Rebuilding to Remain in Palestine’s Al Aqaba

Background 

Question: Are 16 homes in the making still? What’s the status on these? What’s the status on the first 3 that were built?

• Even more are in construction now -- I have great photos, so let’s be sure this project has a gallery

• The village has issued over 60 building permits so far

• No new homes have received demolition orders, and the first ones were finished in 2014 so that’s now 6 years w/o demolition orders. One new home that is outside the ‘Center of the Village will remain standing’ red line received a ‘Stop Work’ order.

Am I correct in my understanding that the RTR project was piloted via building a kindergarten and then expanded?
Not quite.   RA came to Al Aqaba because we received a grant from a family foundation ‘to build a kindergarten in the W.Bank that would not be demolished.’ That was a grant funded project.  RTR took shape 8 years later and provided both a revolving loan and a grant to the homeowners. 

What happened with the Envincible app, for the citizen and congressional outreach/advocacy attempts?
It is in mothballs … it needs updating.  Hoping to raise funds for it in the future.

How much did Haj Sami raise during the speaking tour?
It was a really expensive speaking tour because he is paraplegic and in a wheelchair, so what we raised barely covered costs -- but that would not do.  My family donated so that we could send him home with a grant to build the 3rd floor of the kindergarten building which for many years housed a sewing cooperative.

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Your donations helped establish the Rebuilding to Remain in Palestine project that aims to create homes for Palestinian families in Al-Aqaba where they can live and grow. From a total of 558 donations, we have raised $90,567! 

The people of Al-Aqaba Village have lived and worked the land for decades, but Al-Aqaba is located in Area C, which compromises 62% of the West Bank and is entirely controlled by Israel. This means that if a Palestinian family wants to build a home, they must obtain approval by the Israeli military, which is often denied. Instead, the village is threatened with demolitions.  However, the fact remains that families still need a place to live and grow. In 2002, RTR was a pilot project that started with a plan to build a kindergarten with a $10,000 donation. The kindergarten ended up becoming 3 stories, where the mayor’s office, the conference center, the library, part of the village tea factory, and the Women’s Sewing Cooperative are located. As a result, the people of Al-Aqaba pooled their savings together and got creative with Rebuilding Alliance! 

With your help, Rebuilding Alliance partnered with community members from Al-Aqaba Village to create the Rebuilding to Remain Program (RTR), a program that aimed to promote peace in the area through economic development and civil rights. The program allowed Palestinian families to build homes through a village-centered design, precedent-setting legal work; crowd-sourced Islamic compliant mortgage financing; and advocacy. 

How do we do it? The RTR program provided affordable loans to finish the homes for families in the village and expand advocacy efforts to keep the homes from being demolished. Rebuilding Alliance partnered with Al-Aqaba Cooperative Assembly for Housing the Displaced, a Palestinian-cooperative organized by villagers in the Tubas Governate, where Al-Aqaba Village is located. The agreement was signed in April 2012 for the first three homes! The program focused on two main activities: 1) providing mortgage finance loans and 2) advocacy efforts through action alerts, Congressional engagement and speaking tours. 

The project budget was $180,000 was $120K allocated towards 10 loans and $60K allocated towards advocacy efforts. 

The villages along with the Palestinian architect, Hani Hassan, designed home plans with the residents. The RTR program completed three homes owned by a bus driver, sheep herder and teacher. Four more homes were completed, and 16 other homes are in the making, with the village having issued over 60 building permits thus far!

“No new homes have received demolition orders, and the first ones were finished in 2014, so that’s six years without demolition orders. However, one new home that is outside the ‘Center of the Village’ red line received a ‘Stop Work’ order,” mentioned Donna Baranski-Walker, Founder and Executive Director of Rebuilding Alliance. 

The repaid loans will be re-lent to other families to build homes. The advocacy efforts for the RTR program included a speaking tour that the Mayor of Al-Aqaba, Haj Sami Sadeq Sbeih, attended in the U.S. between October 25 and November 19, 2017. Mayor Haj Sami, a parapalegic due to being shot by the Israeli military when he was a teenager, traveled to California, Michigan and Washington D.C. to raise funds for the remaining homes and spread awareness about the condition of his village! He was able to go home with a grant to build the 3rd floor of the kindergarten building which for many years housed a sewing cooperative.

Mayor Haj Sami told Rebuilding Alliance in 2015, "Donna, three more families moved into their new homes," said Mayor Haj Sami as we traversed the street.  "Look, they painted with gold and cream, just like the first three. Someday my whole village will be painted gold and cream, and everyone will know us as a beautiful village of Peace."  

By creating the Rebuilding to Remain Program, Rebuilding Alliance and Al-Aqaba Village move towards creating homes for the Palestinian families in the village where they can live, grow, and love! 

See project photo gallery here

In support of this development, and in an effort to advocate to prevent demolitions in Al Aqaba, Rebuilding Alliance launched “Rebuilding to Remain in Palestine,” a program that provides mortgage finance loans to the families who are building and works with Congress to ensure that whenever the village is threatened, Congressional intervention keeps the bulldozers at bay. 

Much of Al Aqaba’s success can be attributed to the head of its Village Council, Mayor Haj Sami Sadeq, a charismatic man who was paralyzed from the neck down at the age of 16 by an Israeli soldier’s bullet. Now, Mayor Haj Sami joins Rebuilding Alliance in the United States from Oct. 25 through Nov. 19 to speak about the importance of supporting not only the development of his village, but advocating for fair planning and building rights for Palestinian communities across the West Bank. Mayor Haj Sami will travel first to California, then to Michigan, and finally to Washington, D.C. in an effort to raise the funds necessary to complete construction of the 15 homes. Congressional intervention has kept the village safe when it was under threat, and so raising awareness in this regard is also a goal of this tour.

Al Aqaba is the first village in Area C to issue its own building permits in accordance with their master plan. Area C is the 62% of the West Bank that is entirely under the administration of the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA). This means that in order to for construction to be considered authorized, Palestinian communities must receive building permits from the ICA after first submitting a master plan for approval. While 110 master plans have been submitted since 2011, only five have been approved. This leaves the vast majority of Palestinian villages vulnerable to demolition, and forced to live in constant fear that precludes the true flourishing of the community.