The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite Donors, International Organizations, and Local NGOs

This book aims to inquire into the ways in which external actors influence Palestinian NGOs in terms of their development policies and their relative promotion of democratization, and secondly, to investigate the capacity of Palestinian NGOs to contribute to the elaboration of global agendas through transnational activism and global conferences. In order to circumscribe this broad problematic, the empirical data was drawn from organizations working within three sectors: in health, in gender and development, and in human rights and democracy. As the empirical investigation for this study proceeded, this study became aware that an examination of the sites where the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ intersect and intertwine is inseparable from an analysis of the effects of new transnational relations, specifically the aid system, and their impact on local social formations. This is to say that local actors and social structures do not remain static, but are transformed as they are drawn into new transnational relations and then seek to negotiate their place within the aid industry and their relations with donors and international NGOs.