Executive summary
Following the peace agreement between Israel and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1993, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (Palestine RC) was allowed to operate as an independent humanitarian organization in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The National Society, with the support of the International Federation, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), partner National Societies (PNSs) from a number of countries, partners from outside the Red Cross/Red Crescent (RC/RC) Movement, and a big number of national and international volunteers, rapidly built its capacity to respond to the overwhelming needs of the Palestinian people. As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians flared up again in late 2000, the need for intervention has grown with an alarming rate, putting huge burdens on all agencies and organizations providing humanitarian aid to the growing number of people in need of external help. In this situation, the Palestine RC is playing a very important role as one of the biggest, most diverse, reliable, and developed actors, with branches and facilities all over the territory and the surrounding countries with millions of Palestinian refugees.
From its wide network of branches, health and social service facilities, the Palestine RC will continue providing disaster response and humanitarian services in cases of man-made and/or natural disasters. With the conflict in the territory and in the Middle East frequently reaching high intensity, the need for health services is imminent. Palestine RC will continue running primary health care (PHC) services from its own facilities or in cooperation with the Ministry of Health. Hospital services are desperately needed and will continue to be an important programme of the National Society also in the future, in particular in Lebanon where Palestine RC is the only provider of such services to the Palestinian refugees. The National Society is playing an increasingly important role in terms of psychosocial programme for school children, and ability development for disabled people of different ages.
For the last few years, the support from the International Federation to Palestine RC was mainly with focus on organizational development. Special programme support has been provided by a number of RC/RC Societies and other partners, where the major role of the International Federation was to facilitate coordination, and organizational and branch development. Due to the steadily growing need for humanitarian interventions not only for people in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) but also for the Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora, where Palestine RC is one of the most important providers of humanitarian services, the National Society is seeing growing expectations for more services to be delivered. The critical financial situation of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) - for the last many years being one of the biggest donors of Palestine RC - has made the authority a less reliable provider of funds and thus, the National Society is facing huge financial challenges. The International Federation will alongside and in close cooperation with the Palestine RC advocate for and facilitate fundraising initiatives in the years to come. This support falls within the Palestine RC strategic plan and will contribute to further development of good management and governance of the National Society.
The secretariat's total 2009-2010 budget for its support role is CHF 570,058 (USD 521,077 or EUR 363,094). This amount covers the running costs of the International Federation's representative office in Ramallah, which has a role of being a facilitator for the Palestine RC programmes. Click here to go directly to the attached summary budget of the plan.
However, the Palestine RC operates under the operational alliance (OA) and the total amount of OA for 2009-2010 is CHF 95,540,622. The detailed figures can be found in the table on page 10 and 11.