Mariam Barghouti gives space for my youngest daughter to tell about her first Israeli interrogation at age 12 and for me to describe my recurrent harassment at Ben Gurion airport, in her article in The Forward, “Palestinian Women Are Harassed and Humiliated at Checkpoints. Here Are a Few of Their Stories.” Read the full piece here.
My short analysis of Dalia Association’s learning from reporting is available on pp. 118-121-155 of the fabulous book, “Smart Risks: How Small Grants are Helping to Solve Some of the World’s Biggest Problems,” edited by Jennifer Lentfer and Tanya Cothran. Contact me or the editors should you wish to schedule a book event or media coverage. Get info about how to buy the book here: https://www.smartrisks.org/ and spread the word!
Excerpt from “Does Your Financial Report Make People Feel Poor?”
We didn’t realize the financial report could contradict everything we were trying to do.
When time came for the community groups, or grantees, to submit their narrative and financial reports (not only to Dalia Association, but to the entire village in an open, public meeting), we realized we had made a grave mistake. The reports showed how each shekel (approximately 25 cents) had been spent. But where was the grantees’ local contribution? The village hall that was used for training sessions, the time of the women who cooked food for participants, the office supplies they got from the municipality, and so much more—none of this was reflected on the financial report. Therefore, these local resources had no apparent value, and we knew this was inaccurate….
In fact, many funders, large and small, recognize the importance of local contributions. People who invest in their own projects have more incentive to sustain them over the long term. But there is something different and powerful in the way Dalia Association conceptualizes the local contribution. Many funders just ask for a percentage to be listed on the grant application, thus encouraging applicants to inflate their costs to make it appear that they are contributing money they don’t actually have. Instead, what I have described is a process that helps local people determine the dollar value of what they already give. The village hall, the food cooked for participants, and the office supplies all have a value of which people can be proud. It’s a process that consciously seeks to undo damage caused by decades of dependence on international aid. It’s a process that helps people re-focus on the value of what they do have rather than on the cash they lack. And it’s a process that reminds them that their giving – not external aid – is what keeps their communities going.
Read the rest of the story in Smart Risks, and please share your own experiences trying to fairly and accurately acknowledge local contributions.
My short internal dialogue between a hypothetical local community group and a hypothetical international donor is available on pp. 152-155 of the fabulous book, “Smart Risks: How Small Grants are Helping to Solve Some of the World’s Biggest Problems,” edited by Jennifer Lentfer and Tanya Cothran. Contact me or the editors should you wish to schedule a book event or media coverage. Get info about how to buy the book here: https://www.smartrisks.org/ and spread the word!
Excerpt from “The Dissonance”
I don’t like the idea that I judge them, but I suppose I do.
They say they want to support good local organizations in developing contexts,
but their ways of thinking and acting are very problematic.
I don’t like the idea that I judge them, but I suppose I do.
They say they want our support, and we dedicate our careers to helping them, but they often make it much harder than it has to be.
Sometimes I think we’re worse off with their “help” than we would be without it.
Sometimes I think we’d accomplish more if we just did the work ourselves.
In one not atypical case, we heard about an international NGO that gives small, flexible grants to organizations like ours. On their website, they had a long list of grants to organizations in our country. They even had a note – in our language – explaining that they like to make personal connections with their grantees.
So we sent them an email. They sent back eight pages of guidelines
that were already on their website.
In one not atypical case, a local NGO wrote to me: “We need money.”
What does need have to do with anything? I thought. There is far more need than we could ever respond to. They should tell me why I should fund them and not another NGO. I sent them our guidelines (which are on the website, if they had only looked). They didn’t even thank me!
We gave the guidelines to a local student to translate for us. She did a few pages but when her brother was seriously injured in the war, she started coming to us less and less. We finally managed to translate the guidelines using the internet, and we wrote our responses and translated them on the internet. Some of the questions didn’t make sense, though. We skipped the one about inputs, the one about quantitative indicators and the one about social return on investment.
We had no idea what they were talking about.
Read the rest of the story in Smart Risks, and please share your own experiences trying to work across differences between funders and grantees.
When I was still with Aid Watch Palestine, I co-authored an article with Alaa Tartir about the militarization of Palestinian aid. It was published by Reality of Aid and IBON International here and in Arabic here. It was a great honor to have the issue picked up by The Real News Network, whose wonderful Shir Hever interviewed me about the issues. It is 14:46 in English with a transcript of the interview here. Please share if you find it useful, and please comment below or on TRNN so we can get discussion about this critical issue going.
Now in Spanish! See: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=237144&titular=militarizaci%F3n-de-la-ayuda-internacional-a-palestina-
This article was originally published by Mondoweiss here.
My father was a social worker on Los Angeles’ skid row for decades. He felt deeply about the humanity of homeless people, and he did what he could to help each person to have a better life. Herb Lester, my father, saw homelessness as a humanitarian disaster; he saw it as the failure of governments to ensure the well-being of their people. And he felt a responsibility to act.
If my father was still living, he would have been appalled to hear about the demolition of Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa’s home in the Sur Baher neighborhood of Jerusalem. He would have been furious that Israel intentionally and systematically makes Palestinian families homeless.
The demolition of the Fawaqa home on May 4, 2017
I was thinking about my father on June 13 at the “Iftar on the Rubble,” which I organized with my friends at the site of Ashraf and Islam’s demolished home.
We planned the Iftar to show solidarity with Ashraf and Islam, and the tens of thousands of Palestinian families whose homes have been demolished, partially demolished, or sealed, and who live every day under the imminent threat of demolitions by the Israel authorities. I felt compelled not only by the humanitarian instincts I inherited from my father (and mother), but also by my profound disappointment in the United Nations coordinated humanitarian response, a prominent feature of the Jerusalem landscape, but not, in my point of view, an effective one.
Home demolition is not merely an Israeli administrative policy, as it is often presented in the western media. Home demolition is part of Israel’s political strategy to expel Palestinians from any place they want control, often through the establishment of Jewish settlements.
Given the magnitude of the impact of demolitions on Palestinians, I have long felt that the humanitarian sector should do more to fulfill its “protection” mandate. Protection involves reducing vulnerability, and for me, this means humanitarians should provide proactive, robust help to strengthen at-risk communities. Even after demolition, the response of humanitarian organizations is inadequate, bureaucratic, and according to some families, demeaning.
My friends and I felt that the least we could do to show these families–families who are on the frontline of the continuing Nakba–that they have real allies, that they are not alone.
On the night of the Iftar on the Rubble, local and international media were in attendance as Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa talked about the demolition of their home on May 4 and how they now live in limbo on the rubble of the demolition site.
Munir Nusseibeh of the Al Quds Community Action Center, one of Jerusalem’s most prominent lawyers, spoke about how demolitions are increasing and the danger demolition poses to the ability of Palestinians to stay in Jerusalem. Nurredin Amro, whose home was demolished on March 15, talked about his experience. His wife, Nabiha, spoke about the terrible psychological impact the demolition had on their children.
Powerful as it was to hear these families talk about their experiences, I think my father would have agreed that the real accomplishment was the Iftar itself. Muslims break the Ramadan fast at the sunset call to prayer, and that’s when the nearly 75 attendees pulled out the dishes they brought and set them out on long tables the Fawaqas had rented for the occasion. There were grape leaves stuffed by the Domari of Jerusalem, home baked cookies, whole meals contributed by the zakat society, and roasted chicken donated by Jerusalem Hotel and Café La Vie, dried figs and juice and more donated by Tanour Market and Abu Zahra Market. People from different walks of life, Palestinians and international solidarity activists, sat elbow to elbow and ate.
The sun went down and the temperature dropped, but people did not rush to leave. They stayed and talked and talked and talked. In the dim spotlight Ashraf rigged, an unusual mix of human beings enjoyed the cool Jerusalem breeze together on the rubble of the Fawaqa family home.
I felt my father’s presence with us that night in Sur Baher, Jerusalem. Like me, he would have been heartened by this real humanitarianism. It wasn’t programmed. It wasn’t funded. And it wasn’t part of anyone’s three-year plan. It was just people caring for people. And it felt hopeful.
UPDATE! We got excellent media coverage of the event. Here are some of the links:
Aljazeera Plus 2:09 English subtitles (this one already has 450,000 views!)
Aljazeera Online, 28:56 minutes, Arabic
http://www.aljazeera.net/reportslibrary/pages/69ccf346-e532-43d8-a38f-bbfc75dddb08
Falastin Al-Yoom, 2:24 minutes, Arabic
https://youtu.be/wCW3sx-WCVs
Ma’an Network, 3:07 minutes, Arabic
https://youtu.be/X8uw6Baajxg
Aljazeera, Arabic
http://www.aljazeera.net/news/alquds/2017/6/14/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%85%D9%82%D8%AF%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%B7%D8%B1-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%A3%D9%86%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%B6-%D9%85%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B2%D9%84%D9%87%D8%A7
Al-Araby, Arabic
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/society/2017/6/14/إفطار-فوق-الأنقاض-مبادرة-للتضامن-مع-عائلة-المقدسي-أشرف-فواقة
AA Turkish, English
http://aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/palestinians-break-fast-amid-rubble-of-demolished-home/841683
International Solidarity Movement, English
https://palsolidarity.org/2017/06/iftar-on-the-rubble/
This story was first published in Mondoweiss.
Every single home demolition is devastating to a family. Every single family who experiences a demolition tells a unique and surreal story about the day when Israeli bulldozers rolled over their children’s schoolbooks, their grandmother’s prescription medicines, and letters from their uncle overseas.
Home demolition is one of Israel’s preferred methods of evicting Palestinians from land they want, usually to provide housing for Jewish settlements, in violation of international law.
I want to tell just one story — the unique, surreal and totally intolerable story of Ashraf and Islam Fawaqa and their four daughters — Ritaj, 9; Rimas, 7; Saba, 4; and Aya, a newborn.
On May 4, the Fawaqas took baby Aya for a newborn checkup. While at the clinic, they got a call from a neighbor that Israeli authorities had started to demolish their home in the Sur Baher neighborhood of Jerusalem. According to Ashraf, they had paid 25,000 shekels to delay the expected demolition.
“Isn’t that a particularly upsetting case?” I asked a friend.
“All home demolitions are upsetting.”
“I know. But when Ashraf rushed home and showed the demolition crew the Israeli judge’s order to pause the demolition, do you know what they did? They noted the judge’s name, left the site, and returned one hour later with a new demolition order from the same judge. Ashraf says an emergency court session gave them legal cover for their immoral act. Isn’t that evil?”
“All home demolitions are all evil.”
“I know. But shouldn’t we get some more international media coverage of this case? Surely the world will be appalled that four children, including a newborn, are living on a demolition site under a thin awning stretched over the few sofas they salvaged.”
“There were twelve demolitions in Jerusalem that day.”
“What?”
“Nine Palestinian families’ homes were demolished in Jerusalem on that same day plus three stores.”
I had no words.
“It’s ethnic cleansing,” my friend said. “And sadly, it’s so common that it’s not considered news.”
I visited Ashraf and Islam on May 15, the day of commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba, the ongoing historic expulsion of Palestinians from their land and the attempt to destroy their property, history and identity. I sat on the sofa amidst the rubble, my feet on the hard dirt.
Their little girl, Saba, served me some apricots.
“I see they left your chickens alone,” I commented as one walked by my feet.
“And the chicken coop,” Ashraf pointed out.
I looked and indeed, the chicken coop was standing. “Why did they leave the chicken coop?” I asked.
“I guess so the chickens would have shelter,” Ashraf said ironically.
Ashraf had lived in the house for six years. He built it with his own hands on land Ashraf’s family has owned longer than the State of Israel has even existed.
“That house was built without a permit,” Ashraf motions to one of the neighbors. “They told me they paid a lot of money after the fact and now they have a permit. And that family,” he points to another building,” tried for years to get a permit and was denied. They built without a permit and paid after the fact and I heard that now it’s considered legal.”
The Fawaqa family had already spent hundreds of thousands of shekels, first to try to get a legal building permit, then to pay fines for the home they ultimately built without a permit, and then to delay the demolition until after the baby was born. Now they must pay the expense of demolition itself (90,000 shekels according to Ashraf’s estimate), and the removal of the rubble (60,000 shekels plus a fine if the rubble isn’t removed promptly), and the cost of a temporary shelter. Ironically, Ashraf earned the money he’s paid for the home by working in construction. He works for the Jerusalem Municipality.
In order to have a kitchen, bathrooms and a place to sleep, the Fawaqa family ordered a prefab caravan, not unlike those that some Gazans, whose homes were destroyed by Israeli war planes, consider death traps because of the sweltering temperatures in the summer and the cold in the winter. Ultimately, they will face the cost of rebuilding, and if they build again, the new home will also be subject to demolition.
It seems there’s a great deal of profit to be made in the denial of building permits to Palestinians in Jerusalem.
I’ve visited several demolished families in Jerusalem, since my friend Nureddin was locked in a room with his wife and kids while Israeli authorities demolished the house around them. That experience, and the families I’ve met since then, have me feeling heartbroken and angry.
For Palestinians, owning a home is everything. They spend every penny they have on their homes, forgo every other need and luxury in order to build a home to provide security for their families. But clearly, while the international community makes every effort to uphold Israel’s right to security, little Aya’s right to security is violated with no effective action by those governments obligated to ensure respect for the human rights of Palestinians under occupation. Fortunately, Human Rights Watch did cover this case.
The legitimacy of a state comes from the protections and services it provides to the people in its jurisdiction. What kind of state has an explicit policy to destroy people’s homes? What kind of state has an elaborate infrastructure to make people homeless, impoverished and hopeless? Because that’s what Israel has done—made the destruction of Palestinian lives a national priority.
Almost two years ago, I wrote an article about Marwan Abu Jammous (Abu Fathi) and his family in the Khuzaa area of the Gaza Strip. At that time, they had been living in a temporary caravan provided by a donor for almost one year, and no permanent housing was on the horizon. Despite the billions of dollars donated after the 2014 Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, tens of thousands of people (or hundreds of thousands, depending on how you calculate) still lack adequate housing. It has been 1003 days since the 2014 ceasefire after which there was supposed to be massive reconstruction.
I visited the Abu Jammous family last year and they were in a new caravan, a wooden one, which was touted as an upgrade from the aluminum type.
But it floods in the winter and is unbearably hot in the summer. There is still no prospect of permanent housing. Some other families have gotten assigned to donors and are re-constructing around them, but when I asked, no one could tell me the criteria or process by which some families were chosen before others. It might not matter so much if everyone quickly got what they needed, but they don’t. Reconstruction now seems virtually at a standstill.
Abu Fathi calls me every couple of weeks. I call him back because he has no credit on his phone. His children talk to me one by one, each of them calling me “auntie,” breaking my heart by begging me to visit. Of course I can’t visit without a permit from Israel. The Gaza Strip is under an illegal blockade and very few people can get the special permission needed to enter or exit.
Rumors are there will be another attack soon. Escalations often happen during Ramadan. Ramadan starts tomorrow. What do I say to Abu Fathi when he calls?
Meanwhile, a relative of the family sent me a short video of their dinner time this week. With no electricity and no cooking gas, Abu Fathi sat in the dark and cooked over coals with his five kids. There is nothing romantic about not being able to give your family a safe, warm, dry place to live and enough nutritious food, not to mention the pervasive fear of more bombing, with no place to escape.
Please, contact your representatives and the media. Tell them you want them to put pressure on Israel to end the blockade on Gaza. It’s just wrong. It’s just so very wrong.
When philanthropy heroines Jennifer Lentfer and Tanya Cothran invited me to submit chapters for their ground-breaking book about grassroots grantmaking, I was honored. I wrote a reflection about how the procedures of financial reporting can be transformational for communities and for grantmakers. I wrote a second short investigation into the challenges of communication between international NGOs and local NGOs. (I have a lot of experience with that problem.)
The just-published book is called Smart Risks: How Small Grants are Helping to Solve Some of the World’s Biggest Problems. Jennifer has already written about why she now feels that title doesn’t reflect the reality that people of color are less able to fail (and therefore to take risks) than white people.
I don’t love the title either, but for a different reason. It fails to highlight that the real cost of failed development grants is not born by grantmakers but by receiving communities.
These, and other important debates are IN the book. To read my chapters and others’, please buy it. You can read more about the book on the fantastic website: https://www.smartrisks.org/.
This story is about my sister-in-law, Juwahir. No, it’s about her car. No, let’s be honest. It’s about me.
It was a struggle to write it.
This Week in Palestine asked for a “positive” story about Palestine for their January issue themed, “The Common Good.” I could not for the life of me think of a single positive thing about Palestine. I went to sleep sure I’d miss the deadline, but I woke up with this fully formed story. It is one of my favorite stories of all time.
You can find the original here on pages 56-60.
**********
Through the Window of Juwahir’s Old, Gray Chevy
My sister-in-law died at the age of 40 leaving four beautiful children. Breast cancer moved to her lungs, then to her brain, and stole one of the kindest and most humble human beings I’ve ever known. Five years on, there is still a hole in the village in the shape of her life-force.
Her husband gave me Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy and told me to donate payment for it to people in need. I sent it to Syrian refugees in Jordan. I still try to do good in her memory every day. When it’s very hot, my daughters and I pick up old ladies who are burdened by kilos of vegetables balanced in baskets on their heads, or old ladies dragging bushels of wild thyme they harvested in the mountains. We drive them home and they bless us and we feel we’ve honored Juwahir.
But driving Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy through Palestine isn’t always easy. Through her window, I have seen a lot of stupidity.
Just last week I pulled into a parking space marked with the logo of the beauty salon where I had an appointment for an expensive procedure. The doorman came out to tell me to move — it was the private parking space of the owner of the salon. I looked up and down the block and there was no other place to park. I remembered my uncle in the US who had owned a jewelry store where excellent customer service wasn’t a matter of greed, it was a demonstration of integrity. “Are you really sending away a paying customer so you can keep a spot empty for the owner?” I asked incredulous. The man smiled as if to say it wasn’t his fault, but I was tired and stressed and I left in a huff. Yes, I have seen a lot of stupidity through the window of Juwahir’s old, grey Chevy.
But I have also seen decency.
There was a time I stopped at an intersection then inched forward right into a car that was soaring by. The only damage was to the guy’s hub cap, but if I’d hit the body of his car, he might have flipped over. That experience scared the hell out of me and I couldn’t bring myself to drive for weeks. My husband and I often walked passed the guy’s house, and he waved whole-heartedly and invited us in for coffee.
When the car died on my way to an important meeting just before the busy Sharafa Junction in Ramallah, I leaned out of the window and summoned a small group of young men on the sidewalk. They pushed me into a space in front of the bookstore before there was even time for a traffic jam to form. I hailed a taxi and phoned my landlord to ask him to have a mechanic meet me at the car two hours later. But in just 15 minutes he walked into my meeting, took my car keys, supervised the mechanic, and it was all fixed before my meeting finished.
When the car died between two Israeli settlements as I left my friend’s house in Susya in the South Hebron Hills, a man and his wife with what seemed like ten kids in the backseat stopped and filled my radiator with water. They followed me for more than one hour, refilling the radiator every couple of miles, until we reached a military checkpoint they couldn’t cross with their Palestinian license plate. Although I didn’t have his name or mobile number, I believe he was genuine when he yelled from his window, “Call if you need any more help!”
When the car died in Beit Hanina, I went into Ja’afar Supermarket to ask for help and ran into a friend who offered to deliver me to work – on his bicycle! I found a nearby service station, but the mechanic wasn’t yet at work. A neighborhood boy went to wake him up. He arrived soon, coffee in hand, without complaint.
Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy is a piece of junk but I can’t say goodbye to it because I can’t say goodbye to her.
Last week I had one terrible day after another. It seemed everyone around me was ignorant and incompetent and selfish and I just wanted to be alone. I dropped my daughter at her circus class and parked in front of Zaman Café where I could sit in the car and use the wifi. I guess I stayed too long because when I turned the key to pick up my kid, the car battery was dead. I collected my daughter in a taxi and brought her back to the old, gray Chevy where we tried to figure out what to do.
Within minutes, the shabab who work at Zaman and the shabab who work at Shishapresso across the street were in competition to see who could find jumper cables first. They accosted every single customer in their respective cafes, and when the cables were found, a small mob gathered around my car debating which bolt was positive and which was negative – it was a community affair.
For years one of Juwahir’s hijab pins remained stuck in the soft ceiling above the rearview mirror and I’d rub the white plastic tip when I needed strength and perspective. I’d imagine her fixing her scarf before she went to the health clinic where she worked or before she led a religion meeting for women, or before she popped into her mother’s living room to greet me warmly with her slightly lopsided smile. The pin got lost at a car wash years ago but I still touch the place it used to be.
Through the window of Juwahir’s old, gray Chevy, I have seen shooting and teargas and arrests and home demolitions. I have seen children sent by drug-addicted parents to beg at military checkpoints and women and children abandoned in poverty by cheating husbands. I have seen students disrespect teachers and teachers disrespect students and I myself have endured periods when I felt that nothing I did mattered in the slightest.
Then I remember Juwahir. I get into her car and go out into the world to do the work that has to be done. If I need anything, I just look at the world through the window of her old, gray Chevy, and I see good people like Juwahir. Ordinary decent people.
It was my honor to write the Palestine chapter assessing the implementation of global commitments to aid effectiveness. It was originally published here from page 127-134.
It’s a pretty harsh critique. In it, I say:
“Global commitments to international aid reform, including the Rome Declaration on Harmonization (2003) through the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (2011), have in no way challenged the donor community’s politicized approach to Palestinian development. The Oslo Accords (1993) and the Paris Protocol (1994) established a hegemonic paradigm within which all “development” takes place. Western donors fund only work that advances or is consistent with the two-state solution: the ends justify the means. Western and west-affiliated governments use their aid programs to entrench their political objectives, even when there is blatant contradiction with principles like local ownership and mutual accountability that are enshrined in global commitments. There is still essentially no space for engagement with alternative paradigms even in 2016, fully seventeen years after the planned expiration of the Oslo peace process and despite overwhelming evidence of its failure. These observations are consistent with the 2015 Palestine report that noted the historical importance of civil society and the increasing constrained space in which it operates (CSO Partnership, 2015).
Aid is a significant variable in the Palestinian economy representing up to 46 percent of GDP in some years. Dependency on aid controlled by politically-motivated donors decreases Palestinian control of development in ways not unlike the Israeli occupation itself. In fact, Palestinian aid critics say that international aid actually undermines genuine Palestinian development — directly, by controlling development resources; and indirectly, by enabling Israel to maintain its occupation, colonization and dispossession of Palestinians. This not only contradicts normative global commitments on aid and development effectiveness but, it can be argued, contradict the far stronger obligations these donors have to comply with customary international law enshrined in the Geneva Conventions and strong global instruments designed to promote peace and human rights. One danger of relying on normative commitments is that principles may be reframed as best practices (e.g., transparency) rather than as rights (e.g., Right to Information), thus making rights claiming more difficult.
On the other hand, to the extent that the global aid reform commitments suggest a new political will to change relationships between donor and recipient countries, they represent a valuable opportunity: context-sensitive aid; ending policy conditionality; addressing predictability of aid flows; stronger transparency and accountability; and more inclusive involvement of civil society. In Palestine, however, the actual impact of these global commitments appears cosmetic at best. In many cases, local experts note regression in key areas. Global commitments to aid reform are not visible in the discourse of donors or the Palestinian Authority (PA). Palestinian civil society also does not leverage the global commitments in any strategic or concerted way to demand accountability.”
I invite you to read the full report and share your comments here.