It hasn't been a good year for Israel-Palestine.
Actually, it has been a downright lousy decade.
One reason is the 8 atrocious Bush years, when the pattern of US involvement in I-P was extremely detrimental - as I explained elsewhere. One Bush after-effect is that the international diplomatic system, which in the past had some mitigating power at times of crisis, is now jammed broken with respect to I-P and the greater Middle East. So nowadays, the prospects for improving the situation via ordinary channels are dim.
On the other hand, since I-P is a small country, civil society organizations - Israeli, Palestinian or joint - are able to affect the situation directly on the ground to a significant extent. These organizations serve both as a stopgap to salvage whatever coexistence can be saved, and as seeds for a future of coexistence.
If you are still considering donation options for 2009, below the fold is a list of some of my favorite I-P on-the-ground organizations. In this list I focused on groups whose activities are not just forms of protest, but also have a strong element of building a better future.
I was planning to list 12 organizations I recommend for donations - one for each month of 2010, I guess. This being late in the day Christmas eve (which we don't celebrate, but our son's daycare teachers do want to go home early), I'll post the first 6 and hopefully the next 6 in a few days. The organizations are arranged in pairs.
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1-2. The Villages Group and COMET-ME
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Disclaimer: I was involved in the VG's inception, although I am not among those who conceived it. More recently, I've set up and run its website. So I'm pimping a bit here. On the other hand, knowing where the group came from, I am quite astounded about how far it's grown and even more so, how far-sighted the people who conceived it have proven to be.
Their vision is more or less what I said in the intro: that ordinary channels - not just those of government, but also of mostly political activism attempting to affect government policy - have become as bad as hopeless. Hence, constructive work on the ground by ordinary individuals is what's needed. They embraced this vision back in 2002, and looked for Palestinian villages to work with (my original contribution was to provide them with a village contact near Nablus).
Beside the psychological and logistic hurdles of venturing on a regular basis into regions that many of your friends and family consider to be terrorist-inhabited war zones, and where the de-facto rulers (IDF and the settlers) try to block you at every turn, there is also a very fine line to walk. If your activities succeed even on a small scale, the Israeli government - the same one that sends the soldiers who block you - will hop on the bandwagon, co-opting your activities to show how enlightened Israel is. With respect to Palestinian residents, there is the danger of the relationship becoming one of patronism and dependence.
The VG, which is basically just a bunch of some 10-20 individuals, has handled these pitfalls admirably well. The guiding principle has been strong and simple: everything begins and ends with long-term friendships between Palestinians and Israelis on the basis of equality. And so, even though there is a huge disparity in formal status (full-fledged citizens, usually of privileged social strata, vs. citizens of nowhere under military dictatorhip), in freedom of movement (nearly unlimited vs. nearly none), in economic status, etc. etc., decisions about what to do and how to do it are taken in consultation and partnership. The group's main activity regions are two large villages/suburbs east of Nablus, and the sparsely-populated rural area of South Hebron hills. More can be found on the VG website.
COMET-ME is a VG spin-off started some 2 years ago, that has seen tremendous growth in its range of activities. Founded by physicist Noam Dotan who was joined by others, it designs and installs stand-alone solar+wind power generation units for isolated rural Palestinian communities, and trains the residents in installation and maintenance.
This project achieves so many goals simultaneously (cooperation and coexistence, empowering residents under Occupation, seeds for a clean-energy I-P, etc.), that it has caught relatively widespread attention, and was nominated as a finalist in the prestigious BBC World Challenge 2009 competition. It didn't win - well, this 3-man operation competed with some serious heavyweights - but it sure got a lot of respect.
US tax-deductible donations for both organizations is possible via the Center for Emerging Futures (link goes to the CEF donation page). For VG, choose "Middle East Project" and indicate on the dedication that you'd like the Villages Group to benefit from it. For COMET-ME just choose COMET-ME.
How did the CEF, a charity set up by a retired Idaho businessman with no family ties to I-P, get involved with us? The same story, everything begins and ends with personal friendships. A few years ago, CEF's founder Whit Jones met an Israeli child psychiatrist who is among the VG's founders, and it took on from there.
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3-4. Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) and Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC)
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As my DKos friend Simone Daud said, we are not liberated as a global community until Gaza is free. In 2006 geographer Mike Davis listed the Gaza Strip as the worlds 9th-largest slum. And the reasons for the slum's existence are not so different from what is found elsewhere in the world: a war (1948-49) that caused refugees. Refugees are about 70% of the Strip's population. But more painfully, Gaza is just a huge prison for 1.5 million people.
Contrary to the (very artfully delivered) misinformation in the MSM, Gaza is not run by Hamas. Gaza is a prison run by Israel, whose internal prisoner politics are run by Hamas. And nearly a year ago, this insufferable reality and the tensions between the "wardens" and the "dominant prisoners" has led to terrible bloodshed, killing about 1400 Gazans, the majority of them innocent civilians. See also the diaries by soysauce who is going to Gaza now, and by heathlander who reminds us what has transpired over the past year.
Under the subhuman conditions that have plagued Gaza for decades, perhaps the greatest worry is for the residents' sanity. That's where GCMHP, headed by the sage Dr. Eyad El Sarraj (who can sometimes be heard on NPR interviews), comes in. It is a strong local network of counseling and other mental support.
I looked for a donation link on the GCMHP website. Couldn't find any. Probably because it is in Gaza, and it is quarantined from the rest of humanity. Please help GCMHP by -
a. Getting in touch with its personnel and asking what kind of help they need (it could be, for example, access to training and collaboration abroad);
b. Getting back to your representative and asking that GCMHP and similar critical endeavors are supported;
c. Telling others about life in Gaza and why no one deserves to be condemned to such a life.
UPMRC is another grassroots Palestinian care organization, focused on healthcare. It operates in both West Bank and Gaza. It is possible to donate to UPMRC, and I think if you contact the "friends of UPMRC" you may find a tax-deductible option as well.
Rev. Fahd Abu Akel
Friends of PMRS
Tel. 404 441 2702
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5-6. The Parents' Circle and Combatants for Peace
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In I-P, soldiers and other fighters, and families bereaved due to conflict, are not just human beings. They are powerful national and emotional symbols, used by the dominant powers to reinforce the justification for war and Occupation, and to perpetuate them.
Therefore, groups from among these two sectors who rise up and offer a different vision, are especially important. Especially when they reach out and create a joint Palestinian-Israeli organization. The Parents' Circle has been active throughout the decade; Combatants for Peace has joined the action a few years ago. Donations:
Parents' Circle donation link. Tax-deductible.
Combatants for Peace donation link via the Refuser Solidarity Network. Don't forget to choose "combatants for peace" in the drop-down menu. This donation is tax-deductible as well.
May 2010 be the year of true change for the better in Israel-Palestine and the entire world. Peace.