It's 2:25 a.m. in Gaza right now. According to the rules of life, and by the nature of things, everbody is supposed to be in bed right now (except the Italians who won the World Cup - they deserve it.)Gazans huddled around TVs operated by small generators to watch the final World Cup match. They watched local TV stations that "illegally" transmitted the match because they cannot afford paying for ART (a Saudi satellite cable broadcast) to watch it. They tried to forget their plight and enjoy the match. They stood in suport of one of the two playing teams. Some supported Fance because Zinadine Zidane and Henry are Muslims! But the majority supported Italy because they cannot forget that the captain of the Italian team who won the World Cup in 1982 said a good word in favor the Palestinains as they were beseiged in Beirut.
By the end of the final match, an Israeli heliocapter launched a missle attack on a ground target in Gaza. Believe me, I heard the hissing of the rocket when it was launched! It was the second attack for the day.
Now I am up again. I am unwillingly up! I have been awakened by the horrible buzzing of an unmanned reconnisance plane. It sounds as if it is 15 meters over my head; it is an unbelievable noise. The good part of it, just imagine, is that the electric power is on. This time, it's delivered by the municipality and it's our our neighbourhood's turn to receive power. It does not matter whether we use it or not. Our turn has come in the early hours! Each neighbourhood has its turn according to a schedule.This situation looks like wartime. Water delivery is controlled by a timetable as well. Yes, it is a wartime and even worse because this situation has been imposed by a regional super power on a poor people with no real military power. The resistance fights with small arms and some primitive explosives. However, they have been deemed terrorists.
More than 40 Palestinains, mostly innocent civilian women and children died in the last 48 hours.
I want to go back to sleep.
Said Abdelwahed ]]>
The Global Justice Circle http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/blog/global-justice-circle 2006-05-11T15:11:00+00:00 2007-04-26T16:33:07+00:00 Stephanie Sluka Brauer One of the best things about working at Grassroots International is the incredible circle of people we are able to connect with. ]]> One of the best things about working at Grassroots International is the incredible circle of people we are able to connect with. I am constantly reinvigorated with hope from seeing the incredible generosity and commitment of our donors and the inspiring vision and work of our partners. These are people who are not just talking about social justice, but taking concrete steps to improve communities' access to clean water and arable land, to protect human rights and to carry out key economic development projects. To bring these amazing people even closer together we recently launched the Global Justice Circle. The Circle gives donors who contribute more than $500 per year a chance to meet with staff and board members over a meal (or to participate in intimate conference calls) for updates and deeper insights into our work. These gatherings also bring together like-minded social change philanthropists and activists who may come from all different backgrounds, but who have all reached the same conclusion: social movements - to improve the world - need their help.
We had our first Global Justice Circle gathering last month to talk about the situation in Palestine and about how a progressive grantmaker like Grassroots can most effectively focus its work. Around the table were long time Jewish activists involved in a Jewish American Medical Project providing medical care in the West Bank, a biochemist turned playwright reflecting on his time spent in the Occupied Territories at the beginning of the first intifada, a woman who founded Folk Art Mavens, a retailer working with Palestinian artisans, and those just wanting to learn more about the grassroots hope that lives in the shadows of the tragedies filling the news.
Given the recent elections, the continuing violence, and economic desolation in Palestine, we sought to overcome the weight of despair. Where does one find hope when aid from Western governments and official agencies and Israeli transfer of customs revenue to the Palestinian Authority has been cut-off, when this denial of a lifeline of aid sends an already devastated economy into deeper depression?
We discussed how the strong showing of Hamas in the recent elections cannot be interpreted as a mandate for Hamas' policies or vision as much as a protest vote against the corruption, authoritarianism, and inefficiency of the Palestinian National Authority and Fatah, and, equally important, the continuing Israeli occupation and its effects.
We all affirmed that the common struggle of communities around the world is to gain access to basic land and water resources. Nikhil Aziz, Grassroots International's Executive Director, described our program strategy and talked about how we focus our limited resources on strengthening social movements around the globe for resource rights, including their struggle for "food sovereignty — the right of communities to decide what food to produce and what food to consume.
In Palestine, this focus will allow us to work more in-depth with a targeted sector of Palestinian civil society. For example, our partner, the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC), has been helping women in the Gaza Strip utilize small scraps of space to set up rooftop gardens and backyard rabbit cages as a way of increasing the food available to their families. These urban gardens are helping provide a crucial food source as families lose the ability to purchase food — both because of the economic crisis and the inability to get food deliveries through ports controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces.
Grassroots not only supports this vital work, but also works to connect PARC with other sustainable agriculture and human rights groups around the world. In this long-term social change work, the importance of friends and allies can not be under-estimated.
Looking around the table at our donors, it was good to be reminded that we are not alone in this work for a better world.
]]>Waiting for the Promised Land http://www.grassrootsonline.org/news/blog/waiting-promised-land 2005-04-08T21:13:00+00:00 2007-04-27T18:07:47+00:00 Stephanie Sluka Brauer Waiting is something Palestinians live with — they wait in refugee camps established as temporary solutions in 1948, they wait in political limbo, they wait to learn what the disengagement plan will mean for their lives, and they wait in lines. (We ourselves found ourselves waiting in an hour long line to get into Ramallah yesterday for a meeting with our partner, the Rural Womens' Development Society.) Many in the West Bank do not have to wait, however, to see how the geographic lines will be drawn in the peace plan blueprints because construction has already been completed in several areas. In the north, the Wall now completely encircles the city of Qalqiliya and encloses Tulkarm in a dead zone between the Wall and the invisible Green Line established in 1967 separating Israel from the Occupied Territories.
]]>Waiting is something Palestinians live with — they wait in refugee camps established as temporary solutions in 1948, they wait in political limbo, they wait to learn what the disengagement plan will mean for their lives, and they wait in lines. (We ourselves found ourselves waiting in an hour long line to get into Ramallah yesterday for a meeting with our partner, the Rural Womens' Development Society.) Many in the West Bank do not have to wait, however, to see how the geographic lines will be drawn in the peace plan blueprints because construction has already been completed in several areas. In the north, the Wall now completely encircles the city of Qalqiliya and encloses Tulkarm in a dead zone between the Wall and the invisible Green Line established in 1967 separating Israel from the Occupied Territories.
The Wall deviates from the Green Line to carve out settlements and ensure contiguity with the rest of Israel. In many cases, this requires cutting off Palestinian farmers from the land, children and teachers from their schools and communities from each other. Individuals have to apply for permit cards to reach their lands. Permits are not always granted and when they are, they are only for a limited time. As a result of limited access to both land and the water aquifers underneath, agricultural production has fallen.
In the meantime, Palestinians continue to wait at both established checkpoints and at "flying checkpoints" that can pop up anywhere. Many we talked to expect magnetic cards to be issued in the not so distant future that will mark Palestinians by their place of residence and ensure, with a swipe of the card, that people are allowed to be wherever they are as well as track wherever they have been.
Our partners are not waiting for the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government or the United Nations. They are building community capacity through their economic development and humn rights work. Some are running programs in the refugee camps that address both immediate needs and help build resiliency. Today, for example, we visited the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem. The Ibdaa Cultural Center (literally meaning "to create something out of nothing") offers over 1500 youth and their families the opportunity to participate in everything from a world renowned dance troupe to a women's basketball team.
Ibdaa is in the process of constructing a new building in the heart of the 1 sq. km camp which will house their new Radio 194 station, among other things. The media training program recently brought experts from Berkeley to Dheisheh to train 22 youth between the ages of 13 and 17 in filmmaking, digital video editing and radio production and broadcast.
Our partner, the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP) works to alleviate some of the collective trauma through community based therapy. For example, GCMHP runs the Women's Empowerment Project which invites 96 women a year to participate in a vocational training programs to learn skills such as hair cutting and styling, sewing and video production. Women develop confidence as well as a network of supportive peers. Trained mental health workers meet with the women at least twice a week in this non-clinical environment and are slowly able to break through the barriers of talking about domestic violence, gender issues and dealing with stresses of life in the Beach refugee camp.
Through their work, both GCMHP and Ibdaa help communities realize they don't have to wait for their dignity.
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