• "Do No Harm"

By Mary B. Anderson

What is the role of international donors in complex conflict settings? How can the providers of humanitarian and development assistance take seriously the impacts they inevitably have on conflicts without overstepping their assistance-focused mandates and without compromising their commitment to political neutrality and impartiality? These questions have been at the heart of the work known internationally as the “Do No Harm Project,” which is a collaborative effort of many UN agencies, donor governments and international and local NGOs begun in the early ‘90s. Through this project, many individuals and institutions involved in international assistance have examined and analyzed the interrelations of international assistance that is given in conflicts to the dynamics of those conflicts. This work has now included over forty conflict areas.

“DO NO HARM”

REFLECTIONS ON THE IMPACTS OF

INTERNATIONAL ASSISTANCE PROVIDED TO

THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

Report of Visit from May 9 – 17, 2004

by Mary B. Anderson, Executive Director, CDA Collaborative Learning Projects

____________________________________________

CDA Collaborative Learning Projects

130 Prospect Street, Suite 202

Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

www.cdainc.com

CONTENTS:

Purpose of the Mission: The Questions 1

Section I: Brief Introduction to Do No Harm Lessons 2

Section II: Impacts of Donor Assistance on the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict 3

Do No Harm Analysis 3

Donor Programming Options 6

Section III: Impacts of Donor Assistance on Conflicts within the Palestinian Society 8

Do No Harm Analysis 8

Donor Programming Options 10

Section IV: Conclusion 11

Appendix: Do No Harm Framework 13

Purpose of the Mission: The Questions

What is the role of international donors in complex conflict settings? How can the

providers of humanitarian and development assistance take seriously the impacts they

inevitably have on conflicts without overstepping their assistance-focused mandates and without compromising their commitment to political neutrality and impartiality?

These questions have been at the heart of the work known internationally as the “Do No Harm Project,” which is a collaborative effort of many UN agencies, donor governments and international and local NGOs begun in the early ‘90s. Through this project, many individuals and institutions involved in international assistance have examined and analyzed the interrelations of international assistance that is given in conflicts to the dynamics of those conflicts. This work has now included over forty conflict areas.

The purpose of this visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt),

initiated at the invitation of Mr. Fritz Froelich, SDC, was to consider whether and how the learning from these many other settings could or should be integrated into the

programming of the international donor community working in the oPt. It became clear that donor impacts on conflict in this region occur at two levels—on the

Palestinian/Israeli conflict and on the divisions that currently exist, or that threaten to

emerge, between Palestinian groups within Palestinian society.

Approach

The Do No Harm Project (DNH) has always taken an inductive approach, gathering the experiences of aid workers involved in many different kinds of programmes and looking, empirically, at how these programmes affect and are affected by the conflicts in which they are implemented. The approach in Israel/Palestine was also inductive. I interviewed individuals connected to a range of agencies involved in providing, and receiving, international assistance. My intent was to learn from the broad experience and insight of many people involved on a day-to-day basis in various aspects of donor assistance by discussing what impacts they observe aid has (with examples and illustrations) and what they see as options and opportunities for improving these impacts.

As many with whom I spoke know, I came to this region with some genuine doubt as to the relevance of the Do No Harm learning, gathered in civil and interstate wars, to the circumstances of Occupation. However, during my many conversations, it became clear that this learning is relevant and, in my judgment, helpful for understanding and

improving the impacts of donor assistance in the oPt.

In my eight days in the region, I met with 51 individuals (both Palestinian and expatriate) from international donor countries and United Nations agencies, with 11 individuals from NGOs that receive international assistance (again Palestinian and expatriate) and with 5 Israelis involved in some way with international assistance. I also visited a number of programming sites on the West Bank. Unfortunately, because of Israeli/Palestinian violence, my planned travel to Gaza had to be cancelled. I did not meet with 2 representatives of the Arab donor community as most of them are not directly represented in the oPt. Inclusion of these actors in a review of this sort could, in the future, be instructive and extremely useful.

Outline of What Follows

Section I introduces, briefly, the lessons learned through the Do No Harm Project that

provide the analytical underpinnings for what follows.

Section II deals with donor impacts on Israeli/Palestinian relations and Section III with donor impacts on relations among Palestinian groups and within Palestinian society. In each of these Sections, we first outline a Do No Harm analysis and, on the basis of this, provide observations about how donor actions may worsen intergroup relations. We then present ideas for programming options and adjustments that could ensure that donor impacts are positive, rather than negative, on these relations.

Section IV concludes with several overarching points, regarding donor coordination,

impacts assessment and some comments on the extent, and limits, of donor power in

relation to this complex conflict.

Section I: Brief Introduction to Do No Harm Lessons

Four findings from the DNH project have direct relevance to donor assistance provided to oPt. .

1. Even as international donors maintain political neutrality, aid given in conflict

settings cannot and does not have a neutral impact on the conflicts where it is

provided.

2. The resources provided by donors, and the manner in which these resources are

organized and delivered, play into and reinforce the relationships between

contending groups in recipient societies.

3. In all societies, groups in contention are both “divided” by some factors (such as

contending interests, structures, histories or competition over limited resources)

and “connected” by other factors (shared interests, interdependent structures,

some values, aspects of history, etc.)

4. The impacts of donor assistance on conflicts occur as the resources provided (and

the systems of provision) either reinforce and exacerbate the dividers between

groups (thus having a negative impact in that they worsen the conflict) or lessen

dividers (positive impacts). Likewise, impacts are either negative if donors

ignore, undermine and weaken the connectors or positive if they recognize, build

on and reinforce the connectors. Experience shows that the impacts on dividers

and connectors between groups in conflict are never neutral.

[For a fuller explanation of Do No Harm, and a diagram of the Analytical Framework,

see the Attachment at the end of this Report.]

Section II: Impacts of Donor Assistance on the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict

Introduction

Everyone with whom I spoke, without exception (international, Palestinian, Israeli),

agreed that donor assistance to the oPt plays into and reinforces the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. People noted that aid “ relieves Israel of its obligations as an occupier,” that it “ rebuilds whatever Israel destroys” and “ enables” the continuation of such actions, that currently it simply “maintains” levels of poverty resulting from a strict closure regime and other aspects of Israeli control by providing major financial resources for food, employment, etc.

With this agreement, however, there was widely shared discomfort over its implications.

Most people felt that they faced two extreme options – either to continue to provide

assistance and, thus, support the Occupation or pull out altogether. No one liked these

two bad options.

Do No Harm Analysis

Dividers: Occupation clearly divides Palestinians and Israelis. Daily interactions and

prospects for the future are directly affected. As one person said, “Virtually all

interactions between Palestinians and Israelis now occur either through press reports

about violence or at checkpoints in the presence of guns.” This reinforces attitudes of

mistrust, fear, and cynicism on both sides, further feeding separation and its likely

continuation.

Connectors: On the other hand, polls consistently show that the majority of each

population would agree to a two-state solution under certain security assurances, showing that, at some level, there is a broad degree of shared interest between Palestinians and Israelis in moving away from the constant violence. Polls also show that, within each society, the groups who favor total rejection of the “ other” are considered “ extreme” by their own co-nationals who resent being held “ hostage” to these extreme views. (The demonstration of 150,000 Israelis on May 15 in Tel Aviv in support of withdrawal from Gaza conveyed this kind of resentment by many Israelis of the dominance of the extreme settler attitudes on political decisions).

Further, the direct and indirect economic costs to both societies of the continued

Occupation could form the basis for additional “ connectedness.” Although dividers

between Israelis and Palestinians clearly outnumber connectors, there are nonetheless

some important points of common interest that deserve donor attention.

How does donor assistance play into and reinforce (or reduce) these dividers and

weaken (or strengthen) these connectors?

From the experiences told to me, the conclusion has to be that, currently, the patterns of donor assistance have more negative than positive impacts on the ongoing conflict. This is not inevitable! Below under “Options” we discuss some ideas for reversing these impacts. First, we outline how negative, divider-reinforcing and/or connector-weakening impacts occur.

1. Donor Structures. In the capital cities of Europe, decisions have been made that

representatives of the donor processes should work only on the Palestinian side

(based in East Jerusalem, or Ramallah for those who have not had a Consulate in

East Jerusalem except for UNRWA whose HQ was moved from Vienna to Gaza

City during 1995-6) with interactions concerning Palestinian Affairs and Aid

issues for West Bank and Gaza with Israel mainly carried out through the Consul

Generals represented in East Jerusalem, the UN Special Coordinator, The World

Bank and the Norwegian Representative. Other diplomatic activities in relation to

the peace process are taken care of by diplomatic representatives based in Tel

Aviv or at capital level. This multifaceted separation between the assistance and

the diplomatic branches of donor governments reinforces separation between the

two communities with whom they relate. Consequently, the interactions between

the donor community and Israelis often mirror the interactions of Palestinians and

Israelis in their negativity.

2. “Routinization” of the Occupation. In many conversations, it seemed that the

ongoing, daily interactions with the Occupation (closure, check-points,

barrier/wall locations, applications for visas and other permissions, etc., etc.) have

become so “ normal” (and take so much time and attention) that staff of donor

agencies develop an almost routine attitude toward them. Further, these

difficulties are dealt with in an ad hoc way, varying from agency to agency and,

often, addressing one issue, then another, then another.

The results of this ad hoc-ism are two-fold. First, people get caught up in

particular battles and enjoy small “ victories” (such as success in getting a portion

of the barrier moved by ten meters) rather than remaining focused on the larger

issue (the fact that the barrier is separating two peoples and reinforcing an illegal

domination of one group over the other). Second, people lose sight of the

cumulative effects of separate decisions. However, it is the accumulation of many

“ small” actions that constitute the Occupation and reinforce dividers between the

two groups.

3. Relations to the PA and other Aspects of Palestinian Society. The refusal by one

donor to provide any support to the PA reinforces (intentionally) the Israeli claim

that “ there is no one with whom to negotiate.” More problematic for other donors

is the parallel fact that their emphasis on and support to reform of the PA

unintentionally also plays into this Israeli claim in that, without strong

interpretations to offset this implication, the focus on reform stresses failure,

rather than success, of newly formed and still embryonic governmental or public

administration structures. Here we also need to underline that Palestinians never

had a state and were largely lacking the administrative culture for a state. Over

90% of the public administration/governmental functions in Gaza and West Bank

were created after the signing of the so-called Oslo Agreement between 1994 and

2000. A prevailing emphasis on weaknesses in Palestinian society seems to

reinforce Israeli feelings that Palestinians are “ not ready” to be peace partners.

This judgment has not always held; between Oslo (1993) and Camp David

(2000), the working assumption of the international community was that there

was an effective peace partner on the Palestinian side.

4. Non-Coordination. Donor unwillingness or inability to coordinate certain

important aspects of their work reinforces the ability of Israel to move ahead with

various aspects of the Occupation. When donors use disagreement as the excuse

for not cooperating, they convey the implicit message that it is legitimate not to

cooperate with people with whom you disagree (an attitude that pervades I/P

relations).

5. Attitudes. Donor expressions of cynicism, frustration, powerlessness, distrust and

even of hatred mirror and, thereby, possibly reinforce Palestinian feelings that

perpetuate and worsen intergroup dividers. Because much of the programming

work with Palestinians is undertaken to ameliorate the impacts of actions by

Israelis, donor staff often feel the same antipathy toward Israeli policies and

practices that Palestinians feel. These feelings toward policy are often translated

into feelings specifically toward the Israelis who carry out the policies and, by

extension, generalized to all Israelis. (Of course, the policies and enactors of those

policies deserve such feelings. The point here is not that these are inappropriate

reactions but, rather, that donors by adopting and mirroring these reactions

reinforce dividers between the two societies rather than reducing them.

6. Word and Labels. Acceptance and use of the language of Occupation can

reinforce, in some ways, its “ legitimacy.” Words that sanitize actions (such as

“ incursion” to describe dangerous, military entries to Palestinian areas where, at

best, people are threatened and, worse, people die) reinforce the “ business as

usual” feelings on which Israeli policy depends.

Further, labels that apply to entire groups of individuals without differentiating

among them (such as “ terrorists” or “ settlers” ) accentuate dividers. Clearly not all

members of Hamas are committed to terror and, while some settlers are driven by

ideological zeal, others are living in occupied territories as inexpensive

“ suburban” neighborhoods and would, if politics demanded it, be more easily

moved back into Israel proper. Political solutions become more possible with

recognition of differences within seemingly intransigent groups.

7. Use of History. Many Israelis and Palestinians engage in recitations of history as

one way of describing their victimization and explaining/excusing their present

actions. I sometimes heard donors also recite histories as a way of explaining why

nothing new can happen, possibly reinforcing the likelihood that, indeed, nothing

will happen.

Donor Programming Options

How can donors change or adjust programming to ensure that they avoid worsening

dividers and that they recognize and encourage connectors?

Note Well: Even though all agreed that international donor assistance in some ways

supports the Occupation, respondents also agreed that withdrawal of aid is not an option.

Palestinians offered four reasons why they did not favor withdrawal: a) possible physical costs to people who lose support; b) loss of solidarity, c) loss of international witnesses to events in the oPt, and d) loss of hope by conveying the sense that the international community considers the situation hopeless. In addition, experience in other places suggests that withdrawal could increase desperation, and desperate people are not good peace-makers.

In DNH terms, withdrawal makes no sense because it would neither weaken

dividers nor strengthen connectors.

A number of good ideas about options emerged in my conversations.

1. Humanitarian Emphasis on Protection. Many of the daily experiences of closure

and Occupation threaten the physical well being of Palestinians. For this reason,

programming around issues of legal protections (applying, Israeli law, and

International Human Rights Law) is well within an appropriate humanitarian

assistance mandate. Some NGOs have conducted legal aid programmes for

Palestinians over many years, working closely with Israeli human rights lawyers

to take cases all the way up to the Israeli Supreme Court/High Court of Justice.

Donor programming to encourage and expand such legal assistance would

provide direct linkages between Palestinians and Israelis who are both concerned

about protection, would (when successful – which such cases have often been in

the past) demonstrate some of the positive aspects of Israeli society to counter

current Palestinian disgust, and would reduce the dividers that are regularly

reinforced by negative encounters with unlawful actions undertaken in support of

Occupation.

2. Research and Data Gathering on Economic Costs of Occupation. From what I

could learn, a good deal of work on the economic costs of Occupation has been

and is being done. However, I could not locate a full study that showed the direct,

secondary and tertiary net costs to both Israeli and Palestinian societies. Such

numbers, assembled over a period of the past ten years and projected into the

future decade could demonstrate, I suspect, a strong argument for a number of

Israelis to object to Occupation continuation.

These data, assembled to show the costs in both directions, could form the basis

for recognition of shared interests and, perhaps, encourage Israelis who suffer

directly from the national budget squeeze to be more open to exploration of peace

options. If well packaged, these data could constitute the basis for a large public

relations/education campaign.

3. Regular Meetings of Donor Community with Palestinian and Israeli Official

Representatives. As noted in the analysis section above, the structures under

which the international donor community operates separate them largely from

Israeli officialdom as they pursue a development and humanitarian agenda. A

regularly scheduled, annual meeting of donor community representatives, Israeli

authorities and Palestinian authorities could negotiate the terms for delivery of

humanitarian assistance, specify the expectations and obligations of each party,

set priorities that need to be jointly addressed, etc. This could result in a MOU

signed by all parties which would form the basis for complaints about violations

of IHL and agreed-to terms of assistance programming. It would also provide a

regular venue in which individuals from the three groups, tasked with making

appropriate humanitarian response arrangements could, over time, develop

additional common analysis and commitment.

4. Transparency/Outreach Campaign. There are a few programmatic attempts by the

donors to reach into Israeli society in terms that would highlight and reinforce

their common interests with Palestinian society (and vice versa). Without any real

attempts to cross this information barrier, there is no way to test whether there is,

within broader parts of Israeli society (beyond the “ peace” groups), a willingness

to face and end the impacts of the Occupation on children, families, workers, etc.

– i.e. “ people like us.” Few donor publications are translated into Arabic; none,

so far as I could learn, is translated into Hebrew.

Perhaps, donors could develop broad outreach programmes to inform Israeli

society about the humanitarian assistance enterprise and about Palestinian positive

efforts to address their own futures. I do not believe that such “messaging” will

make a fundamental shift in Israeli society; however, experience elsewhere shows

that failure to address and correct prevalent social stereotyping does reinforce

dividers among groups. Regular appearances on Israeli talk shows, coverage of

events other than violence, conveying the results of polls among Palestinian

public, all of these could contribute to a more realistic view of Palestinians among

Israelis who, now, gain most of their information from highly biased news

sources.

5. Lexicography Initiative (Or the “ Spade is a Spade Project” !) To address and

lessen the dividers that are exacerbated by labeling of groups and/or “ sanitized”

descriptors of violent events, donors might undertake a direct effort to identify

accurate words by which to discuss and describe events with which they deal. The

effort should not replace sanitized words with inflammatory language but strive to

find accurate, descriptive language that clarifies issues and events. (It may be

possible to draw on experiences elsewhere to speed this effort along.)

6. Programmers Seminar. For those in the donor community who are interested,

someone could organize a bi-monthly “ seminar” in which a group of Palestinian,

Israeli and donor “ thinkers” meet to re-examine and re-assess donor impacts on

the conflict and to continue to explore options for new approaches and

programmes that could help reduce tensions and support connections.

7. Engage More with the Arab Donor Community. Finally, I realize that I am not

clear about the degree to which European and Arab donors actually interact and

plan together. The fact that I did not hear much about this may mean that the

occasions for doing so are limited such as the AHLC (or it could mean that I

missed it). If there is now little interaction, taking steps to overcome this division

among donors could both improve the overall analysis of donor impacts and

options and also model how people coming from divergent backgrounds can work

together on shared interests.

Section III: Impacts of Donor Assistance on Conflicts within the Palestinian Society

Introduction

Very few donors or recipients of aid had considered the impacts of assistance resources and approaches on dividers and connectors within Palestinian society. Yet it is very clear that the allocation of resources to various Palestinian groups, the distributional effects of choices made by donors about who to target (or not), the incentives that are encouraged by sizable resource transfers, etc. all play into the dynamics of intergroup relations among Palestinians.

Do No Harm Analysis

My brief visit does not qualify me to outline in any detail the dividers and connectors

among Palestinian subgroups. However, in every conversation with donors and

Palestinians in the oPt, I heard a variety of remarks about differences in NGOs, other

civil society groups, between civil society and the PA, etc. People described intergroup rivalries and mistrust, competition among groups and “ factions” within groups.

Furthermore, many described a dynamic, changing picture in which former allies have

become competitors or in which “movements” have become “ institutions.”

At the same time, many of these same people reiterate the common desires of all

Palestinians to have an independent state, to end Occupation, to be free to move, to be

able to plan for the future and to engage in productive economic activities that will last and grow. Strategies for achieving these ends differ, but the goals and loyalty to certain principles and personages are, apparently, still strong connectors.

To trace the real impacts of donor assistance on dividers and connectors within

Palestinian society, one would need to take the time and engage the groups in a more

thorough and specific outline of dividers and connectors than the brief sketch above.

However, knowing that both forces exist within the community, we can outline below

how donor activities interact with these and either feed into fragmentation of Palestinian

society or reinforce its common progress toward a shared and healthy future.

How does donor assistance play into and reinforce (or reduce) dividers and weaken

(or strengthen) these connectors?

1. Distributional Impacts. Donor decisions (or the processes by which such

decisions are made) about who to hire (and not to hire), with which organizations

to partner (and not to partner) and about who shall receive aid (and who will not)

have impacts on relations between those who are included and those who are not.

Further, differences in which beneficiaries receive which kinds of resources, over

what time span and in what order also have such effects. When the aid process

benefits some groups whose identity exactly overlaps with the identity of one of

the subgroups who are in conflict, the distributional impacts of aid reinforce the

divisions between these subgroups. In Palestinian society, for example, decisions

(in some cases formalized) to refuse aid to anyone connected to Hamas reinforces

the division between all those who are in anyway connected to this group and

other groups in society. Because no group is completely monolithic, and Hamas

meets many of the humanitarian needs of significant populations, this kind of

labeled exclusion builds a dynamic into the current social processes that may pose

problems for a cohesive future state. In short, policies that exclude Hamas from

beneficiary groups worsen dividers and undermine connectors. Similar impacts

can be traced in relation to local NGOs with whom donors partner. Who is

selected and how, and who is left out and why, all affect relations among these

groups within the Palestinian community, negatively or positively.

2. Legitimization/de-legitimization and Substitution Impacts. Donor emphasis on

reform of the PA was often cited in cynical terms by Palestinians with whom I

talked. It appeared that the judgments of the international community that

corruption was a problem fed into already existing cynicism among Palestinians

and perhaps contributed to the de-legitimization of the PA among some groups.

As the Ministry of Finance has instituted systems for broad transparency and

accountability, donors have supported this financially and with commendations.

Similarly, some donor supported programmes substitute for government by

assuming responsibility for civilian support that should be carried out by

government. This can undermine and weaken the development of effective state

and municipal institutions and, by doing so, weaken the connections among

groups who depend on these authorities. Approaches that encourage cynicism and

undermine the legitimacy of governance structures reinforce dividers; approaches

that build on strengths and support systems that serve all of society reinforce

connectors.

3. Incentives. Experience shows that, in conflicts, donor assistance can be the only,

or a major, source of income. Employment in the oPt has suffered greatly under

closure so that UNRWA and the PA, as conduits of donor funds, constitute the

major employers and many families depend on them for survival. Unless specific

measures are taken to assure people that there will be employment and income

when peace is achieved, current donor support can become (inadvertently) a

disincentive for taking the risks associated with peace. I did not hear anyone stress

this as important in the oPt, but it would be surprising if there were no issues to be

dealt with on this front, after over fifty years of institutionalized support for

Palestinian refugees. What will the employees of UNWRA do if/when that agency

is no longer needed?

Donor Programming Options

Because the focus of my conversations was, largely, on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict,

did not adequately explore programming options for reducing dividers and strengthening connectors within Palestinian society. However, a few ideas and principles of operation became clear.

1. Identify Specific Connectors. Above I outlined the most general connectors that

were clear in my conversations—namely, the goal of ending Occupation and

establishing an independent State. For effective assistance programming, however, it

would be important for donor staff to work with Palestinians to identify specific,

often more localized, common purposes and shared interests around which to

develop programmes. With some effort to do this, ideas would likely emerge (if

experience elsewhere is repeated here) where groups that currently disagree and /or

compete with each other could agree on some common efforts. The idea is not to

create a disagreement-free society. (That would be dull!) Rather, the responsibility

of donor assistance is to ensure that, where its resources are channeled supports

cohesion and the development of joint efforts across the schisms in societies, rather

than ignoring these and inadvertently feeding into them.

2. Develop Strategies for Encouraging Public Accountability. Addressing corruption

and weaknesses in societies without, at the same time, encouraging cynicism and

internal divisive criticism (as discussed above) is a challenge for donors in all

conflict areas. It would be foolish to ignore corruption and failure. The issue is how