, a daily Palestinian newspaper, signed by academics, public figures and many prominent NGO leaders. The signatories launched a critique of suicide bombings and called for a reconsideration of operations that target civilians: "We think that these bombings do not contribute towards achieving our national project which calls for freedom and independence. On the contrary, they strengthen the enemies of peace on the Israeli side and give Israel's aggressive government under Sharon the excuse to continue harsh war against our people." Released in the direct aftermath of the Israeli invasion in April, during which Israeli forces reoccupied the West Bank, the petition was intended to spark an internal debate on Palestinian resistance regarding whether there were inconsistencies between the means and aims of the Intifada. However, the debate quickly subsided. The credibility of the petition was questioned and the initiative was critiqued on a number of counts, but in general it was read as an affront to those who have sacrificed for the resistance. In this regard, the petition met with reproaches and disapprobation (Allen, 2002). One of the reasons for this, as Azmi Bishara, an Arab nationalist member of the Israeli parliament, has argued, is that in a moment of intense national crisis, as the one in which Palestinians now find themselves, it is not enough to merely critique resistance practices but it is incumbent upon activists, intellectuals and political forces to also promote alternatives (2002). By criticizing armed resistance without a sustained critique or strategic analysis of the occupation upon which to firmly advance a viable practical and theoretical alternative mode of resistance, the NGO activists and intellectuals who signed the petition left themselves open to counteraction and delegitimation. In contrast to the first Intifada, when activists, intellectuals and community leaders were embedded within the popular struggle and bound up in a mass-based national movement, the incident of the petition reveals much about the location of Palestinian NGOs today within the social and political fields. The petition reveals these actors as spectators in the Intifada, unable to make the necessary linkages and articulate between their own aspirations for Palestinian freedom and independence, the objectives of their organizations that promote democracy and social justice, and the overarching national agenda and strategies of the Intifada. As such, it also reveals the NGOs as isolated and lacking an organic base in society. This isolation is not necessarily due only to the responsibility of the NGOs but also to a context characterized by the early militarization of the Intifada and the Israeli reaction to it that marginalized most people and institutions and robbed non-military action of its subversive potential. These observations are inseparable from a number of trends and the overall transformation of Palestinian non-governmental organizations beginning in the early 1990's, concomitant with their entry into the 'aid industry.' The Oslo process, which allowed for the creation of the Palestinian National Authority and the commencement of 'state-building' supported by the intervention of donor countries and their peace-building initiatives, also consolidated a space for the growth of Palestinian NGOs and civic institutions. Paradoxically, however, the consolidation of this space was accompanied by a dis-embedding of local organizations from within the society and their base in popular movements. Moreover, this ongoing consolidation process is marred by fractures and disjunctures, as the 'national' agenda has been re-conceptualized and conflated with 'politics' and hence redefined by both local and international NGOs actors as too politicized for 'civic' organizations. These are examples of the problematic of NGOs in Palestine; the complex issues touched upon here will be further explored and explained in the conceptual framework outlined below and the ensuing chapters. Defining 'Development' in the Midst of an Anti-Colonial Struggle The second major challenge facing Palestinian society today concerns the task of defining development in the midst of a national uprising. The immediate post-Oslo 'Interim period' before final status negotiations was not acknowledged by many donors and international organizations as the beginning of a process of decolonization. The situation in the Palestinian Territories was already classified by the donors and international NGOs (INGOs) as a post-conflict area rather than a conflict zone. This characterization has a tremendous impact on donor aid, at both the conceptual and procedural levels. At the first level, the vision of post-conflict assistance becomes linear, when in fact conflict is invariably cyclical. On the procedural level, donor agencies and international organizations take on the role of a 'neutral' mediator, a role which ignores the root causes of the conflict and its colonial nature. Aid invariably follows the modality of colonial control; thus within Palestine, as a new site of 'peace-building,' the international order is superimposed over the colonial order. As Brynen explains, new peace-building efforts have been devised which not only entail regularly established patterns of diplomacy and military peacekeeping, "but also a variety of social and economic objectives and instrumentalities, underpinned by substantial commitments of financial support" (Brynen, 2000: 6-7). The problem that results in practice is that the peace-building assistance, which buttresses a wide range of interventions, including supporting the start-up costs of establishing the Palestinian National Authority, infrastructure projects and a range of social and economic initiatives, is based on the assumption that the conflict is ending, when as we have witnessed in Palestine, the conflict has renewed. On the NGO level this perception shapes the nature of NGO programs and projects. These developmental projects lack any emergency plan in the event of the accentuation of the national conflict. As a result the majority of the NGOs were shown incapable of articulating the civic with the political or to separate the 'political' from the 'national.' It is quite clear that the Intifada shattered the veneer of the Oslo process and the euphoria of donor projects that portrayed Palestinian political as well as social and economic development as linear processes, while masking the transformations on the ground and the Israeli practices that have obstructed Palestinian development options and political independence. In contrast to these linear projections, during the Interim period, Israeli settlements increased by sixty-five percent (Mansour, 2001) and Israel's mechanisms of control expanded. With the outbreak of the Intifada, Palestinian governmental, nongovernmental and international development agencies have been grappling with the task of responding to the growing humanitarian crisis, the potential for economic collapse and the physical destruction caused by Israeli military operations and the siege imposed by the occupation power. According to a recent World Bank report, the GDP per capita shrank by 50% and as a result 60% of the population now lives below the poverty line. The overall losses that the Palestinian economy has endured is estimated at $5.4 million per day (World Bank Report, 3 March 2003). Confronted with a significant influx of emergency assistance, 5 Palestinian NGOs have also faced an additional challenge, the need to maintain a modicum of space from which to define Palestinian development needs and develop strategies for the medium term, while retaining a focus on the dialectic...
The Structural Transformation of Palestinian Civil Society: Key Paradigm Shifts
Middle East Critique, 2015
This article examines the systemic process of structural transformation that engulfed multiple levels, structures and functions of Palestinian civil society in the early 1990s, whereby a large segment of the pre-Oslo mass-based movements were transformed into discrete groups of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs). More specifically, the article explores three interrelated factors that influenced the general trajectory of civil society's structural transformation and shows how these factors are fundamental to understanding the transformation of Palestinian civil society and what went wrong in the process. These factors are: (1) ideological neoliberal globalization; (2) political, especially the Oslo process; and (3) financial, especially the conditionality of international donors. Moreover, the article comparatively identifies four opposing dimensions: the organizational agenda, relations with the grassroots, the status of politics and the production of knowledge. Collectively, they lie at the core of the structural transformation and reveal contradictory functions and roles between past and present civil society versions.
Political Economy of Foreign Aid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: A Conceptual Framing
Political Economy of Palestine: Critical, Interdisciplinary, and Decolonial Perspectives, 2021
Over $40 billion has been spent by international donors as foreign aid for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip since the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993. This makes them one of the highest per capita recipients of non-military aid in the world. That aid was designed as development programming meant to foster conditions that Western donors considered necessary for peacebuilding with Israel. However, their development aid has failed to achieve three main objectives peacemakers envisaged: a lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis, effective and accountable Palestinian institutions, and sustainable socioeconomic development. This chapter addresses the political economy of the nexus of development aid and the Palestinian de-development process taking place under Israeli colonial rule, by examining the different donor approaches to understand what went wrong. It does this by categorizing and assessing the way policymakers and analysts have approached Palestinian development, based on analysis of key features, underpinning assumptions and arguments. This resulted in four categories – Instrumentalism; Critical Instrumentalism; Critics; and Neo-Colonialism – some of which are comfortable with the status quo, and some that want to challenge it. The chapter concludes by arguing any political economy driven analysis or framing of the impact of foreign aid in the Palestinian context, necessitates recognizing the inherent and embedded structures of power and relations of colonial dominance and control in the development paradigm and de-development processes.
Crony capitalism in the Palestinian Authority: a deal among friends
Third World Quarterly, 2019
This article interrogates the multifaceted political-economic networks entrenched within the multiple structures of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA). The main argument of this article is that crony capitalism is a defining feature of the PA's relations with a handful of capitalists and business groups. The demonstration of this argument is exhibited through the large-scale public and private monopolistic practices in strategic sectors of the Palestinian economy, which function within the framework of Israel's settler-colonial reality and the persistent patterns of international aid to the occupied West Bank. While acknowledging the existence of cronyism as a feature of the capitalist system in its diverse typologies, crony capitalism may be more pronounced in situations characterised by political uncertainty, whereby political-business collusion strategizes the expansion of neo-patrimonial networks and rent-seeking opportunities as a meta-mechanism for social control and political stabilisation. In the Occupied Palestinian Territories, crony capitalism was developed as part of the political allegiances and economic alliances that underpin the structures created by the Oslo process, which are fostered by Israeli policies and the international donor community to maintain the cohesiveness of the PA regime. Critical approaches used to study the political economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) tend to focus on the impacts of Israel's economic domination and policies that serve to consolidate its colonial structure. These approaches investigate Israel's systematic policies and practices to transform the economy of the OPT into a captive market and a reserve of cheap labour, with the land, natural resources, borders, trade, industrial development and general macroeconomic framework of the OPT strictly controlled by Israel. 1 Following the 1993 Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994, the impacts of international aid on the politics, society and economy of the OPT have emerged as an additional research focus. Critiques suggest that donors' substantial influence on the PA institution-building, neoliberal economic policy and securitisation of the public sphere has not only led to the demise of a Palestinian state but has also contributed to the formation of 'zombie peace'. 2 The complex interaction between these processes has subjected the local political economy to 'a unique form of neoliberal colonization' , defined by Andy Clarno as a ARTICLE HISTORY
Political Ecology and the Social Solidarity Economies within the Power Matrix in Rural Palestine
2022
The research explores the links between the access to resources and social solidarity economies in Palestine. It is linked to the project Land and Rights, implemented by COSPE Onlus. It aims to further understand the complexities in relation to these links through developing a theoretical approach towards this intersection and its’ manifestation in the Palestinian context. The research utilizes the general framework of political ecology as a way to frame the research in addition Ribot and Peluso’s theory of access, analyzing access to resources in relation to the capacity to benefit from resources. The research adopts the stakeholder analysis methodology, a type of action research, and is based on empirical material and qualitative data collected with various institutional stakeholders, in addition to community members in 4 rural regions in the West Bank; Salfit, rural areas west of Jerusalem, West Bethlehem, and the South Hebron Hills. These include interviews and focus group discussions with farmers, community members, community organizations, and cooperative members. In addition, the fieldwork consisted of interviews with international development organizations, government agencies, and local development organizations; aiming to analyze the different perspectives of actors linked to the development process. The research indicates the complexity of development particularly in the settler colonial frontier areas which the research focuses on, and the failure of international law and humanitarian protective action to protect people in these areas, aspects which are manifested in resource access. Communities face increasing challenges in accessing vital resources such as land and water and their spaces are continuously shrinking. At the same time, there are many everyday individual and collective practices which Palestinians engage in that demonstrate their agency in resisting the situation they are confronted with. Social solidarity and cooperatives, while failing to create a structural change, can at times provide better access particularly through allowing more benefit through collective power and actors’ interdependency. They are still placed within a complex web of power also in relation to the contradictory effects of development interventions. For examples, cooperative members gain better access to markets and relationships and are able to improve their situation, albeit in a limited manner. At the same time, the cooperative sector faces many challenges such as dependency on foreign aid, and lack of belief in cooperative culture. However, the cooperative sector, as the research indicates, cannot be seen as separate from the larger terrain of Palestinian organizing and processes of NGO-ization that have increased their presence in relation to Palestinian social movements. The study, thus presents a complex analysis of reality and opens the door for a deeper understanding of ongoing processes of development necessary for development practitioners, policy makers, and academics. The study presents different recommendations for various stakeholders. This includes recognizing that there is a need for international organizations to work more seriously towards challenging the structural factors that shape development most notably the Israeli occupation and settler colonialism. Moreover, the research stresses the need for in-depth research to precede development intervention, improved networking between actors of the development process, supporting grassroots development, while at the same time, recognizing that there is still benefit for development interventions, even if it is at the micro scale, particularly for those living in frontier areas most confronted with violence.