Elham Bayour
Palestinian residing in the USA

Palestinian women are caught between the still; existing racist Israeli occupation, the discontents of the so-called "peace" and Palestinian women disappointment by the political direction of the Palestinian Authority's institutional development that emphasizes traditional male leadership, capitalism and globalization and increase their marginalization in political decision-making and economic growth. Western NGOs de-politicized Palestinian women and corrupted their ideology by forcing them to normalize with the Israeli occupiers through what they call "democracy", "building a civil society" and "human rights".

Western NGOs (European, American and Canadian) have been introduced to the Palestinian society under the disguise of donors, promoting: charitable and human rights work, democracy and building up of a modernized civil society. Palestinians know that these NGOs are used as a cover to hide the ugly face of imperialist regimes in the countries of the Third World that suffered greatly from western capitalist colonialism, late imperialism and currently globalization. The other ugly side of the NGO phenomenon came as a new tool for globalization that advocates westernization, which serves as the last development of capital's domination and hegemony over the World. Through this domination, any opposition from local leaders, academics and intellectuals who are not involved or agree with the Oslo Peace Accord were deprived from the finances to the level of alienation that drove most of them to declare "loyalty" to imperialism.

So, the suspicious and puzzling dilemma is that Palestinians are forced to accept this western, unjust tyranny, while they are still under the Israeli racist occupation. They are compelled to execute what the west coerce them to do under the slogan of human rights and normalization with the occupier, despite the fact that these issues are not priorities on the Palestinian people's agenda. This raises doubtful inquiries of the level of these Western NGOs collaboration with the occupier and the degree of their implementing the Jewish State oppression over the indigenous Palestinian population. It is important to note that the term "Normalization" is a new term in the Arabic political discourse and it means normalizing relationship with the abnormal entity, the occupying Jewish State.

Finally, the Western NGOs employ a number of methods to force Palestinian women to normalize with the occupier in an effort to shift their attention from mobilizing and grass-root organizing in order to render them less effective, therefore "normalized" as a way to be "westernized" and late "globalized".

Palestinian National Authority
President Yasser Arafat