Community Assistance Program

 

2003 Grants: Jerusalem Fund Summer Trip to Palestine

 
"Headquarters of President Yasser Arafat, Ramallah Palestine."

The Jerusalem Fund Summer 2003 fact finding mission to the West Bank provided many opportunities to assess the effectiveness of current programs and approaches, to witness firsthand the effects of Jerusalem Fund grants to worthy organizations and to accurately judge the funding needs of current and prospective grant recipients.

 

Among the organizations visited by the Jerusalem Fund during the summer trip were the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute, the Arab Women's Union of Ramallah, Atta Services -Aid to the Aged, and BADIL.

 

The Jerusalem Fund provided an emergency grant to the HDIP and its director Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi in order to support the operations of the Palestine Monitor web site. (www.palestinemonitor.org) The Palestine Monitor is a web site that features the latest news about Palestine and the occupation, selections of excellent articles from all over the world, fact sheets and reports, maps, information about other important Palestinian organizations and links to the world of Palestinian information on the internet. The services that the Palestine Monitor provides are in many ways unique and their cessation would be a grave loss to the Palestinian cause.

 

Another organization in need of urgent assistance was the Arab Women's Union of Ramallah. The Jerusalem Fund board approved a grant dedicated to the retirement home project that the Arab Women's Union is implementing.

 

Getting around in the West Bank is often very complicated, and transportation difficulties prevented Jerusalem Fund representatives from spending sufficient time at the offices of BADIL in Bethlehem, but details on BADIL's activities can be obtained from their website (www.badil.org). 

 

A visit to several of the computer labs installed by the Jerusalem Fund as part of the ongoing computer lab project (specifically those in villages in the Ramallah area) revealed that more assiduous maintenance and upkeep of the computers will be necessary in the future. Though the schools who had received computers were grateful, without proper maintenance the performance and utility of the computers was severely diminished. With these long-term considerations in mind, the services of Maher Hashweh of the Qattan Foundation were retained to provide an "on the ground" representative of the Jerusalem Fund.

 

The Law Center at Birzeit University:

 

Birzeit is the largest and most influential university in the West Bank. It draws students from all over Palestine as well as dozens of foreign countries. The student body is very politically active. With the intensification of Israeli military operations and the concentration of active resistance to the occupier in the hands of the Islamic militias, Birzeit students have been politically drawn toward those factions. In the welcoming activities for new students it was apparent that the most influential organizations campaigning for the attention and political support of the students were Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

 

In order to support the battered Palestinian civil society the Jerusalem Fund brought an emergency grant dedicated to the Law Center at Birzeit and presented it to the President of the University, Dr. Hanna Nasser.

 

 

The Jenin Charitable Society:

 

"The Jenin Charitable Society"

Located in a large building on the outskirts of the city of Jenin, in close proximity to the Jenin refugee camp, the Jenin Charitable Society (JCS) boasts a wide variety of services and facilities. All of these are provided to the needy populations free of charge. The JCS is the sole provider of many specialized services for the 200,000 residents of the northern West Bank.
"Playground at the Jenin Charitable Society"

 

One of the original projects the JCS operated was a program of loans for University students. These were to be eventually paid back at little or no interest by the students according to their ability, but since the beginning of the intifada, none of the JCS's outstanding loans have been repaid, leading to a net outlay of over 140,000 Jordanian Dinars (over $220,000).

 

Another ongoing project provides remedial classes for students studying for the tawjihi exams. Due to the tremendous disruptions in schooling caused by endless Israeli attacks and closures, many students have been prevented from completing their full class programs in school. The remedial classes the JCS hosts, both in Jenin and in one other location, seek to make up for the class time and educational opportunities lost at the hands of Israel's occupation forces. The classes are all free, with teachers' salaries paid by the JCS, and feature all of the major subjects students are tested on in the tawjihi. Approximately 200 students come to the JCS location in Jenin for this service. There is another location that serves more than 60 students who are not able to regularly attend classes in Jenin.

 

In addition, the JCS hosts supplemental classes in English, French and Hebrew as well as vocational instruction in sewing
"The Jenin Charitable Society provides vocational training."
and hairdressing. The JCS has a fully equipped beauty salon that is enjoyed by many students seeking to expand their career opportunities.
"Beauty School at the Jenin Charitable Society"
To reiterate, all of these classes are provided free of charge.

 

The only center for hearing and speech-impaired children in the Northern West Bank is located at the JCS. Currently the facility is in the process of being transformed into a boarding school, to alleviate the difficulties that the children face travelling to school from various increasingly isolated villages and towns in the area.

 

One of the upcoming projects for the JCS is opening a computer center to service the greater Jenin area. Once again, this would be the first and only such facility in the area. Currently the JCS has obtained 5 computers for its lab, but has outfitted adequate facilities to accommodate 20-25 computers. The JCS has specially wired labs waiting for computers to fill them.

"Testing room for hearing-impaired children"

 

Another nascent undertaking is a library suitable for students, from the youngest up to University level, and open to the public. Currently the library's holdings amount to only a few shelves of mostly children's books. But the JCS is seeking additions to the collection.

 

During the previous year's Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp,

"View of the Jenin refugee camp - The central area containing more than 600 homes was leveled by the Israeli army."

  the JCS was uniquely suited to provide emergency aid to the residents of the camp whose homes were attacked, and many destroyed, by the occupation army. For nearly a month almost 1000 newly homeless refugees took shelter in the JCS building, and were provided with the basic necessities and emergency aid despite the fact that the JCS itself had no electricity or water for more than three weeks.  




 

 

 

Baladna:

 

Baladna was formed to compensate for the lack of organizations specifically directed towards Palestinian youths growing up in Israel. Though the founders of Baladna saw many Zionist youth organizations designed to instill a sense of identity and purpose in Jewish Israeli youths, Palestinian citizens of Israel were deprived of a similar service. Consequently, no unified Palestinian identity has taken root in the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Most identify themselves either with their local community or with their religion, but the lack of a unified national sentiment is apparent. Baladna hopes to rectify this situation.

"Palestinian icon Handala on the wall at the Baladna office."

 

The problem begins in the Israeli educational system. Although there are separate facilities for the education of Israel's Palestinian minority, even these are not controlled by Palestinians. Palestinian children are not allowed to learn about any Palestinian nationalists or nationalist literature. According to Nadim Nashaf, Director of Baladna,

"Nadem Nashef, Director of Baladna"

( the Palestinian teachers in the Israeli school system are scared. They are concerned for their jobs and will not exceed the limits placed on them by the oppressive Zionist ideology Israel's schools push. Although private schools are better, most students can't afford them. Altogether, there is more freedom of thought in the Jewish Israeli school system than for the Palestinians. For instance, Jewish Israeli students might be allowed to discuss Palestinian nationalist poetry, but Palestinian children would not.

 

The Israeli government delayed the registration of Baladna for 14 months, eventually prohibiting them from officially using the name Baladna. The Israeli government apparently feared that the name was too provocative, and might instill nationalism in the Palestinian youths of Israel.  The organization is legally known in Israel as the Association for Arab Youth.

 

Baladna is pursuing many projects at this time. One of their most important is a three-month training session provided to potential youth leaders. Youths are selected from all over the territory of what is now Israel and given a scholarship and a training course focusing on instilling values of national identity in their peers. Each year the courses extend to more villages and cities, with the hopes of covering as much of Israel as possible. This program has been very successful and Baladna is hoping to expand the scope of the training sessions.

 

The grant provided to Baladna by the Jerusalem Fund was used to buy a projector and other equipment to show films directed toward an Arab and Palestinian audience. At one film festival of Jordanian and Palestinian films from the West Bank Baladna drew almost 700 people, largely university students, to see the films. In giving these films a wide public viewing, Baladna is performing a service that is invaluable to the Palestinian citizens of Israel. This same audio-video equipment has been used to lend out to other organizations with similar goals and projects, thus further expanding the usefulness of the grant.

 

Some upcoming projects for Baladna include a large summer concert featuring Arab music and a Palestinian book fair. In the book fair Baladna will offer more than 5,000 books obtained from various sources but all concerning Palestine to the public. And finally, in November there will be a 5 day conference in Nazareth featuring Palestinian and European organizations and activists meeting to discuss a whole range of topics.

 

Baladna hopes in the near future to be able to implement a student exchange program with American and European students. The aim will be to bring students who are either Arab, Muslim, or from other minority groups, like African-Americans, to travel to 1948 Palestine and to experience life in Israel as an ethnic minority.

 

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