UK, Australia, and Canada Announce Launch of Major New International Fund to Scale Civil Society and Tackle Root Causes of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
LONDON, June 11, 2026 /CNW/ -- Amid continuing instability in the Middle East, three world powers combined forces today with a long-term policy shift aimed at breaking out of the stalemate. At a foreign ministerial meeting in Chevening, the UK, along with partners Australia and Canada, said they have each allotted initial funds to establish a new international fund for Israeli-Palestinian peace aimed at addressing the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the ground up.
By investing in "practical, grassroots initiatives that bring communities together in order to rebuild trust" and "reduce the divisions" that fuel conflict, the new multilateral institution will establish a significant new level of integration of civil society efforts into diplomatic strategy. "[T]oo often, Middle East peace is seen as an issue only of international diplomacy," said UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. But "[w]hen generations of Israelis and Palestinians have grown up with cycles of conflict and violence, we also need to support the local community organisations who are building dialogue, peace and trust across communities."
A two-decade global campaign by ALLMEP bears fruit at a critical moment
The announcement is a major victory in a nearly two-decade global campaign by the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). "Israelis and Palestinians need and deserve a serious international effort to resolve this conflict after almost three years of unprecedented violence and trauma," said ALLMEP Executive Director John Lyndon.
"That requires determined, creative work to create a diplomatic horizon, alongside a ground-level strategy to build the ideas, leaders, public support, and parallel constituencies needed to embrace and shape such a process," he added. "For the first time, a large-scale grassroots strategy can be fused with diplomacy to engage both peoples directly, ensure their voices are included, and build resilient public support."
The fund can potentially scale a broad and growing field of civil society organisations and initiatives that range from bilingual schools and women's entrepreneurship programmes to joint policy incubators, healthcare clinics, and leadership programmes that can work both within and between key communities on different sides of the conflict. More than 200 such NGOs are members of the ALLMEP network.
According to ALLMEP, survey data repeatedly show 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. Notably, the foreign ministers said that the new fund will both help existing projects expand, as well as invest in new ventures.
ALLMEP's founder and president, Avi Meyerstein, said that ALLMEP launched a global campaign to establish an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace in 2009. Over many years, the effort involved building a coalition of advocacy organisations in the U.S. and Europe from across the political spectrum. In Washington, he said, it garnered support from both Republicans and Democrats; in the UK, both Labour and Conservative parliamentarians and prime ministers have backed it.
In 2020, after a decade of advocacy and legislation in Washington, the initiative led to the creation of a $250-million U.S. investment through the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act of 2020 (MEPPA), which anticipated future international funding.
Meyerstein said the steady, long-term persistence and progress is a strong answer to natural skepticism of any new attempt to address the conflict. "In a moment when Israelis and Palestinians will have to decide what comes next, we're not starting from zero. We've been building a wide-ranging civil society network, pushing for an international fund, and calling for a seat at the table for over twenty years. It's a generational strategy for a generational conflict. We're putting in place the infrastructure to build an alternative to today's instability and endless violence."
The idea to create the fund was first conceived in 2004, inspired by the success of the International Fund for Ireland (IFI). Starting over a decade before the Good Friday Agreement, the IFI and European Union poured over $6.5 billion into tens of thousands of partnership and peacebuilding projects. In her statement today, Foreign Secretary Cooper noted the "UK's longstanding leadership" and "experience from similar efforts in Northern Ireland." Australia, Canada, and the UK said they have each put in "£1m to launch the Fund," and that once it's operational, they will "seek to bring on other donors and scale up efforts."
All of this comes just a day before another expected major milestone in the campaign to integrate Israeli and Palestinian civil society into diplomatic efforts. On Friday, as world leaders descend on France for the G7 Leaders' Summit, over 150 Israeli and Palestinian civil society leaders will be in Paris for a day-long policy conference. There they are expected to develop and present a call to gathered foreign ministers and the G7 with recommended concrete next steps toward stabilisation, recovery, security, and a negotiated resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
SOURCE Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP)
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND MEDIA AVAILABILITY, CONTACT: Email: [email protected], Phone: +1 (202) 618-4600
Share this article