4. Giacaman, R. A Community of Citizens: Disability Rehabilitation in the Palestinian Transition to Statehood. Disability and Rehabilitation 2001; 23,14: 639-44

It has been widely argued that community based programs offer considerable advantages to the classical institutional forms of health and rehabilitation services delivery. With about 10 years of experience in operating community based rehabilitation projects (CBR) for the disabled, the Palestinian experience points to potentially serious problems relating to the conception and operationalization of such programs in real life situations. Of Importance is the issue of the impact of communal care on the already burdened lives of women, especially when such care is expected to be voluntary in nature. Care taking in the Palestinian context, especially of the disabled, elderly and the sick, is a pre-defined sex linked role dictated by a patriarchal society and system of policy making that excludes women from economic and social life. The voluntary care aspect entailed in the CBR conception and practice can and does contribute further to the exclusion of women not only from the labor force, but from most other aspects of life as well. This represents an apparent contradiction between the needs of two excluded groups, the disabled and women.