The Intifada and the Aid Industry: The Impact of the New Liberal Agenda on the Palestinian NGOs

Abstract

The outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 marks a return for the Palestinians to a period of direct anti-colonial struggle against the Israeli occupation. As the intifada attempts to figure conditions of possibility for Palestinian independence, it poses practical and theoretical challenges to researchers and practitioners alike. The intifada directly addresses Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as well as their international non-governmental organization (INGO) and donor counterparts. The uprising beckons these organizations to intervene and respond to the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and Gaza; to act as a witness in the face of Israel’s massive military offensive against the Palestinian population; and to support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. In making this invocation, the Palestinian uprising provides the occasion, which unequivocally exposes the previously latent, manifold contradictions, and reveals the tensions in their relationship with the donors. The intifada exposes a disconnection between NGOs and popular movements in Palestine. It reveals Palestinian NGO activists as not able to articulate between their own aspirations for Palestinian freedom and independence and the overarching national agenda. This in turn raises complicated questions: how does one conceptualize and explain the relationship between NGOs, INGOs and donors, and what are the most important structural relations and historically contingent factors that have shaped and constituted this relationship? This article will attempt to shed some light about the paradoxes illuminated by the uprising. Based on empirical research and interviews conducted before the outbreak of the second intifada and during it, we analyze in the first section the role of the NGOs during this intifada and the impact of the aid industry in shaping this role. More broadly the role of NGOs cannot be understood without unraveling the nature of the relationship between Palestinian NGOs (PNGOs), INGOs and donors, as set within and shaped by processes internal to Palestinian society, as well as mechanisms and structural relations within the aid industry. This will be developed in the second section. I. The Intifada and the Problematic Modes of Action of the Palestinian NGOs The outbreak of the second intifada is nothing short of a collective act of resistance against Israel’s occupation and its colonial system of control. During seven years of the Oslo, Israel’s exercise of control over the Palestinians not only deepened, but metamorphosed into an apartheid regime of checkpoints, permit system, bypass roads, and settlements, encircling and besieging Palestinian cantons of ‘territoriality.’ 1 By 2003, however, as the Palestinian uprising enters its third year, a palpable sense of crisis is evident. Not only has Israel’s siege on Palestinian towns, its military invasions and its reoccupation of the West Bank, exacted a heavy humanitarian, social and economic toll, but disquiet looms over the achievements of the uprising. Behind closed doors questions are being raised about the capacity of the intifada to realize Palestinian political aspirations, given the variance in tactics and strategies espoused by different factions and the difficulties of harmonizing societal energies and harnessing them into a single end. This is not to mention the colonial stratagems of the Sharon government’s and its use of armed provocations, particularly its assassinations of Palestinian leaders, not only as a way to escalate the conflict, but also to create havoc within Palestinian internal politics, in an attempt to thwart Palestinian national unity. There are three separate challenges facing Palestinian society today. A consideration of each will delineate the disjunctures and antagonisms within the NGO sphere that are have a bearing on the current crisis, as well as illustrate the overarching issues framing NGO, INGO and donor relations in Palestine.