Nora Lester Murad - The View From My Window in Palestine

Through the Window of Juwahir’s Old, Gray Chevy

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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.

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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.

 

Palestine chapter on global commitments to aid effectiveness

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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.

When Nurredin calls me at 5am, it means something bad is happening

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When my phone rang before 5am on May 17 and Nurredin’s name flashed on the screen of my cell phone, I knew it was something bad.

“The bulldozers are here!” he said. “For your house?” I asked, suddenly wide awake. His home was partially demolished on March 31, 2015. “No. They are demolishing the Tutanji and Totah homes. Right now! They are demolishing right now!”

A few of the Tutanjis
A few of the Tutanjis

I had visited the Tutanjis before, when they expected a demolition and called for internationals to help them protect their home. When nothing happened and weeks went by, they thought they were safe. They were wrong.

Of course there was nothing I could do except cry and spread the word. Then I got in my car and went to visit. I took some film clips and Institute for Middle East Understanding put them into a very nice little video.

Later that week I went back to visit and Hoda Tutanji insisted on making me coffee, despite not having a kitchen! I wanted the world to see what it means to demolish the home of a family, so I made another little video.

That same week, three other homes in the neighborhood went under demolition order.

On Translation: Shadi Rohana on the Joys and Disasters of Spanish-Arabic Translation

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This article first appeared here in Arabic Literature in English.

On May 15, Nakba Day, Shadi Rohana, a Mexico-based literary translator, attracted a devoted group of literary enthusiasts to the historic Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah. They came to discuss José Emilio Pacheco’s Las batallas en el desierto [Battles in the Desert/معارك الصحراء]].

Shadi Rohana with Budour Hassan
Shadi Rohana with Budour Hassan

Shadi has introduced and translated a number of Latin American authors from Spanish into Arabic, including Rodolfo Walsh, Yolanda Oreamuno, David Huerta, Eduardo Galeano and José Emilio Pacheco, as well as speeches and declarations from the EZLN in Chiapas, but Las batallas en el desierto  is his first novel-length work.

To be honest, while I had always realized the relevance of translating Arabic literature into other languages to get Arab perspectives into the global consciousness, I had not previously taken the time to consider the importance – and politics – of translating literature from other languages into Arabic.

Curious, I spoke to Shadi, the translator, and the moderator of the session, Budour Hassan, a well-known political commentator with extensive knowledge about literature. She blogs in several languages.

Nora: What attracted you to learn Spanish, your fourth language after Arabic, Hebrew and English?

Shadi: I started learning Spanish when I found myself as a college student in the United States. I knew one of the good things US colleges offer is study abroad programs and I wanted to go to Cuba. But it was during the rule of Bush II and the embargo was tightened, so I couldn’t go through my college. But in the meantime I was learning Spanish from professors from Mexico, Venezuela, and El Salvador, and I discovered there is a whole continent I really knew nothing of. So, in the process of learning a new language there was also a process of opening up to the region of Latin America, which to me at the time was something totally new, intriguing and attractive. It was like being a little child and growing all over again.

Does the experience of translation, or your attraction to it, have anything to do with being Palestinian?

Shadi: I’m not sure. It is true that Palestinians speak many languages. To find a Palestinian who speaks only Arabic is practically impossible. Everyone I know has had to work as a translator at some point for some NGO or agency, when they were short of money. Also, given Israel’s position in the world, we are always expected to explain “the situation” to others, whether at home or abroad. This can be considered a kind of translation. But literary translation is something else and it requires, first and foremost, personal initiative, learning, and love for literature, not only the ability to explain one world to people from another.

How does your knowledge of so many languages affect your translation from Spanish to Arabic? Do you mediate through other languages?

Shadi: When I translate between Spanish and Arabic I am very self-conscious about avoiding reading or consulting other translations (English or Hebrew). One of the disasters in the Arab and Spanish-language literary worlds is that you can still find translations that are not direct, which go through other languages first (usually either English or French). This, today, is unacceptable since there are people who are capable of working between Arabic and Spanish without any other “mediating” language.

Budour: Shadi is definitely one of the few translators who translates directly from Spanish to Arabic, which is rare not just among Palestinians but among Arabs as a whole. Unfortunately, most Spanish-language novels available in Arabic were translated through English, i.e., translation of a translation. Sadly, the main criteria for translating into Arabic today has more to do with market than quality. So if a non-English-speaking author has sold record copies and has won a prestigious award and is famous in the English-speaking world, that makes it easier to translate him or her to Arabic. So what we eventually end up getting in Arabic is a mirror image of what the mainstream US and European publishers have deemed profitable and “successful” enough to merit translating into English. Even overrated authors who are not highly regarded in the Spanish-language literary scene but who are popular in the US through the translation of their work are more likely to be translated into Arabic. Isabel Allende, for instance, is a kind of literary celeb in the US, which is not the case in her native Chile; Allende’s works have not only been translated into Arabic but even adapted to Arab TV drama. So eventually the shreds we get to read in Arabic are determined by the dictates of foreign publishers. People like Shadi have a project to break those shackles, but unless there are courageous Arab publishers ready to support them, we will remain in this desperate situation where the literature accessible to us in Arabic is selected by global market considerations.

Why did you choose to  translate this specific novel?

Shadi: It’s the first novel I was able to fully read in Spanish. When I read it as a college student, before having gone to Latin America, what struck me most was how “normal” the story is. It tells the story of Carlos, a child from the rising Mexican middle-class in the Colonia Roma in Mexico City, and what happens when Carlos falls in love. The novel is written in simple language that I was able to read, even while I was learning. I could relate a lot to the story because in my encounter with Spanish, I too really feel like a child.

Years later I found myself in Mexico City and living in Colonia Roma, where the novel takes place. This, of course, made me reread the novel. Rereading Las batallas through its translation made me realize the depth of the story it tells and what lies underneath the apparent simplicity of its language; that the narrator registers a moment in Mexican history not only through the political and social context of the story, but also through the language itself and how things are narrated.

I had a lot of support for the translation project in both Mexico and in Palestine, and because of this generosity the book is now available through Qadita Books in Palestine and the Ahliyya in Amman, who will bringing the book to book fairs and bookstores in Arab countries.

Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah
Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah

Budour: I think Shadi’s translation of the novel is important, not just for Palestinians, but for all lovers of literature. J.E. Pacheco, as far as I know, has hardly been translated into Arabic — even though he is one of Latin America’s most important authors from the second half of the last century. Having this novel translated into Arabic will, hopefully, introduce a larger Arabic-speaking audience to Pacheco’s writings.

Was it meaningful to you to discuss the book with Palestinians in Ramallah? At the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center? Why?

Shadi: Certainly it was. I was also able to discuss the book in my city, Haifa. Even though the participants in both events had not had the chance to read the novel first, we were able to discuss issues related to translation and literature, and of course the politics and history of both Mexico and Palestine – simply by reading aloud from the novel. Arabs in general today are introspective about who we are and who we used to be. So, despite the horrors that are going on politically, there are also a lot of interesting discussions happening, and I’m grateful to have had the chance to engage in them, and especially to do so in Arabic.

Budour: There is definitely significant interest among Palestinians in poetry that comes from Latin America, although novels reflecting magical realism are even more popular, and in this sense las batallas en el desierto is completely different. Obviously, we would have loved to have had the honor of hosting Pacheco, the author, in Palestine (and he would probably have been happy to know that his novel was translated into Arabic, in such solid way), but having Shadi speak about his experience as a translator also added value. We didn’t just discuss the novel; we talked about a wide range of issues, including the crisis of translations in the Arab world, the lack of direct translations from Spanish to Arabic, and the limitations that Shadi faced as a translator, particularly the difficulty of finding a publisher.

Apart from going deep into the novel its social and political context, we discussed Latin American literature in general challenging certain common portrayals of Latin American societies, and also the scarcity of Arabic literature translated into Spanish (again apart from award-winning authors).

When you mentioned to me that you’d be selling the book at the Palestinian International Book Fair, you said that you were “only” the translator. Do you feel that the contributions of translators are understood and valued by the general public? By the publishing industry?

Shadi: From my personal experience with Las batallas, I do feel that my work has been valued in both Mexico and Palestine, not only as a translator, but also because of the work I did to get the project going (e.g., securing funding, insisting on publishing the book in Palestine, working directly from Spanish to Arabic). It was also great to have Saleh Almani, veteran Spanish to Arabic translator from Syria (and the grandson of the village of Tarshiha in the Galilee), present at the book fair His name is well known among Arabic readers for his accomplishments translating authors like García Márquez.

As for publishing, honestly I’m a newcomer and I’m still trying to get a sense of what the industry is really like. My experience with the publishers Qadita and Ahliyya is very positive.

But what I do think is missing in the Arabic publishing industry, and the Arabic-reading public in general, is an understanding of and value for the artists who design and illustrate books. I feel most Arabic books are published with very little care for the appearance of the book, and as much as we would like not to judge a book by its cover, sometimes you can’t really help it.

For Las batallas in Arabic we had the contribution of Mexican artist Adriana Ronquillo, who made linocut printmaking especially for the Arabic edition, illustrating the cover and each chapter of the novel. The printmaking she did for the cover, illustrating Mexico City, is very inviting in my opinion.

What do you hope to accomplish by working as a translator of Mexican literature into Arabic? What projects are you working on now?

Shadi: I presented and discussed the book here in Palestine with old and new friends, so there is really nothing more I can ask for at the moment. Regardless of whether people like the book or not, I hope it will be an invitation to Arab readers to read more and dig deeper into Latin American and Spanish-language literature. For me, good books are those that call you to read other books. They send you to places you never thought of or imagined before.

Buy this book!
Buy this book!

Update: Shadi Rohana is contributing to an Arabic-Spanish translation of Instructions Within by Ashraf Fayad. Ashraf is currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia serving an eight-year sentence for blasphemy. To show solidarity for Ashraf Fayad, you can purchase Palabras para Ashraf and write letters on his behalf or sign a petition in Spanish.

 

Come with me to Gaza (photo essay)

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When Israel gave me permission to enter Gaza, a little strip of land integral to Palestine but completely cut off, I jumped for joy and called my friends to gloat as if I’d won a lottery. A few minutes later, I heard myself sigh involuntarily as I admitted that I really didn’t want to go. Who would want to go to a place that oozes hopelessness, that embodies the failure of the world to deliver on even their most basic humanitarian obligations? Last year after a visit to Gaza, also for work, I spent two weeks in bed trying to recover.

But my recent visit was fantastic thanks in great part to the brilliance of Aid Watch Palestine’s Haneen Rizik Elsammak, one of the most energetic, decent, generous and inspirational people I have the privilege to know. From north to south and east to west, she introduced me to people who opened their homes and shared their very, very difficult stories. In between I reconnected with true friends (you know who you are) who continually amaze me with how much they offer to the world and how many obstacles they are forced to traverse in order to do so.

I left Gaza sad but refocused. I still believe Gaza exemplifies #HumanitarianBetrayal, but it is also bursting with #TransformationalOpportunity.

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Names of him and her, Khan Younis, March 2016

Latefa and Nezam Alaqaad in Khan Younis lost their home in the 2014 Israeli attack and now, nearly two years later, they still live in a makeshift aluminum room on the site of the four-story building they used to live in.

IMG_1138

 

 

Inside, the temperature was comfortable in the early spring, but it becomes desperately cold and wet in winter and unbearably hot in the summer.

 

 

Tiny kitchen in separate aluminum structure, Khan Younis, March 2016

The tiny kitchen is outside as is the tiny bathroom.

Gaza caravan

 

 

 

Much of the basic infrastructure is damaged, so utilities are rigged, unreliable and dangerous. There is no privacy, no security, no community, and no hope for any solution in the near-term.

 

Gaza caravan

 

Not far away in Khuzaa, I visited a family of seven that I wrote about in Huffington Post 8 months ago. Before the 2014 Israeli attack, Marwan Abu Jammous lived with his brothers in a 4-story building that used to stand in the place where laundry now dries. After his house was destroyed, Marwan’s family was given temporary shelter.

Gaza caravanThe aluminum caravan was so hot last summer, they slept outside. When the municipality wanted the land, Marwan moved his caravan near to his demolished home; that made the caravan even more unlivable. A donor provided a new, wooden caravan, but as the photo shows, it floods. There is no clarity if, when or how this family will ever get a new house.

Nora Lester Murad

But despite the glum situation, the family welcomed me, fed me, and showed me a great time.

 

 

 

To me, the caravans exemplify the catastrophic failure of the humanitarian system, not just in Gaza, but in the world. Humanitarian actors are supposed to respond to emergencies, and therefore they provide short-term relief, not long-term solutions. But in Gaza, which is locked in a long-term, man-made disaster, short-term relief (like caravans that are intended for habitation only up to six months) are ridiculous — unless paired with intensive, serious and effective political advocacy to end the root causes of the humanitarian crisis. While the international community whines “we’re doing the best we can,” kids in caravans in Gaza are dealing with the physical, emotional, economic, academic and spiritual effects of three major Israeli attacks in 8 short years.

Gaza caravan

One little girl in Beit Hanoun showed me her skin condition, which her mom said is rampant in the caravans. Can we not prevent this kind of needless human suffering?

 

 

There was some weird stuff along the way:

Gaza water

Water made in Turkey, by a company in the United Arab Emirates, imported to Gaza, with taxes paid to Israel. Wow, a lot of people are making money from Israel’s preventing Palestinians from accessing their own water.

 

 

 

Gaza Bank of Palestine

And this towering billboard advertising Bank of Palestine’s daily prize of $5,000. It’s normal in cosmopolitan Ramallah, but to see this in Gaza where the prize might well feed a poor family for something like 8 years, it was, well, weird.

 

 

Gaza donors

Also, all along the highways are notices that donors are building new housing, but many of these signs have been up for a long time, in front of empty lots where there is no visible beginnings of any work, and no one in the community has heard about the project or believes that it will ever come to fruition. It’s like Gaza exists in two “realities,” the deteriorating and frustrating real one and the fantasy one that is “advertised” by international organizations as being in the process of development.

 

Gaza Beit Hanoun

In Beit Hanoun, we drove towards Israel, but it’s hard to see where the buffer zone starts (an Israeli demarcated no-go zone in which soldiers routinely fire from watchtowers at farmers or livestock), so we felt a bit nervous. Haneen, ever efficient, leaned out of the driver’s side window and invited this exceptionally nice woman and her shy granddaughter to ride with us so that we wouldn’t stray too far.

IMG_1429On the short drive, she showed us the rubble of her house, and her brother’s, and then, casually, she pointed out this donkey. “This donkey ran across the buffer zone to Israel and escaped the bombing that killed its owner. After the ceasefire, she came back, but the family who owned her never will.”

 

Gaza Aid Watch Palestine

We relieved the stress of the day, which happened to be Palestinian Land Day, by taking pictures of ourselves and one another among the beautiful wild daisies. We must have taken hundreds of pictures. We were a raucous group of women! This picture of Haneen shows what a good time we had.

 

 

 

Gaza

Back in Gaza city, Haneen took me to an inspiring voluntary initiative where, tucked away in a nondescript location, a group of women collect used clothes and furniture and make them available for free to other women in difficult circumstances.

 

 

Gaza philanthropyWhile I visited, various items were donated and various women came to shop for things they needed. The whole operation oozes with respect and gratitude and mutual help.

 

 

 

 

Gaza philanthropyNo sense of desperation or hopelessness there — Gazan society is doing what they can to help themselves. It was a good way to end my visit. But then, driving towards Erez Checkpoint on my way home, I began to feel a bit desperate. Had I used my precious time in Gaza fully? I started to snap photos indiscriminately to try to hold on to Gaza, to my gratitude for getting to visit this special place.

Reviewing my pictures at home, I laughed out loud to see I had taken a short video of a generator, an almost identical clip to one I shared in a 4-minute video I made about my April 2013 visit to Gaza — three years ago! Generators run Gaza, which has electricity for only 4 or 6 hours at a time. Like caravans, generators are tangible evidence of the way we  are dealing with the #InhumanIllegalIsraeliBlockade — with expensive, environmentally damaging, inadequate, short-term responses to pacify 1.8 million Palestinians who are locked in the Gaza Strip.

Shame on everyone who doesn’t speak out for accountability.

I paid my privilege for a ticket, hopeful

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This poem first appeared in This Week in Palestine’s themed issue on “Security in Palestine.”

 

I paid my privilege for a ticket, hopeful

that from 35,000

reality would shine blue and green,

not red and viscous.

 

I sought days without tach-tach,

nights free of children crying “auntie”

from a freezing caravan

under a GRM-enabled sign: Human Appeal UK.

 

Isn’t escape sometimes justified?

I recline, press “new releases” on my private screen

noting

that my compassion excludes

those who self-medicate with berry-flavored argila

at the cost of a chicken dinner for a family in Rafah.

 

Hypocrite. And naïve!

Return renewed? Ha!

If not to the physical front lines where kafiyas meet tear gas,

then to the psychic front lines where adrenalin meets exhaustion.

 

From which store in Manara Square does one buy renewal? In what currency is it sold?

Chicago, Yarmouk, Lesbos, Shuhada Street – there are too many fronts, too many fronts.

 

I realize now that I sought solace in a place

that is no more

or that only existed

in the imagination

of a white,

American,

child.

I realize now that I have returned to a place

that no longer exists

or perhaps only existed

in the fantasy of a foolish,

entitled,

optimist.

 

Hope is a fickle lover. It entices with curly hair tossed with fearlessness. Then it crumbles

into fet-a-feat when you can’t attend the funeral of Israel’s martyr du jour

because you can’t, because you just can’t, because you really just can’t.

 

The Intifada was pre-paid on a card bought in 10 shekel coins at the Jawwal kiosk,

but that does not mean we were prepared for the lights to go out.

In the dark, strategic options are obscure,

so,

shall we meet to discuss at that old café where the wi-fi is strong?

Rights-based aid goes beyond the transparency of data

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This article first appeared in Al-Adab in Arabic and on Aid Watch Palestine’s blog in English.

“Transparency” has become a key element of the global aid discourse, but is this new rallying cry really revolutionary? Aid transparency advocates argue that effective development requires better aid data. They have started a veritable movement complete with databases, dedicated blogs, specialized NGOs, annual global reports and meetings, grant schemes and training opportunities – all dedicated to improving the transparency of aid.

As a result of these efforts, donors and other aid actors have committed to providing updated aid data that is easy to access, use and understand. Once these commitments are implemented, transparency of aid information should facilitate coordination, hinder corruption and mismanagement, and also expose over-spending and self-interest in aid policies. This could be revolutionary, especially if transparency places information in the hands of the people and upends power relations.

Of course aid information should be public. After all, Official Development Assistance (ODA) is generated from public tax money in donor countries and most of it is transferred to developing country partner governments (either directly as bilateral aid or through multilateral agencies like the World Bank or United Nations) where it goes to public budgets. In democratic countries, information about public funds should be, well, public.

But until now, information about international aid has been incomprehensible and unusable for many reasons: lack of disclosure by some donors, uneven disclosure across donors, lack of common reporting standards, late reporting, confusing layers of contracted relationships between donors and end beneficiaries leading to double counting. All this makes it essentially impossible for beneficiaries of aid or taxpayers in donor countries to build a full and accurate picture of what money comes in, where it goes, and what it achieves.

Some proponents of aid data transparency emphasize the technical objective of greater efficiency. They anticipate that standardized data will help eliminate gaps in knowledge due to missing data and duplication that can lead to double counting. They also argue that improved monitoring by donors and recipient governments will enable better decision-making. However, aid transparency is also frequently framed in terms of a more radical concept: accountability. The notion that aid information should be publicly available directly challenges the neo-colonial attitude embedded in many traditional development approaches: the civilized Western powers benevolently “doing something for” the unfortunate and incapable people of the Third World. Theoretically, if aid recipients have genuine access to useful information about aid, they can demand better policies or even refuse to work with certain donors.

Transparency of aid is not only fundamental to good aid practice, but is enshrined in international humanitarian law. The concept of Freedom of Information, which enshrines the legal right of citizens to access information, is also relevant. Many countries have national laws that guarantee transparency of certain information. In Palestine, however, the Palestinian Access to Information law, drafted in 2005, has been stalled for a decade.

Already, citizens of aid-dependent societies can demand information from their own national representatives using the concept of a “social contract” between citizens and their representatives. Also, recipient governments can already demand information from donors using the concepts of “mutual accountability” that are built into standards for development cooperation. What may be new is this: If new transparency commitments are implemented, citizens in aid-recipient societies will have a stronger basis from which to demand information directly from international donors.

Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, Busan, Korea
Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, Busan, Korea

This year, 2015, is the culmination of ten years of intensive aid transparency advocacy. The Paris Declaration, the outcome document of the 2nd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2005, committed donors to “provide timely, transparent and comprehensive information on aid flows so as to enable partner authorities to present comprehensive budget reports to their legislatures and citizens.” Pressure from civil society and recipient governments in the run up to and during the 3rd High Level Forum in Accra in 2008 led to at least four clear commitments to greater transparency (p. 38). It also led to the launch of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), designed, in part, to support donors to meet their political commitments on transparency laid out in the Accra Agenda for Action. Three years later, in 2011, all the major development actors met at the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan, Korea and committed to “implement a common open standard for electronic publication of timely, comprehensive and forward-looking information on resources provided through development cooperation.” Endorsers of the Busan Outcome Document committed to publishing to the common IATI standard by the end of 2015.

Transparency is also integrated into the Sustainable Development Goals process, the successor to the Millennium Development Goals. In September 2015, all major donors signed the Joint Declaration on Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes a recommitment to the principles of transparency in the context of international development cooperation and “…citizen participation in the implementation of all the goals and targets in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including decision-making, policy formulation, follow up and evaluation processes.”

The commitment to participation goes beyond the mere common data standard envisaged by IATI. The bundling of transparency with participation might suggest a new phase for aid transparency. If citizens are to engage genuinely in their own development, they need more than access to aid data; they will also need access to strategies, project plans, budgets, procurement policies, monitoring reports, evaluations, and more. They will need access to these materials in their own languages and before decisions are made to enable them to participate effectively. This fact was mentioned in the IATI feasibility study conducted in October 2010, but, notably, there is no mention of translation of key documents in the monitoring framework for transparency that is open for public consultation until February 2016.

In Palestine, the allocation of resources and agreement on policies is almost always made on the basis of documents that are not available in Arabic and through coordination mechanisms that do not share information in Arabic or in a timely way. For example, the UN and World Bank both present quarterly reports to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, the donor coordination mechanism for Palestine on the global level. Neither body regularly translates these reports into Arabic despite the significant impact these reports have on the daily lives of Palestinians. Another example is the 300-page, consultant-written “Detailed Needs Assessment and Recovery Framework for Gaza Reconstruction” published by the State of Palestine’s Ministerial Committee for the Reconstruction of Gaza in August 2015. It is only available in English and only on the website of the Local Development Forum — the donor coordination structure. Given that most documents related to aid in Palestine are in English, it is not surprising that the majority of Palestinians are excluded from effective participation in development cooperation.

It can be argued that providing timely information in Arabic is a huge undertaking fraught with expense and complications. Yet, is there any way to have real accountability or genuine participation if “transparent” materials are not available in Arabic? Why are all these materials produced in English in the first place? If Palestinians really led their own development agenda, strategies, plans, budgets, and evaluation reports would be first produced in Arabic — by Palestinians. The challenge would be translating them selectively into English so that international aid actors would know how to lend their support.

Clearly, while the concept of transparency is potentially revolutionary, aid actors will need to do much more than publish aid budgets and expenditures based on a standard format. The signing of new declarations and commitments is unlikely to spur the changes required. Aid recipients will probably need to make repeated demands for transparency of information they deem essential until donors and other aid actors realign their priorities, establish new work patterns, and make real beneficiary participation a priority. Of course, this will also require fundamental changes in Palestinian civil society as community members become aware of their rights and the responsibility that accompanies them.

In Solidarity with Ashraf Fayadh

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Read about Ashraf Fayadh, Palestinian poet sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia here:

Newly Translated: Poems to Read for Ashraf Fayadh on January 14

In solidarity with Ashraf and all cultural workers and activists facing threats to their freedom to speak, I am joining the global reading of Ashraf’s poetry with “The Melancholy of Dough” translated by Tariq al-Haydar.

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Update! The death sentence has been removed. Read the story in The Guardian!

Palestine today offers a “perfect storm” of possibility

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This article first appeared on Counterpunch.

Fluorescent lights burn in the homes of Palestinian activists 24 hours a day now. Ambiguity is evaporating. Options lie on the rock-strewn tarmac near the physical and figurative checkpoints – more stark, more risky, yet more promising than in the last 20 years.

“Is this good?” some ask, motioning to the TV.

“Is this bad?” others ask, pointing at the smartphone.

“We don’t know yet.”

1936-1948-1967-1973-1982-1987-1993-2000-2008-2012-2014

Will 2015 also have a section in undergraduate Middle East textbooks? Will the sub-title read: “End of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”?

The status quo was temporary—that was understood. So why are newscasters surprised that the rubble it was built on has shifted, eroded, dissolved? Although the world knew the status quo was unsustainable, a viable Plan B never coalesced. So now, after decades of evidence that Palestinians would not surrender, it is happening. Label it whatever you wish.

Between the stabbing and lynching and stoning and demolishing, some people are appealing for calm. But sadly, when things are calm the most we can hope for is more talk about more talk. Death and injury are tragic, but they have propelled us to this crossroads. Now, good people who have for decades signed petitions for peace have to commit more. We have to run forward through the metaphorical tear gas to reach the future that awaits us on the other side – even if we have not yet envisaged it. If we hesitate we may miss this moment of possibility.

Possibility? Yes, for it may be, I contend, a “perfect storm” of possibility.

  • Never before has Israel made itself so difficult to defend in the court of popular opinion by people who claim to represent the civilized world.
  • Never before has the Palestinian Authority been more exposed as an obstacle to Palestinian liberation, catering to foreign and Israeli interests at the expense of its own people, and thoroughly despised for it.
  • Never before has the global solidarity community been more organized and empowered, including the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists and anti-Zionist US Jews.
  • Never before have international donors been more tired, more over-stretched and more anxious for a viable alternative to the “peace process” charade and the financial and political costs of going along with it.

None of this would matter, though, without the youth. As in the first Intifada, young Palestinians acting out of conscience and desperation are not waiting for political parties or responding to wrinkled leadership. They leave home, school and work and flock to flashpoints to taunt soldiers, an ostensibly doomed strategy, and yet, it has impact. For now, again, the world is looking at Palestine and Israel, and more than ever before, they are seeing the truth: The Israeli occupation must end.

But what will happen if the Israeli occupation ends? Do we—Palestinians and global allies—know what we are fighting for? Or do we only know what we are fighting against?

In Egypt, Algeria, Iran and other places where inspiration turned into disappointment, smart and fearless heroes and sheroes sought to reclaim history for the people. But good did not come from bad, just more bad. How can we learn from the past, avoid a power vacuum, and finally (finally!) enable Palestinians to unite their people on their land and build a society with dignity?

It depends:

  • Will local leaders emerge to harness these disparate possibilities into a strategy?
  • Will local thinkers formulate a bold vision for a just settlement that captures the hearts of decent Palestinians, Israelis and global justice advocates?
  • Will the movement be diverse, inclusive, geographically integrated and democratic?
  • Will global solidarity expand beyond the usual suspects in response to local calls against Israeli impunity, thus cracking the long-standing global complicity?

Surprisingly, I am hopeful. For we have tried every process and arrangement and mechanism and have learned that stopgap measures and temporary agreements are impotent. It will take guts to permanently end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but not more guts than we have shown in generations of fighting. It is time – right now – to try the only option not yet tried – true justice and genuine peace.

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Source: Hanini.org

‘Chief Complaint’: Vignettes from Village Palestine

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The article first appeared on Arabic Literature in English.

Educational Bookshop in Jerusalem welcomed the small crowd that came to the launch of Chief Complaint on October 8, 2015 and acknowledged that the event was almost canceled.

The current escalation of violence in Jerusalem and around Palestine makes it hard to know what to do. We respect those who have lost their lives or are injured, and we want to dissuade others from going out into unsafe circumstances, but we also feel there is a kind of resistance we express when we press forward with regular life. In this case, we decided to press forward and were pleased to have 20 or so others who also pressed forward to join us for the event.

What follows is an edited version of my introductory remarks:

“I’m not sure why Dr. Hatim Kanaaneh honored me with the invitation to introduce him and his recent book, Chief Complaint. I can say that I fell in love with the idea of the book from the table of contents: ‘Chapter One, High Fever’; ‘Chapter Two, Chills’; ‘Chapter Three’ (my personal favorite), ‘Hair Loss’; and so on.

Chief_Complaint_nonfinal__51468.1420580262.450.800“As far as the text, you will find a combination of fact and fiction that builds off the idea of a chief complaint — what a patient states as the reason for a visit to the doctor seems, in this book, never to be the real reason. Dr. Hatim, who spent his career as a physician in his home village of Arrabeh in the Galilee, consolidated the voices, appearances, dreams, and flaws of patients he treated over decades, added in political and cultural detail, imagined some amusing twists, and wrote it all down in what are, as he admits, more like vignettes than plotted stories.

“What I enjoyed was that, like in real life, I learned as much from how these vignettes were told as I did from their content. My own adopted village is Kufr Manda, also in the Galilee, quite close in both distance and spirit to Dr. Hatim’s village of Arrabeh.

“In Kufr Manda you’ll find my 78-year old father-in-law, who is so spry that we once couldn’t find him in his greenhouse. We discovered, instead, that he was scaling the metal bars that hold up the plastic roofing. He has a long room that is the family’s greeting area, so that during the day there are always people coming in and out to visit or get or share information or perhaps to feast on one of my mother-in-law’s meals. Not long ago, I was reading on the couch next to him when my sister-in-law’s husband came in and told the Haj that his grandmother had won her court case and would finally get her share of inherited land, denied her by her brothers. As his grandmother was no longer alive, he needed to figure out how the property would be divided among the living heirs.

“My father-in-law jumped up onto a chair and reached to the top of a bookshelf on which he kept daily things, like his comb and razor, and pulled down what looked like a small plastic wastebasket with rolls of paper sticking out. The old man and my brother-in-law rolled out the old blueprints and began discussing which plot had belonged to so-and-so, but was later divided among so-and-so and so-and so. It was very detailed.

“Later that night, I asked my husband why his father seemed to be in possession of the official blueprints showing land ownership in the village. It was a strange idea for me, a US citizen who generally assumes that official things should be in government institutions under the care of paid officials.

“‘Because people trust him,’ my husband explained, and the conversation was over.

“I tell this story as an example of the kinds of stories that Dr. Hatim relays in Chief Complaint. They are everyday stories of Palestinians who live in villages in the Galilee. They are the kinds of stories that are unremarkable to the people who live them but very rich to those of us who don’t.

“Dr. Hatim tells the stories in Chief Complaint with both an insider and outsider perspective. He not only brings you into a place where you could not otherwise go, but he also explains what you’re seeing and hearing. The explanations may be long or short, and even if you read them twice, you might not grasp all of it. But the prose is strong and beautiful even if you don’t understand all his references.

“When I told my father-in-law in Kufr Manda that I was reading a book by a doctor from Arrabeh, he said, ‘Humpf.’ I thought he hadn’t understood my poor Arabic so I told him again and asked if by chance he knew Dr. Hatim from Arrabeh and he replied with a straight face: ‘Twenty-five doctors graduated from Arrabeh this year alone. The percentage of doctors in Arrabeh is higher than anywhere else in the world.’

“‘Really?’ I asked.

“‘What do you think I’m doing? Eating seeds?’ which is his way of saying that although he only studied until fourth grade, he is no idiot and Dr. Hatim, book or not, is just another guy. I’ve often thought that someone should write down my father-in-law’s stories so they aren’t lost, and Dr. Hatim — despite not knowing my father-in-law — has done just that. By capturing the humanity and the humor, the wisdom and the parochialism, he has saved a vision of this generation of Palestinian village elders.

“If I have a criticism of the book, it’s that, when you finish reading this book about a village doctor and the characters he comes to know and love, you can be sure that you’ve only seen a part of what there is to know. This book begs for another to be written – not by a doctor but by a doctora. Dr. Hatim’s stories are rich and true and important, but so are those told among women. I look forward to reading that book, whoever may write it.

More:

A video interview with Dr. Hatim about his book, Chief Complaint.

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