EVALUATION REPORTS The German Civil Peace Service Case Study of Israel/Palestine ii The German Civil Peace Service Case Study of Israel/Palestine Riccardo Bocco and Paola Taiana The following report has been commissioned by the Evaluation and Audit Division of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany. The opinions presented in this study are those of independent external experts and do not necessarily reflect the views of BMZ or the people consulted. A summary version of the Synthesis Report is available on the BMZ website (www.bmz.de/en/publications/type_of_publication/index.html#evaluation). This report should be cited as: Bocco, R. and Taiana, P. (2011): The German Civil Peace Service: Case Study of Israel/Palestine. Unpublished evalution report. Bonn: Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung. Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany (BMZ) Dahlmannstraße 4 53113 Bonn, Germany www.bmz.de/en [email protected] April 2011 iii Acknowledgments We are very grateful to all the people who have supported the evaluation in its different phases. From our perspective, the evaluation process has been a real joint learning experience. The evaluation team experienced a high level of collaboration and openness by the CPS executing agencies’ coordinators and CPS experts, who generously dedicated their time to preparing and attending workshops, supporting logistics, participating in interviews and group discussions. In addition, they provided documents before and after the field mission. The CPS’s local partner organisations also showed a great deal of cooperation. They supported us in visiting their projects and connecting us with the different local stakeholders and the programmes’ beneficiaries. A number of national and international experts resident in Israel/Palestine shared information and analyses with us and helped to put the collected data into the right context. We thank them all for their time and precious critical views. A special word of gratitude goes to our colleagues from the CCDP for their flexibility, help and ongoing support to the case study. Special thanks go to the team leader Dr Thania Paffenholz as well as Dr Oliver Jütersonke. Finally, special thanks go to Eckhard Volkmann (BMZ division for peace and security) and Rita Walraf (formerly with the BMZ evaluation division) for their support of the field mission. Prof. Riccardo Bocco and Paola Taiana iv Contents Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................... iv Abbreviations ............................................................................................................ viii Executive summary .................................................................................................... xi 1 Background and introduction .............................................................................. 1 1.1 Objective and purpose ................................................................................................1 1.2 General introduction to the CPS country programme in Israel/Palestine ............................2 1.3 Evaluation design, methodology and process .................................................................3 1.4 Team ........................................................................................................................8 1.5 Constraints ................................................................................................................9 2 The country context ............................................................................................ 9 2.1 General country profile through an introduction to the political history of the Israeli- ............. Palestinian conflict ..............................................................................................................9 2.2 Understanding conflict and peacebuilding in recent decades (1993-2010) .......................... 11 2.2.1 The ‘Oslo Peace Process’ and its hopes ...................................................................... 11 2.2.2 The second Intifada and the new intra-Palestinian conflict ......................................... 12 2.3 Civil society peacebuilding efforts ......................................................................................13 2.3.1 Civil society in Palestine .........................................................................................13 2.3.2 Civil society in Israel ..............................................................................................14 2.3.3 Civil society and peacebuilding activities during the last decade ............................. 15 3 CPS involvement .............................................................................................. 17 3.1 The special context of the German-Israeli relationship ....................................................... 17 3.2 Official German Development Cooperation in Palestine ..................................................... 18 3.3 CPS portfolio in Israel/Palestine.........................................................................................19 4 Main findings along evaluation criteria ............................................................. 23 4.1 Relevance .........................................................................................................................23 4.1.1 Are activities addressing the main needs for peacebuilding in Israel/Palestine? ...... 23 4.1.2 Do activities under CPS adapt to changing conflict contexts? ................................. 26 4.1.3 Do project activities under the CPS programme in Israel/Palestine correspond with the overall CPS strategies? .................................................................................... 27 4.1.4 How relevant are the CPS’s local partners for peacebuilding? ................................ 28 4.1.5 How relevant is the deployment of German CPS experts? ...................................... 29 4.1.6 What would local partner organisations do if the CPS did not exist? ....................... 30 4.2 Effectiveness .....................................................................................................................30 4.2.1 What are the theories of change of the involved actors to achieve their goals? ....... 30 4.2.2 Are theories of change translated into clear objectives, results and process designs? ...................................................................................................33 4.2.3 Assessing outcome 1: What are the main changes within CPS local partner organisations that can be attributed to the work of the CPS experts? ...................... 33 4.2.4 Assessing outcome 2: How did project activities contribute to the main changes at the level of the target groups? ................................................................................ 35 4.2.5 Assessing outcome 3: Do CPS project activities contribute to the reduction of violence, conflict transformation, and empowerment of civil societies?.................... 39 4.2.6 What is the link between effectiveness and the type of local partner? ..................... 40 4.2.7 In which phases of conflict are activities more effective? ........................................ 41 4.2.8 The subsidiary principle, cost-efficiency, and alternatives to the CPS ..................... 41 v 4.3 Impact ...............................................................................................................................42 4.4 Efficiency ..........................................................................................................................43 4.4.1 Administrative procedures .......................................................................................43 4.4.2 Financial procedures ...............................................................................................44 4.4.3 Role of CPS coordinators ........................................................................................45 4.4.4 CPS expert postings ...............................................................................................45 4.4.5 Monitoring, reporting and learning ........................................................................... 46 4.5 Sustainability .....................................................................................................................47 4.5.1 What are experiences of sustainability after the CPS expert leaves? How are issues of sustainability integrated into the planning of CPS activities from the beginning of the project? ........................................................................................47 4.5.2 How does the CPS ensure that local expertise is not sidelined or downplayed by European (CPS) experts? ......................................................................................49 4.6 Coherence / coordination / complementarity (3Cs) ............................................................. 50 4.6.1 Coherence: To what extent is the effectiveness of the CPS project activities influenced by other fields of policy? ........................................................................ 50 4.6.2 Internal complementarity: To what extent do the CPS executing agencies work together? ...............................................................................................................51 4.6.3 External complementarity: What linkages are there with other programmes/players