We just marked the 40th anniversary of the founding of the International Fund for Ireland. Established in the darkest days of the Troubles – more than a decade before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 – it was critical to building the new constituencies for peace upon which the political process ultimately rested.
Dubbed the “great unsung hero” of the peace process by Britain’s chief negotiator (and now National Security Adviser) Jonathan Powell, it is unlikely the peace process would have succeeded without it, or endured over the past three decades.
In June the UK – along with Australia and Canada – established a new international fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. Championed by the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP) and Labour Friends of Israel, it is modelled on the International Fund for Ireland and will prioritise long-term peacebuilding to build new constituencies for peace, and foster the values of trust, empathy and dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians on which a future two-state solution depends. The announcement included a pledge of £3m in initial funding from the three countries.
As in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, years of conflict in Gaza following the October 7 2023 attacks and instability in the West Bank have eroded trust between Israelis and Palestinians. Recent polling shows the most frequently cited obstacle to peace is a lack of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, with 75 per cent of Israelis calling this a “major” obstacle to a lasting peace.
The new fund aims to change this by supporting existing peacebuilding programmes to improve their reach and capability and investing in new ventures spanning all levels of society, from local community projects to support for dialogue between future leaders. Funding will go to a range of projects, particularly those that include youth groups, civil society organisations and women, with an emphasis on relationship building and creating opportunities for engagement that can underpin future peace negotiations.
ALLMEP has been supporting peacebuilding organisations in Israel and Palestine for two decades including groups like Amal-Tikva, which is strengthening organisations, investing in leaders, conducting research and shaping discourse to create the infrastructure needed for large-scale peacebuilding. Desert Stars is building a generation of values-driven Bedouin leaders equipped with the skills to promote economic growth, social development, and shared society across the Negev, while Tech2Peace provides intensive seminars which focus on both peace-making and high-tech training for young adults from Palestine and Israel.
Rigorous academic research shows peacebuilding initiatives in Israel and Palestine are highly effective at fostering empathy, building trust, and countering extremism. Survey data repeatedly show the transformative effects on individuals’ attitudes and behaviour. But the projects have long lacked the resources to reach and sustain society-wide engagement and impact. And they have never been connected strategically and deliberately to meaningful diplomacy aimed at true conflict resolution. The new fund aims to address these issues.
Having worked for many years to bridge seemingly insurmountable divides between communities, I know how important investment in peace is.
The International Fund for Ireland was established as an independent organisation by the British and Irish governments to build peace in Northern Ireland and the border counties. By combining support for peace in a single entity, the contributions from multiple donors – especially the US, EU, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand – allowed the IFI to reach a transformative $1.5 billion in direct funding and $2.4 billion overall. This translated into $44 per person per year, which compares to only $1.50 per person in Israel-Palestine. The new International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace will similarly act as a force-multiplier, allowing stretched overseas development budgets to go further and have a greater impact.
While the violence of recent years has driven Israelis and Palestinians further apart, elections in Israel this month provide an opportunity to change the dynamic and chart a new course toward peace.
But, as we saw in Northern Ireland, it’s not enough to find allies for peace at the political level – peace must be built from the ground up as a “social peace”. The peace process in Northern Ireland required leaders on both sides to make difficult concessions, and it's only when civil society strengthens and encourages leaders to make those tough choices that a peace process can succeed.
Reflecting on the ten-year anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, former Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern praised the “weeks, months and years of quiet work by ordinary people on all sides - slowly, painstakingly and steadfastly creating the space in which old enemies could come together and take forward the process of peacemaking and reconciliation.”
In opposition, the Labour party strongly supported establishing an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. In government, it delivered it. But the work is only just beginning.
The UK should make support for peacebuilding one of its priorities – as it did in the Northern Ireland context. Britain can and should play a leading role globally.
Rev. Dr. Gary Mason is a Minister and director of Rethinking Conflict
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