Ramallah – Palestinian journalist Basim Hasiba has produced a journalistic film titled “The Last Front- Palestinian Culture, examining the complex relationship between international funding and the independence of Palestinian cultural institutions, and what happens when donors’ political and security-related conditions extend beyond the management and use of funds to become criteria that can affect the independence of cultural institutions, the content of their programs, and their relationship with Palestinian society.
The film examines the changes that have shaped the funding environment for Palestinian institutions, beginning with the United States introduction in 2002 of conditions linking grants to counterterrorism requirements, and continuing with the European Union’s introduction in 2019 of requirements related to sanctions and restrictive-measures lists into grant contracts.
The Palestinian position on these conditions, however, extends beyond their administrative and financial implications. Palestinian institutions emphasize that subjecting their work to such lists effectively requires them to adopt political and security classifications formulated outside the Palestinian context. This comes in the context of a people living under occupation and asserting their right to self-determination and their right to liberation from colonial domination—rights grounded in international law and United Nations resolutions—while all parties remain bound by international humanitarian law and the obligation to protect civilians.
From this perspective, The Last Front – Palestinian Culture raises a deeper question: What happens when these classifications move from the political sphere into funding contracts and are no longer limited to how donor funds are used, but become part of the conditions governing Palestinian institutions’ relationships with their employees, the individuals and entities they contract with, participants in their activities, and their broader social and cultural environment? Do they remain merely safeguards concerning the use of donor funds, or do they extend into the sphere of cultural decision-making itself and affect the independence of Palestinian institutions?
Through cultural institutions and the people working within them, the film examines how this issue is reflected in cultural practice itself: Who can be included? What can be funded? What are the limits of what can be said?
In this sense, the film examines funding not merely as a financial resource, but also as a relationship of power that raises a fundamental question about who has the right to define the boundaries of Palestinian cultural work, and about the line between a donor’s right to impose conditions on the use of its funds and a Palestinian institution’s right to preserve its independent decision-making, identity, and political and cultural context.
The film is one of the outputs of the Strengthening Independent Journalism and Media Networking in Palestine initiative, launched by the Palestine Journalism Hub with the support of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED). The initiative aims to enable journalists to produce high-quality professional content and strengthen collaboration with media organizations, helping expand publication opportunities and reach wider audiences, while supporting joint publication and building effective media networks that strengthen the presence and impact of independent journalism in Palestinian society.