Note: Questions and answers were condensed for clarity.
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As the war in Gaza rages on and is streamed for the world to see, many perspectives and ideas are circulating about how to put an end to the bloodshed. As I write, a ceasefire appears to be at a stalemate, Rafah is under siege, and the World Food Programme has declared humanitarian operations to be “near collapse.” At the same time, Spain, Norway, and Ireland announced their intent to recognize a Palestinian state, sparking hope of a future after the genocide.
However, opinions on what the future of a Palestinian state would look like are unclear, and Western involvement, as it has so often before, threatens to overshadow the views of the Palestinian people. As a result, I decided to interview Naila Farouky and Rudayna Abdo — both prominent Palestinian women in the humanitarian sphere whose work revolves around helping those in conflict zones and now, especially, attempting to help those in Gaza.
Naila Farouky is the CEO of the Arab Foundations Forum (AFF), a membership-based network of donors and philanthropy actors in the Arab region promoting effective aid distribution and increasing social impact. Rudayna Abdo is the CEO and founder of Thaki, a non-profit organization making digital learning accessible to refugee populations. Thaki develops educational software and downloads it onto second-hand laptops, distributing it among refugee and vulnerable populations. I asked them how they support Palestine now and how they think we can address the underlying grievances of this conflict.
As those who work in the humanitarian sector, how has your work changed because of the conflict in Gaza? What actions are you taking in support?
Farouky: “We have a member based in Gaza, and that member is still there. He has been our main point of contact. He works for a member organization of our network called Tawasal. Ammar is their director of philanthropy and programming, so he has been our contact throughout their membership.
For our fundraiser under the banner of AFF, it was important to me that we amplify Palestinian-based, owned, and led organizations. We wanted to ensure they were based in Gaza, not just on the West Bank, and have a crew, even a skeleton crew, based in Gaza. The idea was that a ton of aid was stopped at the border, so we wanted to support aid mechanisms that were already there.
We also launched a secondary pooled fund hosted by AFF, where we receive the money on behalf of our community-based organizations in Gaza, and then we distribute that money directly. It is trust-based. We send it $5,000 at a time while Ammar, on the other side, goes to the bank, withdraws the money whenever he can, goes out, and buys necessities or gives out cash handouts to people to buy food. We wanted to find a way to make direct donations to the hands of people and not have a lot of red tape around it.
And then the last thing we launched was the Humanitarian Relief and Recovery Task Force. It launched because we recognized that a lot of our members and network members were saying, ‘We need a concentrated space where we can all get together and build toolkits to use in this crisis, but then also in other crises that come up.’”
Abdo: “We are involved in roundtables and brainstorming groups to see how we will reach the children of Gaza. Even before this war started, we were not able to bring used laptops into Palestine. In the short term, when even food and essential aid are largely blocked, I think this will continue to be a huge challenge. The best way is to source them locally, so we are hoping to partner with businesses within the West Bank. As for reaching children in Gaza, it will likely continue to be challenging, but we will keep trying.
Our learning platform does not need the internet since our learning material is loaded onto laptops for offline learning, but you need power for the devices. If people can access solar or other power to charge their laptops and the internet is not available or spotty, they can still learn by accessing the beautiful content on the laptops. Both open source and licensed material. I think there is a strong role for Thaki to play in the education crisis in Palestine.”
Israel is being accused of using famine as a weapon, and some Palestinians in Gaza are living on only three percent of the international standard of water intake. If the violence were to stop tomorrow, what do you think are the most important issues to address?
Abdo: “The very first thing is to get them the basics of life: sustenance and shelter. All these things cannot even [be] there. Essentials cannot get in. And then I think that the education community is unanimous that the very first thing that has to be done is deal with trauma. And that is because it is unprecedented. I mean, you are seeing what I am seeing. I do not know how people are going to move forward with life. How are people going to heal from this trauma?”
Farouky: “Food, shelter, health care. Those are the three. But from a socio-political standpoint, I think the primary grievances are inequities in geopolitical dynamics. I think that we are seeing a seismic shift worldwide. I think this genocide has opened a Pandora’s box that is impossible to close.
And it is not just a question of hope for stability in the region; no region is stable. I mean Europe is a disaster. The US is on the brink of absolute and utter chaos. Africa is a disaster — look at Congo, look at Sudan. In general, we are seeing the collapse of the major institutions that we were led to believe are for our benefit. There needs to be a power shift — there needs to be a decolonization of aid, of development. In many cases, those of us who come from, or have lived in, colonized lands also need to decolonize our mentalities and the colonial frameworks that get embedded subconsciously.”
Before the war broke out, a 2022 study by Save the Children reported that four out of five children in Gaza were “living with depression, grief and fear.” However, technological advances can make psychosocial support much more accessible to vulnerable populations. What is your experience with technology being used to help deliver psychosocial support?
Abdo: “We just completed a two-and-a-half-year project, funded by the Dutch government, where we worked with our partners TNO, a research innovation organization, and we took the social-emotional learning program that TNO had developed for young children in South Sudan and adapted it for the Lebanon/Middle East context. Through this project, we took the science of the program that they had built with their child psychologists and adapted it into a digital program, ultimately resulting in an app that is Arabic, self-guided, and can be used offline. And in the development process, we also tested this in five schools with over three hundred children in Lebanon, showing significant results.
Farouky: “Before working in the philanthropy sector, I used to be a producer at Sesame Street, and I used to produce international adaptations of the show. I did this for thirteen years, and one of the adaptations was the Palestinian one.
In the Palestinian version, we were starting to build the curriculum, like in many cases, to focus on things like girls’ education. But in the case of Palestine, suddenly, the content producers said, ‘No, we do not need girls’ education. We need to focus on boys’ education. We need a full focus on male empowerment.’ We asked how come, and they said, ‘There is an entire generation — two generations now — of boys growing up in Palestine without any strong male role models because their uncles, their brothers, and their fathers have all been killed or imprisoned.’ It was such an eye-opening revelation that this is a situation where the boys are disempowered, where their spirits are broken, and where they do not have role models.”
According to the UN, “Access to Education” is a Sustainable Development Goal, because of its ability to “reduce inequality” and “foster tolerance between people.” What role has education played in creating this conflict? And how do you think it could be used to resolve those grievances?
Abdo: “I think education is core. I think education is critical. And I am not talking propaganda — I am talking education. The mantra that I grew up with, as a Palestinian, is that your education is the only thing that you can take with you. Palestinians, for decades, have valued education. We are one of the highest educated communities in the world, so decimating educational infrastructure hits us hard.
And I do think that education is core to peacebuilding as well. For us at Thaki, in our work, we have numeracy-literacy content. But we also curate content that deals with peaceful coexistence, with strategies to live in harmony. We are not the content creators; we are getting this proven content from other providers. You can curate the type of content brought in or added to children’s education. And let us be careful. I think there needs to be scrutiny over what children everywhere, and in Israel, are learning because we are seeing so much misinformation and a lack of information. So, if we want to stay away from politics, we can still address things related to how we can coexist, negotiate, and speak.”
Farouky: “Palestinian refugees are some of the most educated people in the world. And that is very much a trauma response. This insistence on higher education is a trauma response. So that we would never live like destitute refugees, or at least seem like destitute refugees, because we are refugees, right?”
As has been said, the Palestinian diaspora is known to be highly educated and economically empowered. The support coming from this community since the war broke out is significant. What do you think the role of the diaspora will be in a post-conflict context?
Farouky: “Whether it is rebuilding in Gaza specifically or reimagining an entire new state, I do not think that any of that can happen without very intense contribution by the Palestinian diaspora. On the one hand, I think that this includes a political contribution. I think the next leaders of Palestine, or at least interim leaders, will be a mix of diaspora Palestinians who have had the luxury and the privilege of being educated outside of the region, and locally born and raised Palestinians. I think it is non-negotiable that there needs to be a leadership change, whether it is in Gaza or the West Bank. Everyone generally [recognizes] that there has been a failure of leadership and that there needs to be some galvanizing leadership for Palestine.
And then I think because the Palestinian diaspora is quite economically empowered, they will play a huge, important role in helping not just to rebuild, but to reimagine what a free, liberated, autonomous state looks like and then, how it is funded.”
Abdo: “Reflecting on this war and how the Palestinian diaspora has come together in a way that I have never seen us come together before, it just shows that our identity carries. Seeing how the younger generation has responded, even for those with Palestinian heritage but so far removed linguistically and geographically, shows you that you cannot erase a people. You cannot annihilate a history. What is happening now in Palestine is a justice issue. It is a colonialist issue. The [Global South] that has been colonized is saying ‘no.’ And it is an unresolved issue that has been going on for decades.”
Edited by Isaac Code
