‘Northern Ireland is a template for peace’
THE NORTHERN Ireland peace process should provide the answers to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a new report from Bicom.
The UK-based NGO commissioned Professor Ned Lazarus, from George Washington University, to create the report, which urged greater funding for peace initiatives on the ground.
The report concludes the UK should join — and contribute “significantly” — to an international fund for IsraeliPalestinian peace, which would be akin to the International Fund for Ireland, which was established in 1986, long before a peace deal was struck.
At the launch of the report on Tuesday, Prof Lazarus pointed out that investment in Northern Ireland’s peace process was 20 times larger than that for the Israeli-Palestinian equivalent, despite Northern Ireland’s population being much smaller.
James Sorene, Bicom CEO, said the report was a “wake-up call” for the UK government, arguing it and its partners across the world should invest more in peace in the region.
He said: “This report establishes the clear evidence base that investment in peace-building projects changes attitudes and recruits the peace activists of the future. Both are the vital missing ingredients for a successful negotiated resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and public support for its implementation.”
At the official launch of the report on Tuesday, Prof Lazarus said while the public perception in Israel and in the West is that the conflict is becoming “more intractable”, peacebuilding efforts on the ground have made a positive impact. He said: “Successful models for Israeli-Palestinian peace-building have been established through decades of work, under extremely challenging conditions. To achieve a broader, longer-term societal impact, these efforts need to be scaled up and to receive significant long term investment.
“There are good examples of successful projects — projects which have grown in size even as the conflict has grown more intractable.”
One way in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict differs from the one in Northern Ireland, Prof Lazarus said, is that there are very few areas where the two peoples organically mix, which is a considerable barrier to peace.
He also said there is a need to broaden peace work beyond the constituency of the “middle class, left-leaning Ashkenazi Israelis”, in order to mobilise the “silent majority” of Israelis.
The report recommended that the programmes should also focus on other areas — such as the economy, the environment, healthcare and technology.
There need to be places where the two peoples organically mix