International Assistance To The Palestinians After Oslo

Why has the West disbursed vertiginous sums of money to the Palestinians after Oslo? What have been donors’ motivations and above all the political consequences of the funds spent? Based on original academic research and first hand evidence, this book examines the interface between diplomacy and international assistance during the Oslo years and the intifada. By exploring the politics of international aid to the Palestinians between the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the death of President Arafat (1994-2004), Anne Le More reveals the reasons why foreign aid was not more beneficial, uncovering a context where funds from the international community was poured into the occupied Palestinian territory as a substitute for its lack of real diplomatic engagement. This book also highlights the perverse effects such huge amounts of money has had on the Palestinian population and territory, on Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territory, and not least on the conflict itself, particularly the prospect of its resolution along a two-state paradigm. International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo gives a unique narrative chronology that makes this complex story easy to understand. These features make this book a classic read for both scholars and practitioners, with lessons to be learned beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

In a fragile and conflict-ridden context such as the Gaza Strip, where the de facto Hamas government faces isolation and lacks international recognition, the provision of aid and development schemes challenges donors and CSOs delivering services to Palestinians. This volume examines how international donors influenced the reconstruction and recovery policy agenda as well as its implementation. Moreover, as a result of the no-contact policy, recovery and reconstruction schemes were delivered with limited involvement from the de facto Hamas government, raising questions about the efficacy of the “governance without government” concept. This book examines the dynamics and the impact of international donors’ financing of Civil Society Organizations that were involved in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. It expands on the existing analysis of transnational aid actors’ influence found in the public policy literature while contributing to our understanding of the concrete, and more specific, impact of international donors’ financing on the livelihoods of the Palestinian people.

This volume reviews the lessons that can be drawn from external funding for the Israeli-Palestinian peace and reconstruction process over the last decade. What are the implications —for Palestinians, Israelis, and international actors —of this experience in light of plans for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip? What are the realistic possibilities for a viable Palestinian state? What are the responsibilities, opportunities, and constraints for external actors?A major aspect of the last decade has been the three-way relationship between aid, diplomacy, and "facts on the ground" during one of the most difficult and frustrating periods in the history of the Middle East. This book offers analyses of the relationship between aid and diplomacy over this period and in particular the role that external assistance has played — and could now play —in supporting peace strategies.Aimed at senior policymakers, diplomats, donors, and academics involved in the peace and reconstruction process in the West Bank and Gaza, Aid, Diplomacy, and Facts on the Ground will also provide lessons for those involved in similar processes in other regions. Contributors include Yossi Alpher (Bitter Lemons), Geoffrey Aronson (Foundation for Middle East Peace), Christian Berger (External Relations Directorate General, EC), Rex Brynen (McGill University), Claude Bruderlein (Harvard University), Larry Garber (former USAID Mission Director, Jerusalem), Eyad El Sarraj (Gaza Community and Mental Health Hospital), Jeff Halper (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions), Mustaq Khan (SOAS), Karma Nabulsi (Nuffield College, Oxford University), Harish Parvathaneni (UNRWA, Gaza), Nigel Roberts (World Bank, Jerusalem), Sarah Roy (Harvard University), Nader Said (Birzeit University), David Shearer (OCHA, Jerusalem), and Jimmy Weinblatt (Ben Gurion University).

This edited volume explores Canada’s foreign policy relationship with the Palestinians and broader Middle East Peace Process (MEPP). Canada was intensively involved from 1992 to 2000 in peacebuilding as a mediator in the multilateral part of the MEPP, as chair of the Refugee Working Group, and sponsor of Track II negotiations. This all changed after a significant mid-2000s discursive and policy shift when Canada withdrew from the politics of Israel-Palestine peacebuilding and took a strong partisan stance in favour of Israel. Through 10 chapters by current and former government insiders and academics with extensive field experience, this unique edited volume offers insight into decades of evolution in Canadian policy toward the Palestinians, MEPP and the Middle East. It arrives at an important time when the international community is reconsidering how it views Israel’s entrenched occupation of the Palestinians, after three failed decades of United States-led efforts to find peace through a negotiated two-state model. Today, peace may never have appeared further away after the Trump Administration adopted policies directly contradictory to the MEPP. This proved a test to Canada’s own official policy toward Israel and Palestine, its longest running and most important region of engagement in the Middle East. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, guest edited by Jeremy Wildeman and Emma Swan.

This book explores the political economy of Palestine through critical, interdisciplinary, and decolonial perspectives, underscoring that an approach to economics that does not consider the political—a de-politicized economics—is inadequate to understanding the situation in occupied Palestine. A critical interdisciplinary approach to political economy challenges prevailing neoliberal logics and structures that reproduce racial capitalism, and explores how the political economy of occupied Palestine is shaped by processes of accumulation by exploitation and dispossession from both Israel and global business, as well as from Palestinian elites. A decolonial approach to Palestinian political economy foregrounds struggles against neoliberal and settler colonial policies and institutions, and aids in the de-fragmentation of Palestinian life, land, and political economy that the Oslo Accords perpetuated, but whose histories of de-development over all of Palestine can be traced back for over a century. The chapters in this book offer an in-depth contextualization of the Palestinian political economy, analyze the political economy of integration, fragmentation, and inequality, and explore and problematize multiple sectors and themes of political economy in the absence of sovereignty.

This book explores Palestinian women’s views of popular resistance in the West Bank and examines factors shaping the nature and extent of their involvement. Despite the signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993 and 1995, the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the contemporary period have experienced tightened Israeli occupational control and worsening political, humanitarian, security, and economic conditions. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with women in the West Bank, this book looks at how Palestinian women in the post-Oslo period perceive, negotiate, and enact resistance. It demonstrates that, far from being ‘apathetic’, as some observers have charged, Palestinian women remain deeply committed to the goals of national liberation and wish to contribute to an effective popular resistance movement. Yet many Palestinian women feel alienated from prevailing forms of collective popular resistance in the OPT due to the low levels of legitimacy they accord them. This alienation has been made stark by the gendered and intersecting impacts of expanding settler-colonialism, tightening spatial control, a professionalised and depoliticised civil society, reinforced patriarchal constraints, Israeli and Palestinian Authority (PA) repression and violence, and a deteriorating economy - all of which have raised the barriers Palestinian women face to active participation. Undertaking a gendered analysis of conflict and resistance, this volume highlights significant changes over the course of a long-running resistance movement. Readers interested in gender and women’s studies, the Arab-Israel conflict and Middle East politics will find the study beneficial.

The volume brings together cutting-edge political economy analyses of the Palestinian people: those living in the occupied territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, those living within Israel, and refugees in Arab states. It is a must-read for those who wish to understand the historical origins and contemporary realities that face Palestinians.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Occupied Palestinian Territory has been the subject of extensive international peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts coordinated by Western donor states and international finance institutions. Despite their failure to yield peace or Palestinian statehood, the role of these organisations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally overlooked owing to their depiction as tertiary actors engaged in technical missions. In Palestine Ltd., Toufic Haddad explores how neoliberal frameworks have shaped and informed the common understandings of international, Israeli and Palestinian interactions throughout the Oslo peace process. Drawing upon more than 20 years of policy literature, field-based interviews and recently declassified or leaked documents, he details how these frameworks have led to struggles over influencing Palestinian political and economic behaviour, and attempts to mould the class character of Palestinian society and its leadership. A dystopian vision of Palestine emerges as the by-product of this complex asymmetrical interaction, where nationalism, neo-colonialism and `disaster capitalism' both intersect and diverge. This book is essential for students and scholars interested in Middle East Studies, Arab-Israeli politics and international development.