The European Union has said it won’t bail out the Palestinian Authority with additional aid for so long as it refuses to accept tax revenues collected by Israel, it has been reported. President Mahmoud Abbas announced in May that the PA would stop accepting $150m a month in tax revenues Read more…
More than 20 members of the European parliament from 15 nations have urged the European Union to partially withhold funding from the PA until Ramallah makes sweeping changes to its controversial school curriculum. The new curriculum, introduced in 2017, incites violence, glorifies terrorism and contains antisemitic content. The UK government has Read more…
Both Donald Trump and his supporters have repeatedly attempted to paint the Democratic party as anti-Israel and suggested that the election of Joe Biden would be detrimental to the Jewish state. This weekend, David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, went further and suggested that a victory for the former Read more…
Israel’s foreign minister urged the Palestinians to “return to the negotiating table” this week. Gabi Ashkenazi was speaking after his historic first meeting with the United Arab Emirates foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, in Berlin on Tuesday. “Only through direct negotiations can we advance a solution for the Read more…
The services that peacebuilding organisations provide for their communities are not just nice – they are necessary, a new report from the Alliance for Middle East Peace says this week. The study, A Resilient Israeli-Palestinian Peacebuilding Sector in the Face of the Coronavirus Pandemic, looks at the impact of the Read more…
In his virtual address to the UN General Assembly last week, Mahmoud Abbas predictably denounced the historic normalisation agreements signed earlier this month by Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. But the president also announced new elections – the first for over 14 years – will take place in Read more…
Steve McCabe has welcomed the normalisation agreements signed by Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain earlier this month. In a parliamentary debate last week, LFI’s chair also urged the government to restore funding to peace-building coexistence projects. “I hope other countries in the region will follow [the UAE and Bahrain] Read more…
In their steadfast opposition to the historic agreement signed last week between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have found a rare common cause. Earlier this month, President Mahmoud Abbas hosted a meeting in Ramallah which brought together all 14 major Palestinian factions – Read more…
LFI’s chair, Steve McCabe, has written an op-ed for this week’s Jewish News in which he urges the government to take action on the Palestinian Authority’s school curriculum. The curriculum, introduced in 2017, incites violence and glorifies terrorists. Through the Department for International Development, UK taxpayers’ aid funds the salaries Read more…
In the third announcement of its kind in as many weeks, the Israeli and Bahraini Governments announced the normalising of relations. This follows a similar agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and two Balkan states. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu traveled to Washington DC for a four day trip Read more…
LFI director Michael Rubin has written in the Jewish Chronicle. Click here to view the original. This week I start as Director of LFI. After five years of Jeremy Corbyn, and 10 years of increasingly right-wing government in Israel, friends of Israel have questioned if they can still find a Read more…
Hamas, the Gaza-based terror group, announced on Monday night that they had agreed a ceasefire with Israel. Shortly after Hamas’s statement, Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians tacitly confirmed the agreement, saying it would reopen the border crossing, including to fuel deliveries, as well as the Gaza fishing zone to the Read more…