Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

Guest Post: Thirty-nine Pounds of Sorrow by Vicki Tamoush

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One of my close friends called today to say, “I know this is pretty bold of me, but I was wondering if you’re going to cure olives again this year.  I’ve been craving them so.  Could you give me two jars this time?”

Vicki's olives -- 39 pounds of them

My dear friend isn’t Arab–she’s just got a taste for olives.  She has no idea what goes through my mind while I’m picking and sorting through the bins of fresh olives at the Arabic market in my southern California neighborhood.  She couldn’t imagine what I think about while I’m hauling home 39 pounds of them, washing and cracking them on my kitchen counter, tossing away most of the leaves and twigs but keeping a few “because it’s good for them to stay together” as my grandmother used to say.

It’s olive harvest season in Palestine, but so many of the laden branches will go unpicked or be crushed under an Israeli bulldozer while farmers weep in the distance.  These trees, many of them quite ancient, stand in stately rows while their fruit develops over the course of months.  And when the moment is just right and the olives are still “hard, but not too hard, habibti,” it’s important to pick them to arrest the ripening process so that they will cure to a consistent flavor throughout the batch.

The practice of bulldozing olive groves or setting them on fire began some years ago as one of the many measures of collective punishment imposed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).  The first time I saw pictures of trees being crushed under military bulldozers, I wept out loud.  Knowing the decades of devoted attention given to those gnarled branches, it looked to me like a picture of babies being smashed to death.  I still feel sick whenever I hear that a grove was destroyed by soldiers on the night before harvest.  It’s so different than hearing that the trees were uprooted by a flood or succumbed to some soil-borne virus.  This is murder.

Olive trees are among a handful of sources from which Palestinians can earn a livelihood even under occupation.  If a family is lucky enough to still maintain control of their land (as opposed to simply holding title through a virtually worthless deed), they can raise crops or animals, but both require regular access to water which of course has been redirected away from Palestinian villages in many cases.  Olives, however, will grow robustly with only sun and the rain gifted by God.  Olive trees give rise not only to the olive industry but oil, soap, and, now, wood carvings lovingly fashioned from the wood of trees murdered in the night.  Praying hands, figurines of the magi, latticed stands for the Holy Qur’an reveal the knot holes from the fruit-bearing branches from which they were wrested.

These days, it’s fairly easy to find groups of Americans or Europeans traveling to Palestine to assist with the olive harvest.  Rather than exploring traditional tourist sites, these folks come prepared to work hard, sometimes even sleeping among the trees along with the farmers in order to guard the grove.

Not that they could fend off the soldiers.  Not that anyone could.

As has been proven year after agonizing year, nothing can fend off the soldiers. Or the settlers.

Vicki's olives being cured for gifts

So yes, I tell my dear friend: I can certainly promise you two jars of olives this year.  Maybe three.  It’s a painstaking, labor-intensive process that I happily undertake each autumn, distributing dozens of jars among my family and friends at Christmastime.  I do it because I can.  And I do it for the women who can’t; the women who, along with their families, watched their trees carefully to determine just to right time for harvest, but who woke in the night to the sound of thunder.  Or so they thought.

 

And here’s a bonus picture of me (Nora) picking olives in Palestine:

Murad family trees in Kufr Manda, Galilee

Perhaps the most important work I’ve ever done…

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Over years of work in Palestine, I’ve spoken with hundreds of people about their experiences with international aid. I’ve written articles and delivered presentations and worked on committees, but I don’t see any real changes happening. Most recently, meetings and discussions with Palestinians led to this draft document — criteria for distinguishing aid that should be accepted from aid that should be rejected. It’s perhaps the most important work I’ve ever done. Why? Because it shifts our entire focus away from what we want “them” (donors) to do, which is not in our control, to a focus on what “we” (the Palestinian community) agree to participate in, which is something in our control. It is a draft document intended as a discussion starter. Please, read it carefully and share your thoughts.

INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE THAT ADVANCES PALESTINIAN SELF-DETERMINATION IS ACCEPTED

International assistance that advances Palestinian self-determination:

•     consistently and explicitly opposes occupation and colonization and puts into practice policies that challenge structural inequality;

•     complies with international law and prosecutes those who break it;

•     actively challenges Israeli impunity through sanctions and political pressure;

•     is actively committed to real democracy, including the right of all Palestinians to choose their own leaders, participate in political life, and receive benefits – regardless of political opinion or affiliation;

•     recognizes the unity of the Palestinian community as a whole and aligns policies toward Palestinians in the West Bank (including Jerusalem and Area C), Gaza, Israel, refugee camps, and the Diaspora toward the goal of self-determination;

•     respects Palestinians’ right to resist oppression including through means such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions;

•     leverages coherent political, economic and cultural policies to protect Palestinians, Palestinian rights and Palestinian resources;

•     conceptualizes “development” as a way of realizing rights, and respects the right and responsibility of Palestinians to lead the process;

•     implements Palestinians’ rights to allocate their own development resources including resources spent on their behalf; and

•     provides information about its activities, including budgets, and engages in mechanisms whereby it can be held accountable by local people.

 

Moreover, international assistance that advances Palestinian self-determination seeks to:

•     eliminate the diversion of Palestinian aid funds to international NGOs or international private sector vendors;

•     intervene only when local actors cannot, and avoid duplication of or competition with local actors;

•     stop the payment of any aid funds to Israeli governmental organizations or to Israeli private sector organizations when there is a Palestinian or international alternative;

•     prevent waste of resources on experts that do not add to local knowledge, are overpaid, and are not selected by locals; and

•     refrain from unethical practices including corruption, breaking commitments, paying beneficiaries for training, favoritism, double standards, stealing projects, etc.

 

INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE THAT UNDERMINES PALESTINIAN SELF-DETERMINATION IS REJECTED

International assistance that undermines Palestinian self-determination:

•     enables Israel to avoid paying costs for which it is responsible as occupier according to international law;

•     is not accompanied by active political support for Palestinian self-determination;

•     is palliative, “humanitarian,” short-term, or in the form of loans

•     demands that Palestinians police one another;

•     requires activities that benefit Israel or that decrease pressure on Israel to change its policies;

•     supports economic or cultural “solutions” that do not include political rights;

•     is based on priorities or strategies developed by non-Palestinians;

•     relies on foreign-chosen or installed Palestinians to speak on behalf of the community as a whole;

•     wastes funds on “capacity building” that isn’t requested and tied to self-determination;

•     requires Palestinians to use foreign languages, frameworks and waste money; and

•     disrespects local traditions and beliefs.

Should Palestinians Boycott International Aid?

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I’m proud to announce that two important articles of mine were published today:

“Should Palestinians Boycott International Aid?” is available on The Guardian. It’s a short piece that argues that international aid actors are not going to reform their policies; Palestinians need to refuse aid that is detrimental. It quickly generated over 100 comments, so they’ve already closed to new comments. Leave your comments here instead.

Also,

“Aid on Palestinian Terms: The Case for a Boycott” is available on the Palestine Studies Group. It’s a longer article that describes how I went from being an advocate of aid to a critic of aid to an activist for aid reform and now to a critic of aid reform.

These articles grew out of conversations with Palestinians in which we drafted criteria that could be used to distinguish between aid that should be accepted from aid that should be rejected.

The Guardian article was reprinted in Al-Quds Online in Arabic and in the print edition on October 19, 2012. There will be an Arabic version of the longer article published soon. Let me know if you’d like a notification.

Thanks for your interest and support.

 

Musings about corruption in Palestine

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I was looking through the “Anti Corruption Handbook for Development Practitioners” published by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (2012). I won’t lie and say I read every page of the 220-page document, but I looked carefully to see what I might be able to learn.

Corruption is definitely a problem in both Palestine and Israel, at all levels. It has a tangible impact on nearly all aspects of life: money is wasted that could be put to good use, inequality between rich and poor grows, people become angry and disillusioned by the lack of fair opportunity, political and economic development are distorted, and so much more.

Photo by Watchsmart

I’ve heard stories about blatant corruption, for example, when employees are paid the salary stated in their contract but are required to bring back half of it in cash every month in order to keep their jobs. Yes, that happens. I’ve also experienced a kind of corruption that is more complex, and in a way, more sinister.

For example, many international donors require that NGO grantees provide, or at least keep, receipts of expenditures paid for with grant funds. Fair enough. The receipts, however, must be official tax receipts, and depending on the amount of the expense, the NGO needs another document proving the vendor has a clean tax record. This is logical when you consider that aid money is needed because tax collections are low and that aid funds should be used in accordance with local law, which includes the payment of sales tax. However, not all vendors are able to provide tax receipts, and not all have proof of a clean tax record.

I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “Good! Let the money flow to the honest and law-abiding people so the others will be pressured into complying with the law.”

It’s not always that easy.

I was once involved in giving a grant to an NGO in a Palestinian village. A major objective of the grant was to keep the funds inside the village in order to activate the local economy. However, none of the vendors in the village were able to provide tax receipts, so the NGO had to purchase the materials from a big company in Ramallah – just to get the paper required for the donor.

Another time, an NGO grantee found supplies they wanted from vendors who offered tax receipts and vendors who didn’t, but the vendors who offered tax receipts wanted 50% more for the materials. (They ended up buying from the vendor without a tax receipt and purchasing a tax receipt—a forged document—from someone else.

Is all this petty corruption the fault of the Palestinian NGOs? Or do international donors share some fault for requiring NGOs to provide documents that cannot realistically be provided in a legal way?

I know what you’re saying. You’re saying, “Why don’t they just open tax accounts and pay their taxes?”

That’s a good question.

Some people don’t want to pay taxes because they want to keep the money for themselves. That’s true. But even an entity that wants to pay taxes may find it difficult for a number of reasons. When I worked for a Palestinian NGO, it took years and great effort for us to open a tax file because the organization wasn’t registered, and it was the Palestinian Authority itself that was delaying the registration. In other words, “You have to pay, but we won’t let you pay.” Moreover, some organizations can never get legal status for political reasons or because of bureaucratic mess-ups. Still others don’t want to pay taxes to the Palestinian Authority because they don’t consider it legitimate, and because they aren’t accountable for the taxes they do collect. You see? It’s complicated.

But I’m more interested in corruption at a higher level.

Handbooks like Finland’s “Anti Corruption Handbook for Development Practitioners” (and I’ve seen many of them) do acknowledge the responsibility of international actors. For example, p. 43 of Finland’s Handbook states:

INTERNATIONAL/REGIONAL ANTI-CORRUPTION CONVENTIONS OBLIGATE BOTH THE EU MEMBER STATES AND PARTNER COUNTRIES. Support for governance is more than tackling corruption and it cannot be addressed in isolation. Corruption is a major obstacle to achieving development objectives and a symptom of poor governance. International and regional agreements on corruption, must be adhered to, ratified and duly implemented by all development partners.

But when you read further, they imply that the responsibility for addressing corruption is shared, buy that corruption is a problem solely in the receiving country. Corruption in developing contexts, they say, is a failure of governance, but overlook the possibility that there is a failure of governance on the part of international actors involved in development cooperation.

What I’m saying is that international aid and development agencies may themselves be corrupt and may be enforcing corruption on Palestine through their control of funds.

Read this, for example, from p. 21 of Finland’s Handbook:

STATE CAPTURE is recognised as a most destructive and intractable corruption problem. It is a phenomenon in which outside interests (private sector, mafia network etc.) are able to bend state laws, policies and regulation to their benefit through corrupt transactions with public officers and politicians.

Don’t “outside interests” include the political interests of foreign countries?

Are you following my train of thought? What do you think?

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