Palestinian Non-governmental Organizations Research Articles

How to Crush Palestinian NGOs: Just Use the “T” Word

Israel has long sought to erase Palestinians, Palestinian resistance, and Palestinian organizations. In Israel’s latest rendition of erasure, Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have become the new target. By labeling NGO staff, and now NGOs, as “terror-affiliated,” Israel is attempting to silence these organizations by making it impossible for them to be funded. Looking at the case of Mohammed El Halabi from World Vision, one can see that it does not take much for donors to run scared: just using the “t” word is sufficient, with no need for evidence.

Reviving al-Nabi Musa: Performance, Politics, and Indigenous Sufi Culture in Palestine

This article explores the revival of Palestinian indigenous performance practices that were part of the Sufi Nabi Musa festival. Focusing on the 2018 and 2019 government-sponsored performances, it examines how the different sociopolitical changes that took place in Palestinian society, following the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their land in 1948, have led to the marginalization, politicization, and eventual revival of indigenous performance practices, which are an important part of Palestinian theatre history. Exploring Sufi rituals as indigenous performance practices shows that theatre forms not based on appropriations of European-style theatre existed in Palestine in the twentieth century. It also raises important questions as to why many of them have been neglected by Palestinian non-governmental theatre organizations (NGOs). Dia Barghouti is the Arab Council for the Social Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the Abdelmalek Essaadi University in Morocco. Her research focuses on indigenous performance traditions in the Levant and North Africa. Her work on theatre and Sufism has appeared in New Theatre Quarterly and Jadaliyya.

Social innovation in extreme institutional contexts: the case of Palestine

PurposeThis paper focuses on social innovation dynamics in extreme contexts where institutional volatility is deeply rooted and enduring. In other words, the authors focus their discussion on the challenges that social innovators are facing in their endeavor of solving wicked social problems within an extreme institutional environment. This research is guided by the following question: How does an extreme institutional environment influence social innovation processes?Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative research builds on the unique case of the Palestinian non-governmental organization (NGO) sector, a rarely studied context in organizational studies. The authors combine archival sources with 24 semi-structured interviews with Palestinian NGOs.FindingsThe authors theorize three barriers that hinder social innovation in such contexts: institutional trap, effectiveness trap and sustainability trap. The authors also theorize five mechanisms through which these barriers influence each other dynamically: mingling, surviving, undermining, binding and reinforcing. Taken together, these barriers and mechanisms shed light on social innovation processes taking place within extreme institutional environments.Research limitations/implicationsThe main limitation of this study is the methodological design, based on an extreme single case-study which, on a bunch of features, is quite unique in the world. The authors argue that the results are all the same transferable to other relatively similar contexts.Practical implicationsBy theorizing the institutional barriers to social innovation in an extreme institutional context, the research thus sheds light on how social innovation could be sustained and stimulated in Palestine and other contexts that face similar institutional challenges.Social implicationsFrom an engaged scholarship perspective, studying Palestine cannot be more relevant than today considering the turmoil in which Palestinians are. The research thus provides a deeper understanding of organizational and institutional dynamics with crucial social repercussions.Originality/valueThe social innovation literature has overemphasized success stories to the detriment of the struggles that hinder social innovations in extreme institutional environments. By focusing on the barriers that social innovators experience in these contexts, the authors provide novel empirical insight. Furthermore, this study enriches the understanding of the institutional dynamics of social innovations by proposing a process model that elucidates how an extreme institutional context can influence social innovations.

Understanding the Rationales of Donor-Funded NGOs in Palestine

This article uses game theory as a conceptual approach to gain a holistic understanding of the aid policy of donors supporting Palestinian nongovernmental organizations (PNGOs). It asks how the work of donor-funded PNGOs has impacted Palestinian societal common good in general, and who are the winners and losers as a result of their work. Quantitative methods are used to capture the perceptions of the main actors in relation to the societal outcomes of PNGOs’ work and actors’ political and socio-economic payoffs in the occupied West Bank. Most of the findings align with much of the critical research on the negative societal outcomes of the aid policy to the NGO sector, and corroborate that the Palestinian public is a major loser in political terms and the least beneficiary in socio-economic terms.

Palestinian NGOs’ Changed Work Dynamics: Before, During, and beyond the Oslo Process

Based on data collected from interviews with 41 Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations (PNGOs) this article will show how they endured the dramatic structural changes that occurred with the advent of the Oslo process and consequently have changed the work dynamics of the PNGO sector in a fundamental manner, and thereby negatively affecting the way society at large and in this case, PNGOs work for the gratification of communities. We theorize around the PNGO’s own descriptions which in detail informs how earlier significant voluntary work in territories under Israeli occupation transformed through an NGOization process leading to professionalization and donor dependence of PNGOs.

The multifaceted outcomes of community-engaged water quality management in a Palestinian refugee camp

The Palestinian residents of Aida Refugee Camp have lived under Israeli military occupation for over 50 years. While they struggle against the more legible concerns of the separation wall, unemployment, military violence, and high rates of incarceration, these residents are also acutely aware of a lack of adequate drinking water supplies. This led one young filmmaker, working at a small Palestinian non-governmental organization (NGO) in Aida, to produce a documentary in 2011 called Everyday Nakba, which suggests that for Palestinians, water scarcity is a continuation of the historical crisis of dispossession that began in 1948. This documentary ignited an interdisciplinary and multimodal collaboration among an environmental engineer, an environmental lawyer, an anthropologist, a Boston-based NGO, and the small Palestinian NGO to investigate problems of water quality that are related to water scarcity. This article—co-authored by members of the group of interdisciplinary scholars and NGO workers—reflects on our practice together to chronicle how small NGOs and interdisciplinary groups of community-engaged scholars can creatively approach multifaceted environmental problems, while also examining the limits of such approaches. Our collaboration has catalyzed water quality testing, point-of-use water treatment, rooftop gardens, awareness about water problems, political advocacy, and environmental education, though it has not been able to address the structural problem of inadequate supply of water. It has led to research that contributed to the literature on water intermittency. This article considers how this collaboration has shifted how members of a refugee community think about justice and the environment. Water concerns often demand a multifaceted and interdisciplinary approach because water scarcity has health, economic, social, and political implications. Our research team saw how interdisciplinary collaboration and a network of activists in the West Bank and the USA can lead to multifaceted—albeit modest—outcomes, even though military occupation presents stubborn barriers to major change.

Touring for peace: the role of dual-narrative tours in creating transnational activists

PurposeScholarship on the contact hypothesis and peacebuilding suggests that contact with marginalized ethnic and racial groups may reduce prejudice and improve opportunities for conflict resolution. Through a study of dual-narrative tours to Israel/Palestine, the purpose of this paper is to address two areas of the debate surrounding this approach to social change. First, past research on the effectiveness of contact-based tourism as a method to change attitudes is inconclusive. Travel to a foreign country has been shown to both improve and worsen tourists’ perceptions of a host population. Second, few scholars have attempted to link contact-based changes in attitudes to activism.Design/methodology/approachThrough an analysis of 218 post-tour surveys, this study examines the role of dual-narrative tours in sparking attitude change that may facilitate involvement in peace and justice activism. Surveys were collected from the leading “dual-narrative” tour company in the region, MEJDI. Dual-narrative tours uniquely expose mainstream tourists in Israel/Palestine to Palestinian perspectives that are typically absent from the majority of tours to the region. This case study of dual-narrative tours therefore provides a unique opportunity to address the self-selecting bias, as identified by contact hypothesis and tourism scholars, in order to understand the potential impacts of exposure to marginalized narratives.FindingsThe findings of this study suggest that while these tours tend to engender increased support for Palestinians over Israelis, their most salient function appears to be the cultivation of empathy for “both sides” of the conflict. Similarly, dual-narrative tours often prompt visitors to understand the conflict to be more complex than they previously thought. In terms of activism, tourists tend to prioritize education-based initiatives in their plans for post-tour political engagement. In addition, a large number of participants articulated commitments to support joint Israeli–Palestinian non-governmental organizations and to try to influence US foreign policy to be more equitable.Originality/valueThese findings complicate debates within the scholarship on peacebuilding as well as within movements for social justice in Israel/Palestine. While programs that equate Israeli and Palestinian perspectives are often criticized for reinforcing the status quo, dual-narrative tours appear to facilitate nuance and universalism while also shifting tourists toward greater identification with an oppressed population. Together, these findings shed light on the ability of tourism to facilitate positive attitude change about a previously stigmatized racial/ethnic group, as well as the power of contact and exposure to marginalized narratives to inspire peace and justice activism.

Participation and marginality on the geoweb: The politics of non-mapping on OpenStreetMap Jerusalem

This paper contributes to the literature on participation and marginality on the geoweb by exploring the politics of non-mapping on OpenStreetMap (OSM). To this end, we reflect on our collaboration with Grassroots Jerusalem (GJ) – a Jerusalem-based Palestinian non-governmental organization (NGO) – and their engagement with OSM. Specifically, we draw on observations from mapping workshops with Palestinian youth, and on the analysis of GJ’s involvement in the dispute about the name ‘Jerusalem’ on OSM. We address the following research questions: How should we understand Palestinian underrepresentation on OpenStreetMap? What does this imply for the conceptualisation of participation and marginality in the geoweb literature? We suggest that the underrepresentation of Palestinian mappers stems in part from the project's technical and linguistic barriers, and in part from a deliberate 'exit' tactic linked to Palestinian anti-normalisation efforts. These findings challenge prevailing understandings of (non)participation as the product of exclusion alone, and indicate that geoweb scholars should pay greater attention to non-users, and their engagements with crowdsourced projects from an outsider position.

The Threat of BDS

The Threat of BDS

Hegemonic Solidarity? NGO Perceptions on Power, Solidarity, and Cooperation with Their Donors

The aim of this article is to understand how power, hegemony, and solidarity are related within the context of foreign aid from the perspective of recipient civil society organizations. By applying qualitative methods and the analytical framework of foreign aid understood as gift, the study explores how these factors are perceived, described, and explained by Palestinian nongovernmental organization leaders. The findings prove that even the “perpetual” recipient can exert certain nonmaterial power over the donor. In the Palestinian case, it is the weakness itself—the combination of helplessness and injustice—which can be understood as “power” even if not as “power over” the donor but at least “power to” secure foreign aid.

Palestine: Children Laboring

Palestine: Children Laboring

NGO Strategic Planning in the Occupied Palestinian Territory: A Futile Exercise

The purpose of this article is to investigate on strategic planning that the Palestinian Nongovernmental Organizations (PNGOs) sector are conducted in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in order to find answers to the question: Do PNGOs act proactively in their strategic planning? Presenting the findings of 40 PNGOs and 4 in the OPT, the study analyses finding based on primary qualitative and quantitative data collected from the field. It concludes that the strategic thinking which connects the public’s individual and collective needs is virtually non-existent among PNGOs. This is because strategic planning is largely insensitive to community needs, lacking in participation by the public and PNGOs governing bodies. Strategic plans are seldom designed to allow transparency and accountability to local stakeholders but rather used for compliance with donors’ requirements and may function as instruments for institutional development and/or fund-raising.

The managers' characteristics and their strategy development in the Palestinian NGOs

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the role of managers in the strategic management process, particularly its application in non‐governmental organizations (NGOs).Design/methodology/approachThe study examines the relationship between managers’ demographic characteristics and the impact of strategic awareness on their part upon NGO performance. It is based on a recent empirical survey of NGOs located in the Gaza Strip (GS) in Palestine. Survey questionnaire supported by selected interviews and secondary data formed the main data collection instruments.FindingsThere is no disparity of opinion of the correspondence about the identification of NGOs manager's perceptions and attitudes toward developing and implementing effective strategies at significant level due to age, years of experience, level of education and gender. Moreover, it was discovered that the awareness of the managers plays an important part in the formulation and implementation of strategy in NGOs.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this first‐time study are specific to the NGO sector in the Gaza Strip, though there are a number of policy implications for other developing countries.Practical implicationsThe research has far reaching implications for selection, training and development of managers of NGOs, because of their significant role as strategists concerned with suitable allocation of resources, human and otherwise, to guide and improve strategic performance.Originality/valueThe original contribution is concerned with the managers’ awareness of the strategic management processes in Palestinian NGOs. It has a particular value for human resource management (HRM) decision processes towards recruitment, selection and management development of the managers.

NGO 'Lawfare' Exploitation of Courts in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

NGO 'Lawfare' Exploitation of Courts in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Child development and family mental health in war and military violence: The Palestinian experience

The article reviews developmental research among Palestinians living in Gaza. The aims are, first, to analyze how exposure to traumatic events associates with children's mental health and their cognitive, emotional and social development. Second, we aimed to model familial and symbolic processes that can either harm or protect the mental health of children. Third, we wanted to learn who the resilient children are in conditions of war and military violence. The reviewed research has been conducted in the context of a Palestinian non-governmental organization, the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, during the political upheavals involving hopes for peace and intensive war and violence: the First Intifada (1987—1993), the Palestinian Authority rule (1994— ) and the Second Al Aqsa Intifada (2001— ). The results show that life threat, violence and losses form a risk for increased psychological distress. There are, however, a myriad of child, family and society related factors and psycho-socio-physiological processes that protect child development and mental health. They include, e.g. loving and wisely guiding parenting, children's flexible and high cognitive capacity, flexible and multiple coping strategies and narrative and symbolic nocturnal dreaming, as well as social support and good peer relations. Different models explain psychological distress and positive resources, including child resilience. Exposure to trauma is crucial in predicting distress, while familial and developmental issues are important in building resilience. Children's conscious and unconscious cognitive-emotional processes are crucial for underlying mental health and knowledge about them is important in tailoring evidence-based preventive interventions among war victims.

'The most basic threat. . . to Israeli and Palestinian women is. . . the occupation': Enduring Strategies and Shifting Tactics of Israeli and Palestinian Feminist Peace NGOs in the Post-9/11 World

This essay examines the ways in which the aftermath of 9/11 structured the discursive and material tactics of the Jerusalem Link, a feminist peace partnership between the Israeli nongovernmental organization (NGO) Bat Shalom and the Palestinian NGO Jerusalem Center for Women (JCW). A Bat Shalom statement for International Women's Day 2002, published in an anthology of feminist responses to 9/11, makes no explicit reference to 9/11 or its international consequences, though it may be seen as a plea to the international community not to forget the Palestine/Israel conflict in the post-9/11 agenda. The International Women's Day statement by the Jerusalem Link in 2003 explicitly links the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq with the two organizations' fears of an increase in harsh measures against the Palestinians by the Israeli government. In the time leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the Jerusalem Link established a phone network between Israeli women and Palestinian women to try to document any attempt by the Israeli military to expel Palestinians from the Occupied Territories. As 9/11 created new international realities, these organizations added new tactics to their overall strategy of linking their rhetorics and actions into the unfolding agendas of the United States and the international community.

Soft Powers Play Hardball: NGOs Wage War against Israel

The campaign of terror that began in late 2000, following the collapse of the Oslo peace process, was accompanied by a full-scale political campaign, aimed at de-legitimizing and isolating Israel internationally. This strategy was articulated at the UN-sponsored World Conference against Racism and Xenophobia that took place in September 2001, in Durban, South Africa. The Durban conference crystallized the strategy of de-legitimizing Israel as ‘an apartheid regime’, through international isolation based on the South African model. This political warfare based on ‘soft power’ 1 has been conducted through a number of frameworks, and in different venues, including the media, the UN, and other diplomatic institutions. In many of these campaigns, powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the main actors, providing the platform, the funds, and the political slogans. The funding is generally provided by governments (particularly in Europe and Canada), as well as philanthropic groups such as the Ford Foundation. Although these NGOs and their patrons generally use the rhetoric of human rights, humanitarian relief, and international law, their actions are primarily political. In contrast to the universality of these norms, in practice the language is exploited to promote particular political and ideological goals. This attack is spearheaded by global NGO ‘superpowers’—Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, the International Commission of Jurists, and Oxfam. The vast resources and large number of employees at their disposal provide access to the media, diplomats (including direct involvement in UN proceedings) and other public relations channels for pursuing their anti-Israel agendas. In addition, hundreds of smaller pro-Palestinian NGOs, often linked together in associations such as PNGO (the Palestinian NGO Network), and closely tied to the PLO political leadership, have formed partnerships with the global NGOs. This provides the smaller local NGOs (often consisting of not much more than a website and a few employees) with funds, credibility

B6. Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations' Network (PNGO), Statement on Foreign Funding to the Palestinian Authority, n.p., 15 April 2006

B6. Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations' Network (PNGO), Statement on Foreign Funding to the Palestinian Authority, n.p., 15 April 2006

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

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.

YES PM: Years of Experience in Strategies for Peace Making

From the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in September 2000 to the eruption of Al Aqsa intifada in September 2000, the international community allocated an estimated $20–25 million for people-to-people (P2P) projects. Since September 2000, almost all P2P projects came to a halt. Many people have asked why this had to happen? Why did the P2P projects cease to work when they were needed the most? Why did the P2P projects fail to produce the desired goals? How could P2P projects have greater impact? Why are some activities continuing, while others have ceased? This article will attempt to deal with these questions. It is based on a research project that involved Israeli and Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Civil Society institutions; Israeli, Palestinian, and international academics; and other expert conflict resolution and conflict prevention practitioners. A joint team of Israeli and Palestinian researchers was appointed to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the P2P process; two workshops were held to conduct subjective analyses of the P2P process from its start until today. An interactive web site was also produced, and some 40 interviews were conducted with initiators and implementers of P2P projects. We present here the findings of this study.