Rebuilding to Remain in Palestine's Al Aqaba

First, to all who have made this project take shape, I thank you for your wonderful support through these many years.

I am writing to decribe and frankly, to celebrate the progression of Rebuilding to Remain from pilot project to program.  In June, 2017, I closed the successful pilot project Rebuilding to Remain in Palestine and opened its sequel, Phase 1: Rebuild to Remain in Palestine. 

This week, the GlobalGiving Bonus Day will give Bonus grants on Thursday, Oct. 5th.  Sixteen families are in construction and need help to finish.  Let's start by funding the revolving, affordable finishing loans to the six families who are building just outside the center of the village.  They most need us - you, me, and hundreds more - to share their risk and join the advocacy to keep their houses standing.

Please use this link to make a donation on Thursday, Oct. 5th.  GlobalGiving is matching all donations all day, up to $1000 per donor.  With your help, Rebuilding to Remain will win a bonus prize for most donations and/or most donors!

Our new program, Rebuild to Remain, is so positive that after 15 years of good work, Rebuilding Alliance (RA) is formally opening a branch office in Palestine!  That photo above shows Rasha Mahmoud, RA's Program and Philanthropy Manager, Mayor Haj Sami - Mayor, head of Al Aqaba's Housing Association, and our partner in the Joint Venture, me (RA's E.D), and Aws Alnabulsi, Technology and Operations Director.   Below is a recap of how we got here and where we're going.

Early History: Building the Kindergarten in Al Aqaba
It all started in 2002 with a $10,000 donation from a family foundation that asked RA to build a school with the caveat: don’t let it get demolished! The mayor of Jenin said,  "Consider a village called Al Aqaba. They want to build a kindergarten."   But no outsider could travel there. In 2003,  I presented my paper, “Rebuilding Homes: A Social Venture Plan to Finance and Rebuild Palestinian Neighborhoods”, at a UN conference in Geneva.  That paper laid the foundation of what we seek to do now, 15 years later, including a revolving loan program and insurance.   There I met the UNRWA team who said they would get me to Al Aqaba — and they did.

When I first met Al Aqaba’s mayor, Haj Sami Sadeq, that summer he conveyed his clear and gentle vision: bring his village home (— they were driven out by Israeli live-fire training exercises), first by building a kindergarten, and then building homes, all the while launching enterprises that offer jobs, so families could afford to stay. When Rebuilding Alliance started, we thought we were simply adding a roof to the existing building. Just a month later, when I brought Cindy and Craig Corrie to visit, Mayor Haj Sami was digging a new foundation! I quietly (and nervously) reminded him that the small grant was just enough for a new roof, and he explained that because the roof would be poured concrete, a new foundation would be required. He was right.  He said, “Don’t worry, just keep asking for donations, and we’ll keep building.” And that’s what we did!

When an international director from Habitat for Humanity flew in to say we might be the most important peace project in the Middle East, we dotted the i's and crossed the t's to register as a nonprofit organization. Cindy and Craig Corrie were among our founding board members.

Rebuilding Alliance helped Al Aqaba build their state-of-the-art kindergarten — but the building includes so much more! The three-story(!) building also houses the mayor’s small office, the conference center, the Ibn Rush’d Library, part of the Al Aqaba Tea Factory, and soon, the Guest House expansion.  That vibrant building brought some 20 countries to invest in Al Aqaba, thus bringing 20 diplomatic corps, including the U.S., to advocate for this village.

Demolition Orders — and learning how to ask Congress to help
In 2004, while we were building the kindergarten, the whole village came under demolition orders. I reached out to a U.S. Consulate official named Prem Kumar.  A few weeks later, that consular official stopped the bulldozers in Al Aqaba as RA rushed forward to help the village hire a lawyer. As their case went to the Israeli High Court in 2008, Robb Ketron, a remarkable Rotary past district governor from Baltimore, taught us how to walk the halls of Congress to get Congressional staff to make private calls to the State Department and the Israeli Embassy to keep the village standing — and it worked!

Later in 2008, Mayor Haj Sami and the Rural Women’s Association Director Raheya, along with a founding board member of Bimkom: Planners for Planning Rights, visited Congress at RA's invitation. This Contact Congress initiative became the basis for Rebuilding Alliance’s advocacy program that now includes the villages of Susiya, Umm Al Kheir, and Khan al Ahmar so far. We also took everything we learned and codified it into our patent-pending mobile app, Evincible (coming out on iPhones soon). Now we are ramping-up our Contact Congress actions because these are dangerous times — we must do more to stop the ongoing crisis of demolitions.

Political Risk Insurance Recap — when will they let us apply?
I first asked to apply for the U.S. Political Risk Insurance (PRI) program in 2006 to protect against the risk of demolition, while Mayor Haj Sami organized the village credit union. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC, a U.S. agency under the purview of the State Department), offers this program to small American companies to encourage U.S. business overseas by protecting against loss from acts of politically-motivated violence or expropriation.  Seems applicable.

Here's a recap of why they blocked our application:

• 2006: OPIC phase 1. "Can't apply because they don't have building permits" 
  
  
• 2012: Our response:  Al Aqaba issued their own building permits =)
  
  
• 2013:  OPIC phase 2. “Against (unwritten) U.S. policy”
  
  
• 2015: Members of Congress advised us to learn more about that unwritten U.S. policy because no one has ever heard of it before.  As a result of our inquiry, The State Department sent me a letter encouraging me to ask OPIC again. 
  
  
• 2016: OPIC phase 3: "Clear to apply for any West Bank Area C project no matter the size"
  Our application was nearly ready in Jan, 2017 but then,
  
  
• 2017 January:  OPIC phase 3. “First we need to partner with Palestinian bank to offer loans.”
  This seemed like a Catch-22, as the banks had all said they needed risk insurance before they would join us.  Then a breakthrough: a Palestinian bank signed an Letter of Intent with Rebuilding Alliance in April, 2017.   OPIC asked us to provide an executive summary of Phase 1 (finish 15 homes) and Phase 2 (build 15 new homes) of our Rebuilding to Remain revolving affordable home construction loan program. They got back to us in June.
  
  
• 2017 June: OPIC phase 4. “Too political and too risky.”  But, after all, isn't that what  “Political Risk Insurance” is for? We did our best to prepare with the PRI team and anticipate the screening committee's every inquiry and concern but we learned that someone at the State Department told OPIC this is not a priority right now, and in addition, the PRI team noted, "This is too risky because there is a conflict of jurisdiction."   That should have been easily resolved by referencing international law, recognizing Al Aqaba's right to issue their own building permits and plan their future. 

Sixteen Homes in Al Aqaba
The good news is that when I brought the Palestinian bank to meet with Mayor Haj Sami, fifteen families in Al Aqaba were already constructing new homes!  A sixteenth started soon after. They all need small loans to finish and move in. The bank was impressed by the mayor, the village's credit union, and the whole village (Al Aqaba welcomes all who come in peace, they have a great park, a guest house, three factories, and are entirely handicapped accessible) and by Rebuilding Alliance's advocacy and long-term commitment.  The bank pledged to manage the affordable revolving loans and to match our investment by co-investing — but on further reflection, the bank's board chair realized that any direct participation would leave them open to retaliation by the Israeli banking authorities.  Thankfully, due to a fortuitous introduction by the Rotary Club of Ramallah, a director from the Palestinian Monetary Authority joined us at the meeting with the board chair.  

The PMA noted that Al Aqaba's Housing Association is already fully qualified to issue loans to its members. We need not wait for a bank.  Rebuilding Alliance and the Al Aqaba Housing Association can get stared!  Now things are moving fast:

1. RA needs a branch office to legally sign the agreement with the Housing Association so after nearly 15 years as a grant-maker in Palestine and Israel and an advocate for peace and justice, Rebuilding Alliance is opening a branch office in the West Bank!   All good: Our paperwork was validated in the State of California in accordance with Palestinian National Authority procedures, and our lawyers filed with the relevant Palestinian ministries in August only to learn that they changed the rules.  Non profit branch offices are no longer allowed to register. So instead, I'm in Palestine this week to sign a fiscal sponsorship agreement with a Palestinian Non-Governmental Organization.
   
   
2. In late May 2017, our team met with key members of Congress, visited the Palestinian Ambassador’s office, and met with the Political Risk Insurance Director at OPIC. In September, we brought a child from Palestine and human rights defenders to speak to Congress at the #ICareAboutPeace Congressional briefing.   We also met with the State Department and we have everyone's positive attention;
   
   
3. This week, our team is negotiating the agreement that will define the roles and responsibilities in the Rebuild to Remain program, describing how the Housing Association and Rebuilding Alliance will move forward;
   
   
4. We have raised $16,810 toward our $87,000 Phase 1 goal to finish six of the sixteen homes. We want to get those families moved in soon.
   
   Please mark your calendar for Thursday morning October 5^th, if possible at 6am Pacific, and and give to Rebuild to Remain in Palestine. That’s GlobalGiving’s next Bonus Day, and your donation - up to $1000 - will be matched all through the day until the competition closes at 9:00pm Pacific. Please ask your friends to give too.
   
   
5. I’m now in Palestine.  If you have questions or suggestions, please call me at +1 650 440-9667 or locally at +970 568 351822.
   
   
6. We are ramping-up our advocacy program.   Susiya and Khan Al Ahmar are facing very real danger as the Minister of Defense in Israel is stating they will be forceably removed by April.  It is up to all of us — you, me, and hundreds more — to press our members of Congress to intervene to keep these villages safe and standing.

Thank you for believing in us and for holding on to hope. I look forward to updating you soon, as our Rebuild to Remain in Palestine program - Phase 1 takes shape and gets wings.

Sincerely,

Donna

P.S. Did you know that you can now find Al Aqaba Village on Google Maps? In April, in response to Rebuilding Alliance’s repeated and ever-more-creative requests, Google added the 236 Palestinian villages in Area C to Google Maps! Type Al Aqaba, Palestine into Google Maps to see =) Now our Mapping Engineer will be heading to Google next week for the Geo for Good Summit - and soon, our intern will be holding a Mapping Palestine Mapathon in Palo Alto CA  using  Open Street Map.  If you and your friends would like to hold a mapathon, please be in touch!