Will the UN Admit its Economic Responsibility?

In a report published by the UN, the obvious factors are listed as threatening a stable future economy for Gaza and the West Bank. These range from import costs, to unstable job opportunities, a weak and untrained workforce, food insecurity, and the famous separation barrier. But the UN conveniently leaves itself and NGOs out of the picture, a convenience many will not even notice since the UN is paraded around as a Mother Taresa for brown folks.

In white drapes and flip flops, it brings food. It opens up schools. The signs for buildings it helped build in days of Palestinian chaos are rusty but still standing. It gives aid, lots of aid, along with European Union countries, the infamous US government donor known as USAID, and other NGOs. Many have just started to recognize the NGOization of Palestine and its implications politically, socially, and perhaps most importantly, economically.

The Palestinian struggle for identity and independence have become an industry. Grant proposals of all makes are being thrown around.  The Central Elections Commission, for example, loves to talk about its programs to go into rural, marginalized areas to train old women and youth how to vote. The cost: over $500,000  a year. Elections have been cancelled or "postponed" the past two years.

Students of Camp Discovery, Jalazone Refugee Camp

Another example is Amideast, regarded as a quality institution of higher education with an American twist, and with millions of dollars gained by the US government. Only but a few know that its summer Discovery Camp is actually a program instituted under Bush as a "demilitarization program" for villages and refugee camps. The funny thing is, when ambassadors come to take pictures with the typical looking "refugee" to publish on some goodwill website, the kids pick up on it very quickly and disregard the show of American good sentiment. Also Jawal  and Wataniya, two of the largest companies in Palestine, show  false independent capitalist pursuit by partnering with NGOs who seek money from donors. The partnership with NGOs benefit the NGO with obvious donor support, but Wataniya and Jawal have also snaked their way into rural areas to expand their telecommunication market.

These grants often get abused. In a recent meeting with the International Youth Foundation, they commented how NGOs abuse certain line items because defining them is hazy. There are loopholes, and they exist for a reason. NGOs create a workforce of just titles in grant documents with little shown actual output. For example often NGOs list their objectives as something like, "Create more awareness." How is that even measured?  And how do the donors sit across the table and actually say, "Wow, this looks like a great idea." When it is not, it really is just cliche and too general to impact some sort of strategic change or development

Without having to describe the lack of entrepreneurship they cause, the decentralization of Palestinian advocacy, or the monopoly over Palestinian forms of development by foreign agendas through grant agreements, one must ask why NGOs became so huge following the second Intifada and how muted Palestinian resistance has become since then.

In a report published through Bir Zeit University, the NGOization of Palestine is debated as an opportunity to grow particular Palestinian pursuits, but warns against global controls over what should be "locally grounded visions."

The big economic problem NGOs have caused is the inflation of prices where NGOs are based and how this leaves poor Palestinians in the shadows of their giant, foreign funded buildings.

And the bigger, scarier thing the UN fails to mention is that it loves to kick its money out to NGOs because they are not legally or politically bound like the UN.  It also fails to mention how donor aid makes up approximately 80% of the Palestinian economy, how most jobs are created by this dependency issue between donor and recipient, and how entrepreneurial pursuits in Palestine often involve the sad inclusion of some third, foreign party. Hardly anything is independently, domestically made, with donor logos all over the West Bank from buildings to books to even cars.

Instead the UN goes off in this report to market the issues it presumably tries to address. If the UN tried to fulfill its goal, it would have an exit plan rather than maintaining Palestinian economic dependency and bringing political development to a standstill. But sadly the issues it addresses in its report are problems not being fully addressed by the UN, possibly on purpose,using obstructions to Palestinian statehood as market items for which to surround itself and other NGOs.

As demigods they parade around Palestine and the diaspora, and perhaps for the first time, the Holy Land has no leader or prophet to lead it away from the idolization of these false good doers.