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12 February 1998, Vol.2, Issue 2
The new, improved Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites was relaunched at the beginning of 1998, with new categories, new reviews, and most importantly, around 30 new websites.
Since then, another 16 websites have been discovered, bringing the grand total to 127, including two significant economic websites:
The Palestinian Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture website added to the Business and Economics section: http://www.pal-chambers.com/ - This Palestinian website is very refreshing, with a simple but attractive design and clearly laid out information about all aspects of the work of the Hebron and Ramallah chambers of commerce, with the others to follow. The website is produced by the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture, and information is available about these. A bonus is the Hebron and Ramallah photo galleries, with information and images of the two cities.
Palestinian Securities Exchange, Ltd.: http://www.p-s-e.com/ - A pretty good website for the Palestinian stock exchange, set up to encourage the expatriot Palestinian investor. The PSE is a high-tech affair and you will find details of its computer system as well as Most importantly, you can find up-to-date prices ofPalestinian shares. When reviewing this website, I noticed that the Al-Quds Index (Palestine's Dow Jones) was up to 158. When I visited the exchange around 7 months ago, the index was just under 100 points, in other words an increase of 60 percent.
After the economic websites, there was a sudden run on health websites:
The Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees: http://www.upmrc.org/ and the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute: http://www.hdip.org/ have been added to Government and Services. Both are pretty good 'brochure' sites.
Other new websites include the Jerusalem Hotel, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities' "Visit Palestine" site, Hebron University, the Tathila Kumi School, Amro and Associates Law Office, Ramallah, the Palestinian Center for Peace and Democracy, the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights, George Nimir Rishmawi's personal homepage, and two Beit Sahour-based organisations and associations, the Alternative Tourism Group and the Palestinian Centre for Rapprochement Between Peoples.
Please visit the Complete Guide's "What's New?" page at http://www.birzeit.edu/links/new.html for more details.
A fun new site to visit is the Birzeit University, Landscape Perspectives on Palestine and International Conference in November 1998: http://www.birzeit.edu/conferences/landscape/ - Palestine, the real land and the concept of it, has been subjected to conflicting notions and representations. They have all produced its present situation. This web site and the Birzeit University conference associated with it are devoted to the exploration of a range of issues related to the historic, geographic, political, aesthetic and other dimensions of the landscape of Palestine. Excellent photos, information and Real Audio music.
Finally, a font glitch that was harming the viewing pleasure of Mac users has now been fixed, which is just as well, because they have enough trouble in a PC dominated world. Thanks to Joseph Roberts for pointing this out. Joe runs a larger scale 'Complete Guide' at the University of Utah called "Middle East North Africa Internet Resources". I'll tell you a bit more about that and similar websites next issue.
A preliminary list of the 1998 winners of the sought after Golden Olive Award for the best websites in Palestine.
Only 15 websites out of a potential 113 (Internet service providers and computer companies are excluded in case they beat us up after a bad call) won a Golden Olive award this year -only 13 percent. This was a result of discovering in the process of re-reviewing all the local sites that many had not been updated for a year. Shame!
An additional factor - that some websites were no longer timely - excluded some more. For example, the Central Election Commission was an excellent website to have a couple of years ago but, since there haven't been any more elections. The Population, Housing and Establishments Census 1997 website takes the CEC's place this year, for an incredibly quick-to-arrive website.
The winners were:
The following categories - believe it or not - had no winners: online memorials, organisations & associations, business & economy, industry & products, and tourist information.
Anyway, congratulations to all who won. The reasons for why the sites that won were awarded the coveted Golden Olive are given at http://www.birzeit.edu/links/go98.htmlThe rest of you may want to read the next article.
A shame to start off a new year with some whining, but it has repeatedly come to my attention that Palestinian organisations still haven't "got" the World Wide Web. Last time I whined on this subject I was told off by two correspondents, so I'll go easy this time.
Palestinian organisations regularly budget for editing, designing, printing and mailing when producing English and Arabic language print publications. So, how come when it comes to the Web that the aim is to spend as little money as possible?
Let's take Birzeit for example, although the university itself is not guilty of this (having said that there are some departments that need a good talking to). Our previous link to the outside world was the Birzeit University Newsletter. When I came to work at Birzeit in 1994, the newsletter only had a print run of 1,500 for worldwide distribution! Yet the Friends of Birzeit University (FoBZU) newsletter (just for UK) had a run of 1,800. Both organisations used to average three newsletters a year.
These days the Birzeit University website gets over 15,000 visitors a month. In other words the original Birzeit University Newsletter, at the point I came to work here, would have had to run for 1 year and 8 months to reach the same number of people we now reach every month!
Tell me it's not worth spending some money on a website.
Yet, 90 percent of local Palestinian websites are launched as cheaply as possible. People get their friends to do it, they give it as a project to a secretary, they contract someone who couldn't show you one well-designed website they had ever constructed.
The result? Websites that are the takiest, most tastless, informationless advert for their organisation and one that, for many people, is going to be the ONLY thing they see of the organisation. Unbelieveable! It's like forgetting to take your lawyers along to the Oslo Accord signing.
What is this? I am not joking when I say that people come into my office from organisations outside the university and expect me to help them build a website, either for free or for a pittance. I was asked to come and look at one organisation a few months ago that offered me $200 for over one week's full-time work. The same organisation pays people double that for editing a 50-page booklet (3 evening's work).
Why is it that people expect to get all the benefits of the Internet for free? A website is a publication, like any other. Let's start budgeting and investing in producing good ones.
Nigel Parry
(I talked a little bit about this and the use of the Internet in Palestine - in a more restrained way - in a paper I presented at an August 1997 UN conference in Geneva: http://www.birzeit.edu/web/unpaper.html)
> I used the Birzeit website a while back to get information > for a couple of presentations I was giving on Palestine > and Jerusalem. I was extremely impressed by a number of > things at your site, and I send you hearty congratulations > for the excellence of the site. It was easy to use and to > find my way around in. I was perhaps most pleased by the > fact that you have made links to all of the other > organizations in Palestine -- it made flipping around and > finding the information and maps I wanted a breeze. > > You are a model for the others out there in cyberland. My > congratulations to you and your staff. > > Sincerely, > > Rochelle Davis
[Editor's note: Congratulations! Another satisfied customer. But don't even think about asking for a raise.]
Hey, we do it for the chance to spend days putting funny little brackets around things. We don't need no reward.
Palestine Economic Forum: http://www.palecon.org/
The Palestine Economic Forum seeks to "promote prosperity and the peace process by bringing in the economic dimension on a broad set of issues that are at the cutting edge of Palestinian economic development."
On the website, you will find extensive information on the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS), publications including the excellent Palestine Economic Pulse, West Bank and Gaza Update, Peace Economics, articles and papers, and a discussion forum, which includes topics such as Public Sector Finances and Administration, International Trade, Investment, and Capital Flows, Private Sector Development, Human Resources, and Permanent Settlement Issues.
Ray Hanania, I'm glad I look like a terrorist: Growing up Arab in America: http://www.hanania.com/book.htm
An excellent book. I'm not just saying this because Ray is advertising with us, but because I actually read the book and liked it a lot. In fact I stupidly started reading it at 1.00am, and only fell asleep after finishing it at 4.00am, as the muezzins were beginning the call for prayer. There should be a government health warning on this one. Visit http://www.hanania.com/ as well. Ray is a well established journalist, with a lot of very interesting writings on his website.
Hey! Advertise with the Complete Guide!. Did you know that each banner advert that runs for a year enables Birziet University to purchase a new computer? More information from http://www.birzeit.edu/links/advert.html
Last month I wrote that "The section of the Birzeit website called "Birzeit, Palestine and the World Wide Web" at http://www.birzeit.edu/web/ will be redesigned and updated after work on the Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites is finished in mid-January."
Clearly I lied. Actually, I wasn't prepared to find the 16 other websites. Palestine is in a semi Internet boom these days. It'll happen eventually. Things just always seem to take a little longer here.
Thank you for your continued support!
Nigel Parry
Birzeit Webmaster
Previous issue: 3 January 1998, Vol. 2, Issue 1
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