ABSTRACT
If international actors see in NGOs an important component to promote certain values and advance a form of political pluralism through civil society assistance, Palestinian NGOs must also address their local constituencies, or better respond to their demands and critiques. In that light, and after the previous considerations on civil society as a source of autonomy (Chapter 2), NGOs cannot be studied but through the lenses of socio-political mobilization in the domestic arena and through the discursive and organizational interaction with international donors. The task now resides in the analysis of the donors’ view(s) on civil society promotion, how they treat differently the two Palestines depicted in Chapter 1, and how external support might influence the self-understanding of Palestinian civil society. We are not looking here at donors coordinating their efforts to broker a crippled peace deal – this has been done elsewhere and thoroughly by Le More (2008) – rather we will look at how donors’ influence the structuration of the field and concept of civil society in the OPT. Civil society is now at work, so to say.
