Recent scholarship has highlighted the little effectiveness of the aid industry in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories, and even its complicity in sustaining the Israeli occupation. A blind faith on economic development to keep alive the “peace process”, as well as the dominant “post-conflict” framework that has shaped most development intervention since the Oslo accords, have contributed altogether to bury the root causes and socio-political realities of this particular context. Less research has been done about the micro-geographies of aid intervention and the ways in which these practices are negotiated, implemented, and contested. The aim of this conference is thus to critically explore the ways in which aid intervention reshapes the socio-political, spatial, economic, and environmental relations, in addition to thinking about alternatives forms of aid that respond to Palestinians needs and rights not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also elsewhere.
Dates: 27/28 September 2010
Venue: Said Khoury Development Studies Hall – Birzeit University
Location: Birzeit, Occupied Palestine
Organizers: Middle East and North Africa Research Group (Ghent University)
Center for Development Studies (Birzeit University)
Supporters:Birzeit University Ghent University Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad – University Development Cooperation (VLIR-UOS)
Conference Program
Monday 27th September 2010
8:15 – 8:45: Registration
8:45 – 8:50 | Opening Remarks
President Birzeit University
8:50 – 9:00: Opening Remarks
Samia Botmeh, Director of the Centre for Development Studies, Birzeit University
Sami Zemni, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Research Group, Gent University
9:00– 9:30: Keynote address
Mark Duffield, Bristol University
Aid, Territories and People
9:30 – 11:30: Session One: The legacy of Aid in Palestine’s colonial present
Perspectives on Palestinian (de-)development
Jamil Hilal, Independent Researcher
Civil society in the context of settler-colonialism and the establishment of the PA
Islah Jad, Birzeit University
NGOs and the Depolitization of Palestinian Social Movements
Jalal Al-Huseini, IFPO
The refugee aid industry during Oslo
11:30 – 11:45: Coffee break
11:45 – 13:45: Session Two: Palestine as a humanitarian space
The humanitarian politics of testimony
Ilana Feldman, George Washington
Naive humanitarians, exemplary victims, and the limits of humanitarian space
Hassan Jabareen, ADALAH The discursive and spatial performativities of law
The political economy of food aid to Palestine
13:45 – 14:45: Lunch break
14:45 – 16:45: Session Three: Development, Neoliberalism and Security
The Limits of Peace building under Occupation: an Analysis of the Palestinian Reform and Development Plan
Dawood Hamoudi, Stop the Wall Campaign
Donor money. Israel Economic Vision
Aisling Byrne, Conflicts Forum
The development of neo-colonial structures under the guise of state-building
Eileen Kuttab, Birzeit University
Building a neoliberal citizen. Education and the reproduction of aid.
Tuesday 28th September 2010
9:00 – 9:30: Keynote address
Patrick Bond, University of Kwazulu-Natal
Post-liberation aid, finance and neoliberal public policy: The case of South Africa
9:30 – 11:30: Session Four: The political logics of donors (and recipients)
Development Mythology in Occupied Palestinian Authority Areas
Benoît Challand, European University Institute
Foreign donors and the power to promote and exclude
Guy Burton, Birzeit University
Revenue without a cause: Arab financial assistance in Palestine
Ayman Abdel Majeed, Birzeit University
Perceptions of Palestinians towards international aid
11:30 – 11:45: Coffee break
11:45 – 13:45: Session Five: Development under occupation
The economic dimensions of prolonged occupation: Continuity and change in Israeli policy towards
the Palestinian economy
Jad Isaac, ARIJ
Environmental Colonialism
Hassan Ladadweh, Birzeit University Facing Palestine’s uneven development
The “Eastern Border”: developing Area C
13:45 – 14:45: Lunch break
14:45 – 16:45: Session Six: Encountering and contesting the aid regime
Iyad El Riyahi, Bisan Challenging development as normalization Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, Badil Political advocacy. Reverting and challenging the neutrality of the aid paradigm Rina Jabaree, Adalah Aid and subjugation. Palestinians inside Israel Nora Lester Murad, Dalia Indigenous Resource Mobilization for Palestinian-led Social Change & Development 16:45 – 17:00 | Coffee break17:00 – 18:00 | Session Seven (round-table discussion): Imagining alternatives
