Sugar Cubes

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in a war,
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

- Pink Floyd

Ghada Karmi
Saturday December 31, 2005
The Guardian

This month has seen a flurry of high-level activity designed to fund the Palestinians under occupation. A private sector investors’ conference took place in London to discuss ways of boosting the Palestinian economy. It followed the G7 finance ministers’ meeting at the beginning of December, which pledged its support, saying that “economic development of the West Bank and Gaza is an indispensable element of lasting peace in the region”. And in the summer, the G8 summit at Gleneagles promised the Palestinian Authority an annual $3bn for three years. Next March, the donor countries will decide their allocations to the PA.

Sounds good. But will these donors pause to consider that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is set to continue so long as they remain prepared to underwrite it? The Palestinians’ dire need for help is indisputable: the PA is virtually bankrupt and has asked for an immediate injection of $200m, just for basic services, between now and next February. Humanitarian aid alone, however, will not solve the problem.

Working in Ramallah, as I have been, makes this fact glaringly obvious. The kidnapping of aid worker Kate Burton and her parents in Gaza this week is a sharp reminder of the political context of aid. Normally, international aid reaches the Palestinians directly, but also through myriad international NGOs. They are thick on the ground in Palestine: it was estimated in 2003 that were 38 in Ramallah alone and 60 overall, in addition to 80 Palestinian NGOs funded by them. The relationship of funders to NGOs here is complex and potentially coercive. There are consequences for the ablest and best-educated Palestinians, who now work for these NGOs, increasingly distant from the less fortunate in their own society, on projects that do not necessarily reflect local priorities.

The need for renewed funding often obliges NGOs to shape their agendas to those of donors, sometimes in contrast to their own beliefs. In 2004, for example, the US Agency for International Development insisted that Palestinian NGOs pledge not to support anyone with “terrorist links” as a condition for further funding. More blatantly, the EU threatened last week to withdraw all funding if militant groups were allowed to participate in forthcoming Palestinian elections. Subtler forms of pressure are also common, and will inevitably affect the political decision making process.[Continue…]

In 2004, the 20th Haifa International Film Festival established a section for “New Palestinian Cinema” in cooperation with Masharaf magazine in Haifa and several Palestinian filmmakers were invited to present their films. A number of us at the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) contacted some of these filmmakers to urge them not to participate in that Festival. There were two main reasons for that:

the first was that the film festival was sponsored by the Israeli government and held under the patronage of Limor Livnat, a minister in Sharon’s government and a member of the Likud party well-known for her racist and Zionist positions and actions, and the second was the fact that a boycott of the festival had been started in 2002, two years earlier, by “Gaslight,” the producers of the British documentary “Sunday.”In their withdrawal letter to the festival, Gaslight wrote:

“… of the many lessons that flow from the story of Bloody Sunday, key among them is the ethical political and long-term military folly of governments attempting to impose military solutions on civil and human rights problems.
“We take this action in support of the Palestinian people and in solidarity with Palestinian artists and filmmakers. It is also done in solidarity with those within Israel (both Israelis and Arabs) who are speaking out and acting (e.g. refuseniks) against the government’s murderous policies against the Palestinian people.”

PACBI’s position was that on the one hand, boycotting the festival would fortify an international position with a Palestinian one, and on the other set a precedent that would hopefully spread to other cultural events in Israel. Thus a cultural boycott of Israel would become the norm, as it was in the case of apartheid South Africa. [Continue]