BICOM

The British think-tank BICOM, has today released its new report on Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding projects in Israel and the West Bank.

The report, titled A future of Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding, has been written by Ned Lazarus, visiting Professor at George Washington University. It also has a preface by Jonathan Powell, the chief British negotiator during the Northern Ireland Peace Process.

BICOM CEO James Sorene says the report “establishes the clear evidence base that investment in peace building projects changes attitudes and recruits the peace activists of the future”.

He added that the report serves “as a wake up call for the UK Government and its partners around the world to increase their investment in dialogue and peace building projects in Israel and the West Bank”. The report reveals the large disparity of coexistence funding between the Northern Ireland context and the Israel-Palestine context – at least 15 times more money has been invested in Northern Ireland coexistence than in Israel-Palestine coexistence despite having less than 15 per cent of the aggregate population of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The report is the first of its kind to attempt a comprehensive review of peacebuilding projects in this area, looking at over 20 years of evaluation data, and based on extensive field work carried out by the author over the past year. It finds only 164 organisations out of at least 20,000 Israeli-registered NGOs that currently engage in peaceful coexistence initiatives or conflict resolution.

The report also provides a list of recommendations for practitioners and funders.

The report’s author, Ned Lazarus, has called for successful models of Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding “to be scaled up and to receive significant long-term investment” if conditions conducive to peace are to be achieved in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. One case study in the report shows that 144 alumni of the Seeds of Peace programme now work for more than 40 different peacebuilding initiatives – representing a 17.5 per cent return.

In his preface to his report, Jonathan Powell wrote: “This invaluable report suggests a practical course of action for governments and civil society. While every conflict has different causes and solutions, we know from Northern Ireland that long-term grassroots peacebuilding between the contending parties is always essential to achieving peace.”

BICOM is officially launching the report today at the Houses of Parliament.

The report can be accessed here.