The recent tragic death of a teenage girl in one of Bethlehem’s refugee camps prompted multiple NGO’s operating in the West Bank to organize a “March of Solidarity” in the camp in support of the girl’s family. As the details regarding the death revealed that she had been murdered by a close relative, the trauma experienced by this family was amplified. NGO’s that had participated in the march began to compete with one another as to what institution would provide psychosocial counseling and services to this family. In my interviews with members of this community, Palestinians often raised the question of whether this case demonstrated “tadamun” (Arabic for solidarity) or “tadakhul” (intervention). The theme of the tension between solidarity and intervention with regards to the “NGOization” (Islah Jad 2004) witnessed by Palestinians in the post-Oslo era was a salient dialectic that emerged during the 14 months of dissertation fieldwork I conducted in the West Bank on the politics of international aid provision. In this paper, I will draw upon my ethnographic findings to highlight the debates within Palestinian society on the role, effectiveness, and social consequences of the pervasive influence of international aid and NGO’s. While some Palestinians recognize the importance of aid in building a vibrant civil society, others are critical of the dependency that has emerged and the political whip of aid. This analysis is motivated by a methodological commitment to the study of the “social life of aid” (Erica James 2010) in addition to a theoretical approach that examines “social engineering” (Sharon Abramowitz 2009) in the context of international donor policies and psychosocial programming. While such an elucidation reveals the intimacy and far-reaching nature of such interventions, it is important to explore how Palestinian recipients of donor aid as well as Palestinian staff of local and international NGO’s understand the impact of foreign funding on Palestinian society. Such a study reveals the drawbacks of interventionism as well as alternative conceptions of interventionism that are aligned with forms of accepted and expected solidarity. While Palestinians do not reject any and all influence from international actors, there is widespread cognizance of when foreign aid is imposing in nature as opposed to when it helps preserve dignity and resilience.