160 children attend the Kindergarten you built.• As a result, 20 embassies, U.N. Agencies, and NGOs invested in Al Aqaba Village.• Thanks to your donations, the Ibn Rush’d Library hired a full-time Librarian.

• 5 visiting teachers stayed in the guesthouse you built, with the 6th teacher coming soon!  Please enjoy this video short created by our 2nd visiting teacher, Morgan Bach, on the schoolbus minivan.

Electricity was just installed in our Rebuilding to Remain homes — doors and windows next!

• In April, when Al Aqaba Village became the 1st Palestinian town to issue building permits in Area C, thanks to you, Rebuilding Alliance provided the 1st revolving mortgage loans in Area C.
• In recognition of this and so much more, on December 17th, Al Aqaba Mayor Haj Sami Sadeq was awarded Best Head of Village Council by PA Minister of Local Governments Dr. Kalid Qawasmi.

But it isn’t easy.

• Because you called congress,
  Israeli soldiers left after one night of live-fire training in Al Aqaba village.
• With your help backing lawyers at JLAC, the Jaber Family’s home is standing and animals are safe in their barns.

But it isn’t enough.  According to BIMKOM, over 12,500 demolition orders have been issued in Area C, and our partners at UNOCHA are seeing a sharp rise in demolitions and forced evictions to make way for illegal settlements.  UNOCHA’s Displacement Working Group writes today about the imminent risk of forced eviction facing a Palestinian family, the Shamasneh family in Sheik Jerrar East Jerusalem.  Amos Gvirtz wrote in his series, Don’t Say You Didn’t Know #342, that on Christmas Day, “a Palestinian farmer in the town El Khader (near Bethlehem) discovered that some 200 of his olive trees had been cut down presumably by settlers from Neve Daniel.  It is not the first time.”

With your encouragement, we formed a technology team to bring Ushahidi Crowdsource Mapping tools forward.   Lea Park’s Palestine Crisis Map won “Ushahidi Deployment of the Week” in November, and we launched the Stay Human Conference Calls to Congress series to bring Palestinian and Israeli Peacemakers to you — and to your congressional staffers. Teacher/blogger Morgan Bach and I went on the road in December to see if sister groups would join us to invite their members and congressional staffers to calls with leaders of the projects in their care — and everybody said yes.

What we learned, matters.  Every Congressman, every Senator, states on their website that they will intervene on a constituent’s behalf with any federal agency when an urgent matter needs attention.  So staffers for even the most conservative congressman will privately call the State Department when you ask for their urgent assistance to save a home, a school, or an olive grove.  Your call makes them call the State Department and the Israeli Embassy.  And their calls work.

So often in these past ten years, I’ve left my small paycheck un-cashed to pay operating costs, working day and night, and wondering how to meet payroll for my part-time staff.   I keep going because I love this work — but with my recent diagnosis of zero stage breast cancer, I’ve been looking long and hard at sustainability for health’s sake. Thankfully the operation is over and I should be fine. But I can’t do this alone.

Please match any part of my donation with a gift of your own. 
Right now we’ve raised about $7800 towards that $35,002 goal.

Our team, Nur Center for Art, Exercise, Enrichment

Thanks to your support, we’re now very close to completing the fundraising to meet Rebuilding

Alliance’s commitment to construct the first three homes in the Rebuilding to Remain program.  More challenging is whether or not the Palestinian National Authority will be able to meet their commitment.  I’ve been meeting with advisers and talking with Mayor Haj Sami to figure out a Plan B and so get the houses finished.   More on this soon.

In the me

antime, I put all my frequent flier miles together and flew to Washington D.C. a week and a half ago to explore ways to move our rebuilding projects and our advocacy work forward.  I was joined by Morgan Bach, our second visiting teacher in Al Aqaba.  Together we met with sister organizations to invite them to join our Stay Human Conference Call series, visited with other NGO building companies to explore new projects, and also met with senior staffers to request their assistance with the State Department.  We visited old friends and made new friends too.

Rabbi Rosen will be hosting Morgan in Illinois!

An especially positive moment came when I joined Morgan for a Lutheran Service only to somehow find ourselves in the 40 year anniversary celebration for N Street Village, a remarkable residential shelter for homeless women.  Forty years ago it must have felt as bleak and hopeless as Israel/Palestine peace feels today, yet they persevered and now N Street Village is a beautiful place and a model for everyone.

With Israel announcing the E-1 punishment for Palestinian statehood and the U.S. Congress announcing various amendments to cut-back U.S. humanitarian aid to Palestine, Rebuilding Alliance’s work is needed more than ever.   U.S.-back mortgage insurance for Palestinian families in Area C could change the game.   Below is a copy of my letter to Diane Feinstein, Senator from California.

Sincerely,
Donna

P.S.  Morgan’s speaking tour con

tinues in December and January.  Please give me a call if you would like to hold a houseparty fundraiser or a speaking event.  My cellphone is 650 440 9667.

Dear Senator Feinstein,                                                                                                                  December 6, 2012
 

Morgan and I outside Sen. Feinstein's office

I am writing as your constituent to ask you to seek clarification on my behalf of U.S. policy regarding American investment in Palestinian housing in ‘Area C’. 

Please forward my letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

I am the founder of Rebuilding Alliance, a U

.S. nonprofit organization that offers mortgage loans to Palestinian families in Area C to help them build their homes on the land they own.  Rebuilding Alliance’s pilot project is called Rebuilding to Remain. We work with Israelis as advocates and use the

Israeli legal system to pursue building permits and petition to freeze demolition orders.  Three homes are now in construction in Al Aqaba Village in the northern Jordan Valley near Tubas where in 2004, Rebuilding Alliance built a kindergarten that serves 160 children/year.

Here’s the challenge:  despite holding clear title to their land, 97% of the buildings in Al Aqaba Village — including the kindergarten — have been issued demolition orders by the Israeli Army.  When Rebuilding Alliance requested mortgage loan insurance, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) said U.S. government policy requires denial of mortgage insurance to Palestinian families in Area C.  This can’t be true.

Just outside Senator Feinstein's office, Hart Bldg

Rebuilding Alliance works to help Palestinian families in Area C build their homes on the land they own, find employment, educate their children, and plan their future. I know the U.S. seeks to realize these goals as well through USAID programs to support Palestinian infrastructure development in Area C.

While OPIC insures Palestinian mortgages in Areas A and B, their mortgage loan insurance does not extend to Area C because the Israeli Army refuses to issue building permits to Palestinian families living there.  As you may know, the Israeli Army is denying Palestinian master plans and thus denying building permits to Palestinian families in Area C while the Government of Israel is simultaneously issuing building permits to illegally expand Israeli settlements on occupied land. The Israeli Army denied Al Aqaba’s 3^rd master plan on June 21^st 2012 for no good reason. 

On Mar. 14, 2012, Al Aqaba Village became the first Palestinian village in Area C to issue building permits, realizing both the text and the spirit of the Oslo Accords.  On Apr. 14, 2012, Rebuilding Alliance became the first group to provide mortgage loans, including a clause stating that if the home is demolished, the family will not make payments until occupancy is restored.   I ask your help to make OPIC mortgage loan insurance available for Rebuilding Alliance’s Rebuilding to Remain mortgage loan program to fully develop this revolving mortgage loan program.

Please ask Secretary of State Clinton to issue a policy directive instructing the Overseas Private Investment Corporation to guarantee Rebuilding Alliance’s mortgage loans in the Rebuilding to Remain program.  Please ask her to make U.S. policy clear:  starting with Al Aqaba, recognize the right of Palestinian villages in Area C to issue building permits in accordance with their master plans —just like towns throughout the U.S. — and support that right by providing U.S.-backed mortgage insurance.

I look forward to your prompt reply.

Sincerely,
Donna Baranski-Walker
Founder & Executive Director

Hosting Stay Human Conf. Call from Nur Center, VA

Morgan speaking in our Stay Human Conference Call

The Palestine Vote had just passed at the U.N. !

The founders of N Street Village, Luther Place DC

Thank you again for making it possible to realize a dream in the creation of the first Palestinian Birthing Center in Area C, the Jordan River Valley.    We’re getting closer to project implementation as we work to address three important questions:  (1) Customs Approval, (2) Staffing for 24/7 access, and (3) RI Matching Grant paperwork.

Customs Approval:   This is especially challenging because we must seek approval from at least 2 and possibly 3 countries, each with their own regulations regarding the import of refurbished medical equipment.  Do it wrong and there could be tariffs or huge delays.   The Rotary Club of Ramallah have been researching possibilities and meeting with Palestinian ministries seeking advice and waivers of tariffs and taxes.  Assist International is in touch with the Israeli Ministry of Trade to confirm that they are providing a waiver of tariffs and taxes as well.  While in Washington DC, I met with American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) to learn how they approach challenges like this and received their offer of help too.  We’re closer now to moving forward.

Staffing Up for Round-the-Clock Care:  As you know, babies are born on their own schedule, so round-the-clock staffing will required for our Birthing Clinic.  That’s the staff we’ll be training as part of this project.  When we first drafted this proposal with Al Aqaba’s Mayor Haj Sami Sadeq, we assumed the Palestinian National Authority would readily provide the staffing needed when the time came.  However, sanctions leading up to and following the U.N. vote for recognition of Palestinian statehood, mean that the Palestinian government is unable to pay its current staff and in no position hire new staff.   Recently, the director of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, Dr. Allam Jarar and Dr. Ruchama Marton of Physicians for Human Rights — Israel spoke at Stanford University Medical School.  I asked both for their help.   Next step: I’ll soon contact the British Consul General in Jerusalem to ask if British funding is available for staffing, as the British built Al Aqaba’s clinic building.  If you have an in with the British Foreign Service, please ring me at 1 650 440 9667.

Transfer of the Rotary International Matching Grant Funds:   this should be straight-forward once all i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed.  Overall, that approval of the RI Matching grant is just good, significant because some seven Rotary Clubs in the SF Bay Area signed-on to help, along with the Rotary Club of Nazareth Israel and the Rotary Club of Ramallah Palestine.

I want you to know that you are part of a dream that took shape back in 2008.  You see the light at the end of the tunnel, and usually only the next two steps ahead are visible.  Take those two steps, reach out to all who can help, and the next two steps become clear.   Happy Holidays, Happy New Year!

With love and gratitude,
Donna

P.S.   GlobalGiving is offering a remarkable 100% match for new recurring donations — our Birthing Center will certainly benefit from and deeply appreciate your long-term commitment.   Throughout the entire month of December, GlobalGiving is matching new monthly recurring donations 100% up to $100 per donor.   This could be a wonderful gift for the holidays!   To participate, click the Donate button and select “Recurring Donation”.

Morgan holding a map of West Bank Areas A, B, & C

Morgan Bach, our 2nd visiting teacher in Al Aqaba Village, is now in Michigan starting her U.S. speaking tour!   We sent her there to attend the Students for Justice in Palestine conference.  Today she is speaking at the First Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor, standing-in for Palestinian nonviolence leader Iyad Burnat who was prevented from entering Jordan despite holding a U.S. Visa.

1st stop: Peace Lutheran Church in Danville CA

The wonderful travel stipend you provided through your donation to this program brought Morgan to Al Aqaba Village where she spent eight months volunteering as teacher, writer, and aspiring filmmaker (remarkable films). A graduate of Whitman College, she was in New Orleans working as a teacher when she found Al Aqaba through Rebuilding Alliance’s campaign to save the kindergarten that hundreds of Americans helped build.

160 children now attend our kindergarten!  It keeps Al Aqaba Village standing, attracting new investment despite demolition orders — we hope that is a positive model that audiences will want to explore and support.  Morgan will share her stories, photos and films to introduce Al Aqaba and discuss Area C, the 62% of the West Bank controlled solely by Israel where over 12,000 demolition orders have been issued by the Israeli Army to Palestinian livelihood structures build on their own land.   Morgan will describe new interfaith building projects there, and introduce a new way to reach Congress here, on behalf of 149 Palestinian towns at-risk in Area C.

Here are Morgan’s destinations:

• Nov 4^th-Nov 9^th: Michigan
• Nov 9^th-Nov 13^th: Chicago and maybe Ohio
• Nov 15^th-16^th: Washington D.C.
• Nov 17^th-18^th:  NY, NJ
• December:  Seattle area (and she may join me to speak in Irvine)

Please give me a call at 650 440-9667 if you would like to gather your friends and organize a house party or speaking event to hear this dynamic speaker!

Morgan's grandfather created mural, Peace Lutheran

We have some good news!  We have been notified by our friends at Playgrounds for Palestine that they will provide a grant to allows us to begin construction of a third Abir’s Garden Playground right away. Ideally, we would like to use your donations to cover the construction and meeting expenses of Combatants for Peace who will be coming together for this construction.

The “Combatants for Peace” movement was started jointly by Palestinians and Israelis, who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence; Israelis as soldiers in the Israeli army (IDF) and Palestinians as part of the violent struggle for Palestinian freedom. After brandishing weapons for so many years, and having seen one another only through weapon sights, they decided to put down their guns, and to fight for peace.  Rebuilding Alliance joined when a child, Abir Aramin, was killed by an Israeli soldier’s rubber-coated steel bullet.   She was the daughter of CfP founder, Bassam Aramin and his wife Salwa.  Together we created Abir’s Garden: a Safe Place to Grow as a way to build good in memory of this beautiful child.

Thanks to your help, this will be our 3rd Abir’s Garden playground!   Our first playground was at Abir’s school in Anata East Jerusalem.   The next was in Al Samoa Simya in the south of the West Bank.  This time we are asking Combatants for Peace to go north — and that means we’ll be working with CfP’s Northern team for this project.   We have a site in mind: right next the Al Aqaba Kindergarten, in a village at risk of demolition in Area C.   ‘God is in the details’ so we will be updating the project description as soon as the new plans are confirmed.  More info coming soon!

Please note, GlobalGiving.org is holding their Bonus Matching Grant day on Tuesday Oct. 16th starting at 9:01pm Pacific time.   They will give away $50,000 and they way this competition has been going, we expect that to happen in the first 2 hours.   If you would like to give, please set your clock — GG will match your donation by 30%.

Sincerely,
Rudy

Inshallah, we will finish Shahad's home soon

Dear Friends,

I hope you’ve had a wonderful summer!   You’ll be happy to know that construction of the first 3 homes in our Rebuilding to Remain program has reached beyond the halfway point. Everyone, especially the families, are eager to finish these homes and move in!

Now the bad news:  I need to tell you that construction stopped just before Ramadan.  Even though Rebuilding to Remain placed 10^th in the Global Giving Matching Grant Competition, we fell short of our fundraising goal.  In early July, we transferred all the funds we had raised.

Ours is not the only source of funding for the project.  The Palestinian National Authority has committed $13,000 per home and we had hoped they would transfer their share to keep construction moving forward.   Rebuilding Alliance Board Chair Carin Pacifico and I flew to meet with the Ministry of Finance and received assurances that these funds would be transferred as soon as they are able.

Perhaps you’ve read of the demonstrations and consumer riots in the West Bank because the Palestinian Authority cannot yet meet payroll.   According to the Maan News Agency, “The PA is waiting for the US Congress to approve a request by President Barack Obama’s administration to pay $200 million to the Ramallah-based government. A hoped-for $1.1 billion in 2011 reached only $750 million, as pledges from Gulf states in particular fell short.”

What next?

1)    We must meet our commitment:  $20,000 per home of which $5000 is grant and $15,000 is loan.  Please mark your calendar for October 17^th, the next GlobalGiving Bonus Day!  Starting at 9pm Pacific time on Oct. 16^th, every dollar donated will be matched by GlobalGiving by 30%.

2)    Can you join us as a Bonus Day Captain to ask 10 of your friends to donate too?  We’ll coach you by phone and email, and invite you a conference call with Mayor Haj Sami!  If you would like join us, please give me or Rudy a call at 650 325-4663.

3)    This is a critical time for Al Aqaba and all Palestinian Villages in Area C.
As the world turns to elections and the very real possibility of war with Iran, we’re one of the only groups watching and working to keep this vulnerable area safe.   Next week, Morgan Bach, the teacher who spent 6 months in Al Aqaba as a visiting English teacher is joining us at our shop to help launch our campaign for Al Aqaba in advance of the October 14^th Israeli High Court review of demolition orders near the homes we are building.  We have designed a cool Ushahidi mapping system to help Contact Congress and Morgan will be setting-up a speaking tour too.  More soon!

Thank you again for your support, your patience, and your encouragement.   Thank you for being there.

I am writing to update you on the project, Teaching in a Village under Demolition Orders, which you have supported with your generous contributions.

During the GlobalGiving Matching grant competition, this project received donations of $1041 which generated a match of $561!  Very exciting.  The donors asked us to use these funds specifically to buy books for the Ibn Rush’d Library!

More good news:  The Palestinian Authority has notified Al Aqaba Village that they will pay the salaries of two new teachers!  This means the kindergarten will have room for 20 more children.  The challenge here is that in general the Palestinian Authority does not have the funding needed to pay salaries.  What should we do if this promise cannot be fulfilled by the time school begins in September?   Do you think Rebuilding Alliance should organize a Kindergarten scholarship fund for needy children?

Perhaps you remember our first visiting teacher to Al Aqaba, Ms. Kali Rubaii.   Kali returned this summer with filmmaker Maurice Jacobsen to interview families in our Rebuilding to Remain program.  Kali, a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology now UC Berkeley, is working with her professors to set-up a study visit to Al Aqaba for her Congressman Sam Farr.

You’ll be happy to know that Save the Children has been sponsoring a summer camp for the children of Al Aqaba!  In addition, Al Aqaba’s guesthouse continues to welcome a steady stream of visitors!  Koreans, Brits, Americans and Israelis are all visiting.

While in the West Bank, Kali interviewed two new visiting teacher candidates, an American and an Estonian.  One, Patrick Fogerty, recently arrived in Al Aqaba.  He was a teacher at Project Hope this summer and will stay in Al Aqaba for about a month.  More about Patrick in our next email.

We continue to look for new teachers for the Fall Semester.   If you know someone who you believe would be excellent, please ask them to get in touch with us to fill out an application!

As always, please send me any questions or suggestions.  I look forward to your thoughts.

I hope you are wonderfully proud of both the Abir’s Garden Playgrounds now completed in memory of Abir Aramin.  These wonderful play areas and family meeting spaces are realizing our dreams, so carefully developed in Abir’s memory: “a safe place to grow. A place where children can be children and step out of the occupation into a world of play and imagination, kindness, and warmth.”

For all these years, even as we worked to build the Abir’s Garden playgrounds, Rebuilding Alliance together with the Aramin Family and Combatants for Peace have done our best to press for laws that will keep soldiers and guns far away from schools.  In 2008, Rebuilding Alliance brought the Aramin Family to testify at the State Department’s Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Group.  In 2009, with the help of the Carter Center, we brought her lawyer, Atty. Michael Sfard of Yesh Din, to meet with the State Department as we submitted transcripts of the failed investigation by the Jerusalem prosecutor, to begin a long process to invoke an important U.S. Human Rights Law called the Leahy Law.  Michael Sfard told them, “Sometimes people think that if you do nothing following a human rights violation, the problems will just stop or go away — instead, they get worse.”

Not long ago, the US State Department released its Human Rights Report for 2011, Israel and the Occupied Territories.  Based on our meeting with a member of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor last December, I feared that our long efforts to pursue the Leahy Law on Abir Aramin’s behalf would come to naught but instead, by what was written about Abir in the Human Rights Report,  a door remains open in the application of this law. I expected the Leahy Law would help most in the Middle East, but it suddenly came closer to home when in Fall 2011, the Israeli Border Police joined the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department in the Oakland CA area for training, just before the County Sheriff’s Department violently broke up the Occupy Oakland Movement. Due to what happened to Abir Aramin, the U.S. Leahy Law prohibits U.S. aid and training for the unit involved, the West Bank Unit of the Israeli Border Police, until the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Upon reading the U.S. State Department report, Abir’s father Bassam Aramin was hopeful, writing “Just remember one thing about Abir’s cause, justice must win even if it takes a long time.”

On a positive note, we’ve already raised just over $7000 towards what will be the 3rd Abir’s Garden Playground.   I have asked Combatants for Peace to visit Al Aqaba village in the north, near Tubas, in Area C to consider citing the next Abir’s Garden there so to keep this village standing and to reinforce their message of neighborliness, recovery, and peace.  Al Aqaba Village is also inviting the Northern Group of Combatants for Peace to use their guesthouse as a retreat space to advance their important work.

Thank you, once again, for supporting the Abir’s Garden Playground Project.  We’ll be in touch again soon as plans take shape for the 3rd playground in memory of Abir Aramin!

Sincerely,

Donna

P.S.  My colleague Rudy, found this amazing video, documenting Combatants for Peace in action during one of the early phases in the construction of the Al Samoa-Simya Abir’s Garden:

“On the Fourth of July, when their American friends are on holiday, Israeli High Court Justice Esther Hayut will decide whether or not to demolish a Palestinian family’s home, their goat barns, and three other small businesses owned by other villagers. The plaintiffs, all residents of the Palestinian Village of al-Aqaba located in the Jordan Valley in Area C (the 62% of the Occupied West Bank that Israel solely controls), turn yet again to the Israeli courts with hope. Justice Hayut would do well to affirm the villagers’ fundamental human rights and freeze all demolition orders while the High Court considers a new master plan rightfully designed to include all the land the villagers own.”

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