Case Study

International organisations have been providing relief in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt) since the war in 1967. Due to the occupation, intermittent conflict and general economic decline, between 1993 and 2003, the oPt received USD 6 billion in international aid - half of these funds disbursed since September 2000. While the amount of aid given to oPt (and Israel) is "unparalleled", the oPt continues to experience a decline in development indicators or as, described by the international community in the oPT, to "de-develop".

The report has been prepared as part of “Strengthening of the Commercial and Marketing capacities of small and medium vulnerable Palestinian farmers from the Tubas Region through trade to the Israeli and International Markets” project, where five agricultural cooperatives located in six villages were targeted in the north-eastern part of the Jordan Valley: Bardala, Kardala, Ain Albayda, Wadi al Far’a and Tammun from Tubas Governorate and Furush Beit Dajan from Nablus Governorate.

The case study explores the activities undertaken by the Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division (ESWD) jointly with the Emergency Operations and Rehabilitation Division (TCES) to improve youths’ skills and abilities in carrying out income generating activities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS).

This case study focuses on human rights violations against Palestinian workers attempting to enter Israel without a permit.

In April 2002, al-Nu’man’s residents were verbally informed that the village lay adjacent to the planned route of the Wall. Shortly after, a preliminary road was built along the route of the Wall. The road to al-Nu’man from the neighbouring West Bank village of al-Khas was destroyed, as were the village water pipes. One year later, in April 003, residents received a visit from a man purportedly working as a liaison between Israeli government ministries and residents of areas affected by the Wall.

It is now eight years since the beginning of the second Palestinian Uprising, or intifada, in September, 2000, and fifteen years since the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) following the signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 between the state of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to end almost half a century of conflict over the land of Palestine. In 2002, two years into the second Uprising, I returned to Palestine to do fieldwork against the background of ongoing Israeli Occupation.

Community Organizing in the West Bank. Opportunities and Obstacles in Civil Society,2000-2003. Case studies: Awarta, Al Mazra’a Al Sharqyia, Al Burj

First Israeli settlements separated Anata from its land, and then interim peace agreements split it into separate, unequal authorities that spurred a population boom in urban areas. Now the Apartheid Wall is encircling the town. Prior to 1967, the village of Anata was vast, its 35,000 dunams stretching from the outskirts of Jerusalem down into the valleys near Jericho. Anata was a major thoroughfare, and its wheat fields and olive trees an agricultural heartland.

The Qalqilya district continued to surface as one of the hardest hit areas by Israel’s occupation and colonization. Qalqilya is a difficult place to visit, not only from the act of bearing witness to blatant injustice, but also because the occupation often turn the visitor away at checkpoints. One can spend an entire afternoon attempting to reach the district from Ramallah, a physical distance of a little more than 30 kilometers, only to be denied passage. That number is rapidly decreasing.

Jamal Othman, a farmer from Al-Jaroushia, a village in the Tulkarm governorate, is one of many saddening examples of the human costs of the construction of the occupation’s new Wall. Othman’s family has lived in Al-Jaroushia for generations, the second most prominent family in the village of 1400 residents. His extended family of 120 lives on a 400-dunam plot of land.