Labour Friends of Israel is committed to building the civic society foundations for a two-state solution and a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
The centrality of this work is demonstrated by the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. The International Fund for Ireland, which was established in 1986 during the darkest days of the Troubles, built deep and broad constituencies for peace in both the nationalist and unionist communities. It played a key role both in securing the ground-breaking 1998 agreement and in sustaining it through the inevitable challenges which followed. One leading peace activist termed the fund the “social glue that holds our peace process together”, while Britain’s chief negotiator, Jonathan Powell, called it the “great unsung hero” of the Good Friday Agreement.
But while the International Fund for Ireland was investing $44 per person per year in grassroots peacebuilding projects, a mere $3 was being invested in such work in Israel-Palestine. The International Fund for Israel-Palestine Peace – a concept devised by the Alliance for Middle East Peace and promoted in the UK by LFI – seeks to fill that gap. It would bring together and leverage investment from the US, Europe and the Arab world to scale-up important, but grossly underfunded, peacebuilding work in Israel-Palestine. These projects – which stretch across the environmental, tech, youth and health fields – are already up and running and have been repeatedly proven to make a real difference in changing attitudes, fostering empathy and trust, and building “conflict-resolution” values.
We are delighted that Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and David Lammy strongly backed the International Fund in opposition.
Now we want to support Britain’s new Labour government to:
- Play a leading role in establishing the International Fund for Peace in Israel and Palestine.
- Re-establish UK investment in peacebuilding which was eliminated by the Conservatives in 2020 as part of their cuts to international aid.