Currently, the West Bank is split in more than 500 local government units. Some of them are so small that they are not able to provide the necessary services to their citizens in terms of waste management, water supply, street cleaning…

The Local Government Reform and Development Programme (LGRDP) tries to strengthen municipalities and village councils across the West Bank in order to give everyone access to basic services, also the citizens living in the smallest villages. The intention is to create a streamlined local government sector with an effective local administration capable of realising sustainable development, and to reduce the development discrepancies between communities. Therefore, we aim to facilitate and strengthen inter-village collaboration, so that villages can exploit and share local resources and jointly provide the necessary services for their citizens.

In order to encourage small villages to work together, we are now implementing a local economic development (LED) approach. A LED strategy can offer a small window of hope for the future of the Palestinian population notwithstanding the great uncertainty about the creation of a viable Palestinian State in the coming decades. It helps the Palestinians to improve their local economy, which should lower the unemployment and increase social cohesion and will eventually contribute to the enhancement of their quality of life.

The first LED pilot project under the local government reform and development program started one year ago, in the newly created municipality of Al Karmil, consisting of four villages that have decided to melt together. The socio-economic analysis of Al Karmil revealed that the cluster has four sectors of high economic potential. The most important of them is the agricultural sector.

Although the agricultural sector in Al Karmil could potentially have been  very developed already, it was suffering from a severe lack of water. Therefore, the LED strategy for Al Karmil has focused mainly on improving the access to water for the local farmers. In total, 35 water cisterns have been rehabilitated, so the farmers can again collect rainwater for agricultural purposes. Moreover, 40 farmers have been trained on water management skills and best water practice awareness, in order to maximise the use of the available rainwater.

The water cisterns have been rehabilitated by local farmers, who operated as small contractors for the project. By employing locals, the ownership of the project in the local community has increased. Furthermore, this opportunity created 80 temporary working opportunities for community members.

In the future the LED strategy will be developed and used in other  village-clusters as well. Depending on the existing local resources of each village-cluster, the approach will be different for each of them, but in every cluster the LED strategy will always be developed in partnership with the private, public and civil society sectors.