The Effectiveness of Civil Society Organizations’ Interventions in Supporting Women’s Issues in Palestine: Between the Reality of Support, Actual Needs, and Required Policy Responses

Executive Summary

Women-led and feminist Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) operate within an exceptional and highly complex context. The Israeli occupation, political division, legislative paralysis, and a socially conservative environment, compounded by chronic economic fragility and recurrent humanitarian crises all shape this context. Despite decades of international funding directed toward gender equality and Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) programs, tangible and sustainable improvements in the lives of Palestinian women remain limited.

This paper is grounded in a central premise: the existence of funded programs does not automatically translate into transformative impact. Interventions can only generate sustainable change when they are context responsive, rooted in a comprehensive rights-based approach, and supported by funding modalities and public policies that promote institutional sustainability, independence, and accountability.

The Governing Structural Context

Feminist organizations in the oPt operate under three interlocking layers of structural pressure:

• The Israeli occupation, which continues to restrict civic space, intensify movement and access restrictions, and redirect feminist work from long-term developmental and rights-based pathways toward emergency and humanitarian response.
• Political division and legislative paralysis, resulting in the suspension of the Palestinian Legislative Council, the continued delay in enacting the Family Protection Law, and ongoing legal fragmentation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
• A socially conservative environment, which generates resistance to gender transformation and fuels incitement narratives that constrain women’s ability to report Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and seek protection.

Within this occupation context, violence and marginalization are structurally reproduced, limiting the ability of short-term or fragmented interventions to produce sustainable change.

Key Findings

• Gender-Based Violence (GBV): While protection and support services have expanded, this has been negated by other factors. The absence of an enforceable legal framework, particularly the Family Protection Law, and the continued production of violence within a politically and economically fragile occupation context have reduced interventions to case management rather than comprehensive justice pathways.
• Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE): Microfinance initiatives and vocational training programs have improved selected individual indicators. However, they have not produced structural shifts in women’s economic positioning within an occupation-constrained economy characterized by low female labor force participation.
• Political Participation: The quota system has increased women’s numerical representation, yet women’s access to actual decision making and positions of influence remains limited due to structural barriers and entrenched patriarchal political culture.
• Funding Modalities: The dominance of short-term project-based funding tied to rapid quantitative indicators, combined with the scarcity of flexible funding and core funding, undermines long-term strategic planning and reproduces fragmented and unsustainable interventions.

The Structural Gap

Palestinian women’s priorities are safety, legal protection, economic stability, access to justice, and essential services. A clear gap exists between these priorities and the nature of funded interventions, which often prioritize short-term training and awareness activities that are easily measurable but fail to address the structural roots of violence and marginalization within the occupation context.

Policy Recommendations

At the Level of the Palestinian Government:

• Enact the Family Protection Law and reform related discriminatory legislation in line with CEDAW obligations.
• Institutionalize gender-responsive budgeting and allocate sustainable national resources for Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) and GBV protection mechanisms.

At the Level of Donors and the International Community:

• Shift toward flexible funding and multi-year core funding to enhance institutional sustainability.
• Support gender-responsive early recovery efforts, particularly in the Gaza Strip.
• Build trust-based partnerships and adapt programming models to Palestinian political and social realities within the occupation context.

At the Level of Civil Society Organizations:

• Diversify funding sources and strengthen locally grounded and community-based financing mechanisms.
• Rebalance service delivery with movement-building and rights-based advocacy.
• Adopt an intersectional approach and actively engage men and boys as partners in transformative change.

Conclusion

Support for women’s rights in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) cannot be separated from the broader occupation context and structural political and economic constraints. Sustainable impact requires a shift in the CSO model from crisis response toward policy influence and structural transformation grounded in institutional independence, sustainable financing, and accountability.

Gender justice in Palestine is not a stand-alone programmatic issue; it is an integral component of a broader emancipatory trajectory rooted in dignity, equality, and freedom.