"If the lack of European financial support continues, many Palestinian socio-cultural organisations will close", warns Moustapha Sheta, director of the Freedom Theatre, based in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, where a new Israeli raid killed four Palestinians on 30 October (interview by OLJ).
On 9 October, two days after the Hamas attack on Israel, the European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, the Hungarian Oliver Varhelyi, caused a stir by declaring on X (formerly Twitter) that all payments to Palestine were being "immediately suspended". Later that day, in the face of an outcry from several Member States, including Spain, Ireland and Portugal, the European Commission finally announced that it wanted to "review" its development aid programme for the Palestinians, i.e. almost 300 million euros in 2022 and 1.7 billion euros planned between 2021 and 2024. The aim? To ensure that no European funding enables any terrorist organisation to carry out attacks against Israel", said the Commission.
To survive in the face of the forthcoming drying-up, Nidal Kaabi believes that Palestinian cultural organisations must learn to "reduce their dependence on this aid by developing income-generating activities and sharing our resources". For him, there is no question of "giving up the right to resistance in order to receive financial aid".
Others go further. For example, the Adaleh coalition, which defends the socio-cultural rights of Palestinians, announced a boycott of institutions supporting the state of Israel, like NGO Adalah boycotting Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.
Photo: A street destroyed in the Jenin camp in the West Bank after an Israeli raid on 30 October. Photo: Reuters.