ABSTRACT
After having studied the return to prominence of the concept of ‘civil society’ in Part I of this book, Part II showed some of the shortcomings of ‘civil society at work’. This chapter draws some conclusions about the most salient problematic features of the impact of international aid. Undoubtedly the situation of heteronomy that is facing large sections of Palestinian civil society is the most severe problem, not so much for the donors (who hold the knife), as for the population itself which needs a sense of domestic cohesion in critical periods. Civil strife that has characterized so much of the political life in Palestine since Hamas came into power in January 2006 and the coup in Gaza in June 2007 is a sad illustration of the incapacity of Palestinian elites (of any faction) to relate to the most urgent needs of the population. Some of the elites are challenged by popular discontents and protests emanate, for parts, from the scene of civil society that we have described at length here.1
