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 Home Overseas Projects The Middle East Region Strategy
Middle East Strategic Plan 2005-2008
29 March 2006
Since we were established by ACTU in 1984, Union Aid Abroad – APHEDA, has supported development and relief programs with the Palestinians via in long-term partnerships with local non-government organisations
Food security beneficiaries - Gaza
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Background - Program Context
In September 2000 a new round of confrontations began in Israel and in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, ending the hopes invested in a decade of peace negotiations. The closure of borders and check points has cut the incomes of Palestinian workers, and Palestinian communities are under siege, resulting in over 2 million people living in poverty. Recently, there have been new moves towards peace, with Israel undertaking a withdrawal of settlements from the Gaza Strip, however, this has been offset by the consolidation and expansion of other settlements, particularly around East Jerusalem.
Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA believes that both countries, Israel and Palestine, have the right to live in peace within internationally defined and secure borders. Both peoples have the right to national self-determination. Since 1948 only one of the two nations has been able to exercise this right.
A political solution to the conflict is imperative, and both peoples should turn away from violence and force as a way of achieving security and independence.
Israel must renounce state-terrorism against Palestinians, while all Palestinian organisations must renounce suicide bombings and actions against civilians in Israel as a means of ending military occupation and of winning independence and statehood.
The United Nations Resolutions (including UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338) must be respected. Israel must cease its 35 year military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and return to live within its pre-1967 borders, in exchange for peace.
International Humanitarian Law (the Geneva Conventions) should be respected by all parties in the conflict, particularly in relation to allowing medical, emergency and relief workers to reach those in need unimpeded.
The dispossession of Palestinians of their land in order to construct illegal settlements must cease.
There needs to be a just solution for the Palestinian refugees in accord with international law and United Nations resolutions.
We believe that sustainable peace in this region is central to global peace. The continued cycle of violence and terrorism is creating terrible suffering for both Israeli and Palestinian non-combatants, and traumatising whole communities. Positive humanitarian and peace-building efforts are urgently required. Union Aid Abroad and our Palestinian partner organisations are committed to promoting the international humanitarian law and international conventions against terrorism.
Union Aid Abroad - APHEDA's work in the Middle East
Our humanitarian support has been in response to ongoing violations of the basic human rights of Palestinians, and their limited access to services and economic opportunities as refugees and/or under occupation. Persistent violence, intimidation, restriction of employment opportunities, and decreasing access to health and education facilities, make living conditions in both the Palestinian Territories and the refugee camps in Lebanon extremely harsh. Since 1984 Union Aid Abroad has assisted refugees in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip through training projects in partnership with non-politically aligned and non-sectarian Palestinian humanitarian organisations in areas of:
- health and aged care
- literacy
- vocational education and livelihoods
- agriculture, environment and food security
- gender rights and women's skills
- organisational capacity-building
- conflict/trauma management
- early childhood development
Key issues for Palestinians
- Palestinians still do not have their own nation state in which they can live at peace within internationally recognised borders
- Palestinians living within the State of Israel face discrimination, and Palestinians living under military occupation in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem face severe restrictions on their most basic rights.
- There are over 4.1 million Palestinian refugees (as registered with UNRWA in 2004) and displaced people since the war of 1948, and more than 4 million Palestinians living outside historic Palestine, many in very constrained camp conditions. They continue to demand the right of return to their homes according to international law.
- The construction of the so-called Security Barrier, or Separation Wall, condemned by the International Court, is cutting Palestinian communities off from their own land, their access to water, schools, markets, health services and social contacts. The Wall is illegally confiscating Palestinian land and making a viable Palestinian state with contiguous territory impossible.
- Increased land and resources being confiscated from Palestinians as the number of illegal Israeli settlements expand on Palestinian land. The CIA Fact Book reports in 2004 that there are over 187,000 illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank, 5,000 in the Gaza Strip and 177,000 in East Jerusalem.
- In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees face severe economic and political discrimination, with limited opportunity for living outside the densely congested camps, for employment or for education.
Key strategies of Union Aid Abroad in the Middle East 2005-2008
- Projects empowering women and targeting those who are economically and socially disadvantaged and marginalised.
- Strategic partnerships with and support for, local organisations in key refugee camps and the West Bank and Gaza, to build civil society and essential services.
- Responding to the new crisis with emergency assistance, but continuing to meet expressed needs of Palestinian communities for developmental training programs adjusted to the current constraints, in particular around food security and livelihoods.
- Health, including community health worker training, health promotion, conflict and trauma management, empowering people with disabilities.
- Literacy, ESL, computer and vocational/on-the-job training as requested by partner organisations
- Early childhood education and child care for working mothers.
- Human rights training and institutional capacity building for Palestinian NGOs and community organisations.
- Advocacy for funding and human rights concerns for the Palestinians both in Australia and the Middle East, in collaboration with trade unions, community organisations and other international development agencies.
- In accordance with international law and UN Security Council Resolutions 242, 338 and 1402, advocacy for an Israeli withdrawal from the settlements and military occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.
Current projects
West Bank and Gaza
- Food security in Southern Gaza, with MA'AN Development Center
- Medical relief program with El Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital, Southern Gaza
- Medical relief program with Patient's Friends Society, Jenin
Lebanon
With the Women's Humanitarian Organisation in Burj el-Barajneh camp:
- Child-care and early childhood education
- Medical, physical & psychological care for the elderly and disabled
- Vocational training for women
Future directions depending on funding opportunities
- Food security and livelihood support for vulnerable communities.
- Medical care.
- Early education for refugee children in Lebanon.
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