'Good governance' is the term
used to describe the post-cold war ideology of World Bank and IMF-linked
development aid. According to this approach, development is no longer
accomplished solely by the promotion of free markets. Instead a well-managed
state sector and a democratic civil society form a troika of elements necessary
for the promotion of sustainable development in Eastern Europe and the Third
World. For a discussion of good governance from a European NGO perspective see
ClaytonAndrew (ed.), Governance,
Democracy and Conditionality: what role for NGOs?
(Oxford,
INTRAC,
1994).
2.
For a critical analysis of charitable
societies in Palestine, see GiacamanRitaPalestinian Women and Development in the Occupied West Bank
(Birzeit,
1982).
3.
TarakiLiza'Mass organisations in the West
Bank', in AruriNaseer (ed.), Occupation: Israel
over Palestine (Massachusetts,
1989), pp.
442–3.
4.
TarakiLiza'Mass organisations in the West
Bank', in AruriNaseer (ed.), Occupation: Israel
over Palestine (Massachusetts,
1989), pp.
442–3.
5.
A few of the 'standing
project' initiatives survive to this day in the form of agricultural
extension projects, daycare centres, and clinics - although the latter two have
suffered massive funding setbacks.
6.
This is especially true of the
'women's centres' such as the two Women's Affairs
Centres (Nablus and Gaza), the Women's Studies Centre and the
Women's Legal Rights and Law Centre (both in Jerusalem). These centres
initially saw their goal as strengthening women's agendas within the
factional women's committees in response to the historical experience of
women's issues being marginalised within the nationalist
factions.
7.
Public opinion polls in the West Bank and
Gaza bear witness to the left's shocking lack of popular support today.
The former Communist Party (the Palestine People's Party), as well as the
two splits of the Democratic Front, garner only 1 per cent support each, while
the Popular Front does comparatively better with a meagre 6 per cent. In
contrast, Fatah is supported by more than 40 per cent, while Hamas comes in
second at about 15 per cent. Poll carried out by the Centre for Palestine
Research and Studies, 17–19 November 1994.
8.
This is not say that the occupation made it
easy for NGOs to operate - but that controlling them had become less of a
priority during the 1990s, in sharp contrast to how Israel actively sought the
destruction of the mass movements in the early 1980s and the popular committee
period at the beginning of the intifada.
9.
See PNGO Network
Newsletter (Vol. 1, no. 1, October
1994). The network was able to avoid membership requests by
Islamicist organisations through its discussion of principles - which is
agressively secularist and calls for women's rights. A sister network in
Gaza was set up in the winter of 1994, made up of a small steering committee of
eight Gaza NGOs.
10.
The position paper is reprinted in
English in ibid., p. 3.
11.
The local head of the DFLP used a June
1995 NGO conference in Jerusalem to publicly upbraid the
Minister of Social Welfare on the authority's poor record on both
democracy and administration.
12.
BargouthiMustafa'Palestinian NGOs and their role in building a civil
society' (Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, n.d.). For
a similar position see the discussion by Dr. Iyad al Sarraj in
thePNGO Network Newsletter, op. cit.
