Playing the Aid Game
U.S. Funding Cuts Stifle Development in Palestine
RAMALLAH, West Bank - The administrative headquarters of Ruwwad Youth Empowerment Project, housed in a newly constructed office tower on the outskirts of Ramallah, sparkle with disuse in the fluorescent overhead light. A skeleton crew of employees looking for ways to busy themselves are scattered around the offices, separated by a grid of vacant cubicles that serve as a reminder of what this project was meant to be.
"Ruwwad was going to be so important because it was working with youth in marginalized areas that usually get ignored," Says Marwan Bashitee, one of project's administrators, speaking from a polished conference room that just a few months ago was filled with young Palestinians consulting on Ruwaad's development. "The goal was to benefit 100,000 Palestinian youth over the next five years, but we barely had a chance to get started before the funding was suspended."
Zeina and Omar, who will begin university
in the United States this year, say that
Ruwwad would have been of even greater
value to youth with fewer economic options.
Photo by Alex Stonehill.
Like many NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza, Ruwwad (Arabic for "Pioneers") fell into crisis after the political wing of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, known internationally as a terrorist group, surprised even its own members by winning control of the Palestinian government in legislative elections last January. Though the conduct of the elections was praised by international observers, the US and other Western governments declared that they wouldn't recognize Hamas' victory until the group renounced violence, recognized Israel's right to exist and accepted all past peace agreements, steps they still refuse to take.
Now Ruwwad and hundreds of other Palestinian NGOs, which receive a combined average of about $140 million in funding each year from USAID, the main foreign aid dispensing agency of the American government, have become bargaining chips in this political standoff. In an effort to avoid putting any money into the hands of Hamas, USAID has reevaluated the projects it supports, cancelling funding for some, and suspending others, like Ruwwad, whose funds have been scaled back to the bare minimum of administrative costs.
"People voted for Hamas because they were sick of the corruption of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. Anyone can tell you this." says Dua'a Qurie, Ruwwad's Youth and Community Development Coordinator. Her colleagues add that appeals by the Bush Administration discouraging the Palestinians from casting votes for Hamas candidates may have actually added to their success, playing on local distrust and resentment of the American President.
But soon after the election results came in, with Hamas candidates winning 42.9% of the vote and 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), it became clear that all of the Palestinian people would suffer for the defiance of some voters.
For Ruwwad, whose program just began last October, this meant the stifling of an innovative vision. The project's goals ranged from providing running water and internet connections in local schools to developing service learning programs where students could hone vocational skills like nursing or child care while providing those much needed services to the local population. Ruwwad's founders also hoped the project would encourage youth from wealthy families, who tend to go abroad for education and employment, to stay and help develop local civil society.
Many of the ideas for how the $25 million slated for the project would be spent were influenced by young Palestinians themselves who were brought together in Ruwwad's Youth Forums. Omar Awartani and Zeina Amro, two 18 year old Ramallah natives, were both leaders of these forums and were heavily involved in the development of Ruwwad. Their faces light up with excitement when they talk about the potential they saw for the project.
"At the first meetings we talked about our ideas for Ruwwad, and the [American officials from USAID] all started taking notes. We were so surprised, like 'you're really taking us seriously!'" says Omar, who now seems almost embarrassed by the hopes he pinned to the project. "We didn't think the project was political before the election happened - we thought it was about us."
Projects directly developed and funded by USAID are not the only ones who have suffered from the severance of aid. The Association of Women's Committees for Social Work (AWCSW), another Ramallah-based NGO that has worked for over 23 years to promote women's rights and political involvement, has seen its proposals for projects ranging from domestic violence prevention to voter education put on hold by USAID as well as several European funders.
Rabeha Diab, the founder of the organization, and a newly elected member of the PLC for Fatah - the party that previously controlled the government - speaks with frustration about international isolation that she says will only serve to strengthen Hamas.
"Hamas members don't need the US's help, they have their own sources of money" says Diab, who like most of the 165,000 Palestinian civil servants, has not received her salary since the election because the money to pay those salaries usually comes from international funding or local tax payments that have been frozen by Israel. "Isolating the government and arresting Hamas ministers [as Israel has recently done] only confirms the anti-Israel, anti-Western stance they got elected on - they become heroes and we in the opposition can't say anything to criticize them."
Officials from USAID deny that the organization is trying to punish the Palestinian people for the results of elections that they too recognize were free and fair. They are quick to point out that much of the funding pulled from suspended or terminated programs has been re-routed into direct humanitarian aid in the West Bank and Gaza and that "only programs that involved assistance to, or could result in benefits for, the Hamas run government," have been affected by funding cuts.
A recent USAID campaign to improve its public image in
Palestine has been abandoned. Photo by Alex Stonehill.
But staff members at Ruwwad and AWCSW say it is unfair to put their projects into such a category. The work that Ruwwad planned in Palestinian schools, for example, would require some interaction with the Ministry of Education, which, like most other government ministries, is now headed by a Hamas member. But locals say Hamas only has a presence at the highest levels and has not meaningfully altered the mission of this or other ministries or replaced the lower level bureaucrats who coordinate work with NGOs.
Staff at Ruwwad and AWCSW also complain about what they see as efforts by the US government to politicize their work. Most Palestinians working with USAID programs have been asked to sign an "Anti-Terrorism Certificate" created by the US congress which states that they will not deal with members of "terrorist" groups like Hamas or the Palestinian Popular Front. But according to Maher Awartani, Ruwwad's Youth Program Coordinator, this list is so broad that it could be construed to include most of the Palestinian population, and specifically lists militias that act as the West Bank's only police force.
Awartani also reports that Ruwwad recently received an official letter from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stating that funding will not return until the Hamas government is replaced with one that conforms to international demands. He says that USAID employees have been encouraged to use their programs to "provide alternatives to Hamas" a request he says undermines the credibility of development projects like Ruwwad and discourages people they are intended to serve from participating.
Such blatant use of USAID funding as a political tool is somewhat unprecedented. The organization was created by President Kennedy in 1961 in response to criticisms that American humanitarian aid efforts had lost international credibility because of their close coordination with political and military strategies in the Cold War. But USAID's reaction to Hamas' election victory, along with a recent restructuring within American international aid programs, points to a new direction in policy.
Just days before the Palestinian elections took place, Rice announced the creation of a new government post, the Director of Foreign Assistance, answering directly to the Secretary of State and charged with managing USAID and several other government aid programs, thus consolidating control of foreign aid money - formerly spread amongst several officials in different bureaus and organizations - firmly in her hands.
Almost simultaneously, USAID spent $2 million in the West Bank and Gaza distributing free food and water, cleaning streets, donating computers to local community centers and organizing a youth soccer tournament, all in the name of the Palestinian Authority, with the American aid organization's participation obscured. According to a Washington Post article published at the time, the campaign was a thinly veiled attempt by the State Department to improve the chances of Fatah, which has become synonymous with the Palestinian Authority over 12 years of uninterrupted control, against challenges from Hamas candidates.
As it turned out, these efforts were not enough to overcome Palestinian voters' frustration with the stalemate in the peace process, and corruption in the P.A. Whether the subsequent reshuffling of aid from USAID and other international donors will succeed in weakening Hamas' standing with the Palestinian people remains to be seen.
But for young Palestinians like Omar and Zeina who dreamt of cinema clubs, youth art programs, and after school gender discussion groups these politics mean little more than a barrier to their desire to improve the lives of their people. They still speak with passion about their responsibility to their peers but both agree that they have been too jaded by their experience with USAID to ever become involved with an American funded venture again.
"Hamas will come and Hamas will go," says Omar, his eyes clouded with frustration, "but we're still the same people with the same dreams."
© 2007 The Common Language Project
