CSOs and Social Service Provision

Abstract

The 2008, 2012, and 2014 Israeli wars on Gaza, with their destruction and loss of human life, required a large scale intervention by international donors to support Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction efforts. However, the highly isolated and impoverished Strip was under the control of the de facto Hamas government, which is considered a terrorist movement and boycotted by the international community. Hence international donors had to find other local partners with whom to collaborate, bypassing the de facto Hamas government.

In a fragile and conflict-ridden context like the Gaza Strip, where the de facto Hamas government faces isolation and lacks international recognition, understanding how international donors influenced the reconstruction and recovery policy agenda and its implementation is very important. Using the Transitional Actors Influence (TAI) framework, this book examines what mechanisms international donors employed to influence domestic policy, and what the perceived impacts of their policy interventions were. These mechanisms influenced the roles and relationships of international donors, civil society organizations (CSOs) and de facto Hamas government. The TAI framework provides an opportunity to examine how, because of the importance and significance of donor funding relative to domestic government budgets, donors’ influence in these fragile contexts essentially weakens the veto power of legitimate, democratically-elected veto players. The research also examined donors’ decision-making processes and preferences and their overall impact on the existing governance structures in the Gaza Strip.

With boycott policies in play, international donors were unable to work directly with the elected de facto government. At the same time, international donors were obliged to continue their aid to prevent a further humanitarian crisis from escalating and a total collapse of the peace process. International donors chose to work with CSOs as an alternative to working with government to avoid direct cooperation and contact with the de facto Hamas government. Therefore, CSOs acted as intermediaries between the government and international donors. Moreover, since recovery and reconstruction projects were delivered with limited involvement from government; as a result of the no-contact policy, the situation raises questions about how relevant the concepts highlighted in the “governance without government” literature are to this fragile country context. The findings in this book indicate that involving the non-governmental sector is not a solution for the weak government problem. The limited presence and influence of government led to many undesirable outcomes resulting from poor policy coordination and the absence of a comprehensive vision for the future. Most notably, the formal absence of government under the no-contact policy resulted in the short-term quick-fix nature of policy solutions at the expense of sustainable, long-term policy solutions.

This book has produced three main findings. First, international donors created a parallel operation involving, to a large extent, CSOs and UN agencies to plan and implement recovery programs. CSOs played an intermediary role between the government and international donors. The aid policies adopted by international donors have contributed to expanding the role of CSOs at the expense of the Hamas government, creating tensions between CSOs and the government. Such policies have possibly granted CSOs near-veto powers in terms of prioritizing and implementing recovery and reconstruction needs, turning CSOs to almost a shadow or substitute government. Second, international donors did not maintain a neutral status, as they should in conflict-ridden contexts. The positions donors took against a major player like the de facto government increased the rift between Hamas and Fatah. As a result, donors have weakened their positions as potential future brokers for national reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Third, international donors agreed to deliver recovery and reconstruction programs under strict Israeli restrictions, which affected the outcomes of such programs. Instead of challenging the restrictions, international donors ended up implementing programs that lacked development components and focused mainly on provision of basic and humanitarian assistance, making occupation policies less costly to Israel while keeping economic conditions fragile in Gaza.

This book expands on the existing analysis of transnational influence found in the public policy literature while contributing to our understanding of the concrete, and more specific, impact of international donors’ financing on the livelihoods of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. In the end, the book shows that “governance without government” does not seem to be a solution for weak government involvement in a fragile country context such as Gaza. The weak presence of government in the recovery and reconstruction efforts led to poor policy coordination and a short-term focus of policy solutions.