Founded | 1996 |
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Founder | Shimon Peres |
Type | NGO |
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Location | |
Area served | |
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Employees | 35 |
Volunteers | 5 |
Website | www |
Part of a series on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict |
Israeli–Palestinian peace process |
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The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, located in Jaffa, Israel, is an independent non-profit, non-governmental, and non-political organization founded in 1996 by Nobel Peace Laureate and former President of Israel Shimon Peres. Its aim is to further Peres' vision of people in the Middle East working together to build peace through socio-economic cooperation and development and people-to-people interaction.
The Peres Center for Peace and Innovation describes its mission as "promot[ing] lasting peace and advancement in the Middle East by fostering tolerance, economic and technological development, innovation, cooperation and well-being – all in the spirit of President Peres’ vision." [1] [2]
The peacebuilding activities of the Peres Center fall into the following fields: Agriculture and Water; Business and Economics; Civil Leadership; Community Programs in Jaffa; Culture, Media and Arts, Medicine and Healthcare; Social Media and Information Technology (IT); and Sport.
Implementing programs that facilitate cross-border research, capacity building and cooperation in order to enhance crop management practices, environmental protection, and water quality. Projects include cross-border pest management, aquaculture, crop production workshops, regional water research, joint olive oil production and more. [3]
Providing space for interaction between stakeholders on both sides through joint economic research (in partnership with the AIX Group), capacity-building workshops and professional networking to foster cross-border cooperation across a wide range of business fields including hi-tech, confectionery, food, textile and shoe-making and more.
Projects include private sector partnerships, regional economic research, cross-border tourism projects, technology projects, and the creation of a Palestinian business directory. [4]
Designing and implementing programs that engage Israeli and Palestinian civil society and community leaders, creating a strong cross-border network while providing enrichment and professional training. Programs generate dialogue channels between Palestinians and Israelis and between Jews and Arabs within Israel across professional fields. [5]
Projects include international youth exchanges, a leadership program for young politicians and forums for public debate.
Delivering theater, photography and arts programs that bring together Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish and Arab adults, youth and children.
Projects include a cross-border photojournalist program, an arts program for children, and a play that expounds messages of coexistence in schools. [6] [7] [8]
In cooperation with the Israeli medical community, assisting in the creation of an independent Palestinian medical system through human resource development, advancement of complex medical services and cross-border cooperation and knowledge transfer, as well as providing humanitarian medical aid to Palestinian babies and children.
Projects include a program that allows for the treatment of Palestinian babies in Israeli hospitals and a program for training Palestinian doctors. [9]
Designing programs that enable the people of the Middle East, particularly young people, to engage in virtual dialogue with each other.
Projects include a popular Facebook group, dialogue curricula for school groups through computer centers and a diplomacy-based game. [10]
The Twinned Peace Sports Schools bring together Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish and Arab boys and girls to play together through sports. These include football, basketball, wheelchair basketball, cricket, table tennis and Australian football. [11] [12]
Since December 2009, the offices of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation are housed in the Peres Peace House in Ajami, a largely Arab neighborhood of Jaffa.
The Peres Peace House also contains the Shimon Peres Archives, an auditorium and conference rooms, and a conflict resolution library. Many of the Peres Center's activities, including public lectures and coexistence activities, [17] take place within the Peres Peace House, as well as activities for the empowerment and development of the local Jaffa communities. These include legal aid services, community empowerment programs and a mentoring program for underprivileged children.
The cost of the center was estimated at $6 million and timeline of three years. According to Haaretz, as of August 2009, the cost and building time of the Peace House have been highly underestimated. [18] The center was opened in December 2009. The building (2,500 sq m), a distinctive architectural landmark on the Jaffa coast next to the poor Arab neighborhood of Ajami, was designed by renowned Italian architect Massimiliano Fuksas. [19]
Through the years the building was open to the use of the local Arab community and the Center promoted projects to empower local groups and individuals. The first event held at the building was a graduation ceremony of 21 women, mostly Arab who graduated from a Women's Economic Empowerment Program and received their computer technician certificates. [19]
The Director General of the center is Efrat Duvdevani, formerly Director General of the President's House during Peres' Presidency. Her predecessor was Ido Sharir, formerly Chief of Staff to President Peres. Before Mr. Sharir, Ron Pundak served as Director General for over 10 years. The men and women who comprise the executive board are CEOs, Directors, and Presidents of various organizations, as well as scholars, academics, and journalists. The first Director General of the Peres Center was Ambassador Uri Savir, who, together with Shimon Peres, established the organization and currently serves as Honorary President. [21] [22]
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Over the years the Center has won both negative and positive critiques. Author Witt Raczka questioned the efficacy of the organization. [23]
The Israel Tax Authority denied the Peres Center's request for tax-exempt status in Israel. According to Haaretz , after the Center applied for the tax-exempt status the Tax Authority demanded that the organization stop funding the training of the physicians from the Gaza Strip in Israeli hospitals. [24] The demand led the organization to suspend its application rather than stop the project. [25] [26]
In 2016 the Peres Center received tax-exempt status in Israel. The Peres Center for Peace and Iinnovation also has tax-exempt status in the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy. [27]
Yitzhak Rabin was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth prime minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–1977, and from 1992 until his assassination in 1995.
Shimon Peres was an Israeli politician and statesman who served as the eighth prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the ninth president of Israel from 2007 to 2014. He was a member of twelve cabinets and represented five political parties in a political career spanning 70 years. Peres was elected to the Knesset in November 1959 and except for a three-month-long interregnum in early 2006, served as a member of the Knesset continuously until he was elected president in 2007. Serving in the Knesset for 48 years, Peres is the longest serving member in the Knesset's history. At the time of his retirement from politics in 2014, he was the world's oldest head of state and was considered the last link to Israel's founding generation.
The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as "the Occupied Palestinian Territory", and this term was used as the legal definition by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2004. The term occupied Palestinian territory was used by the United Nations and other international organizations between October 1999 and December 2012 to refer to areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, but from 2012, when Palestine was admitted as one of its non-member observer states, the United Nations started using exclusively the name State of Palestine. The European Union (EU) also uses the term "occupied Palestinian territory". The government of Israel and its supporters use the label "disputed territories" instead.
Arab–Israeli peace projects are projects to promote peace and understanding between the Arab League and Israel in different spheres. These are part of a broader attempt at a peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. Sponsors of such projects can be found both in Israel and Palestine.
International aid has been provided to Palestinians since at least the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The Palestinians view the aid as keeping the Israeli–Palestinian peace process going, while Israelis and other foreign policy authorities have raised concerns that it is used to fund terrorism and removes the imperative for Palestinians to negotiate a settlement of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. As a provision of the Oslo Accords, international aid was to be provided to the Palestinians to ensure economic solvency for the Palestinian National Authority (PA). In 2004, it was reported that the PA, within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, receives one of the highest levels of aid in the world. In 2006, economic sanctions and other measures were taken by several countries against the PA, including suspension of international aid following Hamas' victory at the Palestinian Legislative Council election. Aid to the PA resumed in 2008 following the Annapolis Conference, where Hamas was not invited. Aid has been provided to the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian non-governmental organizations (PNGOs) as well as Palestinian political factions by various foreign governments, international organizations, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), and charities, besides other sources.
The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is an academic studies and research institute located in Kibbutz Ketura on the Israeli side of the Arava Valley. Following the understanding that "nature knows no borders", the Arava Institute's mission is to advance cross-border environmental cooperation in the face of political conflict.
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The Arab Peace Initiative, also known as the Saudi Initiative, is a 10 sentence proposal for an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict that was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002 at the Beirut Summit and re-endorsed at the 2007 and at the 2017 Arab League summits. The initiative offers normalisation of relations by the Arab world with Israel, in return for a full withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories, with the possibility of comparable and mutual agreed minor swaps of the land between Israel and Palestine, a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. A Palestinian attack called the Passover massacre took place on 27 March 2002, the day before the Initiative was published, which initially overshadowed it.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is the phenomenon involving political tension, military conflicts, and other disputes between various Arab countries and Israel, which escalated during the 20th century. The roots of the Arab–Israeli conflict have been attributed to the support by Arab League member countries for the Palestinians, a fellow League member, in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict; this in turn has been attributed to the simultaneous rise of Zionism and Arab nationalism towards the end of the 19th century, though the two national movements had not clashed until the 1920s.
On July 2, 2008, an Arab resident of East Jerusalem identified as Hussam Taysir Duwait attacked several cars on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem in a vehicle-ramming attack using a front-end loader, killing three civilians and wounding at least thirty other pedestrians, before being shot to death. Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that an inquiry indicated the attacker had been acting alone. A motive for the attack could not immediately be determined, but police at the scene referred to the incident as a terrorist attack. Three copycat attacks have occurred since then.
The following events occurred in the year 2007 in Israel.
The Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development (CJAED), located in Herzliya Pituach, Israel, is a non-profit, non-governmental organization founded in 1988 by Ms. Sarah Kreimer and a coalition of Jewish and Arab businesspeople. CJAED works to promote Jewish-Arab economic cooperation as well as develop a thriving Arab sector in order to establish peace, prosperity and economic stability in Israel and the region. The center's main premise is that Israel's primary resource is its people, therefore a vibrant and stable economy requires an integrated society. In 2010, CJAED was recognized as one of the "Ten Top Israeli Business Ventures" that promote peace in the Middle East.
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Jaffa, also called Japho or Joppa in English, is an ancient Levantine port city founded by the Canaanites that is now part of southern Tel Aviv, Israel. Sitting atop a naturally elevated outcrop on the Mediterranean coastline, it was a strategic location that exchanged hands repeatedly in ancient Near East history, and was also contested during the Crusades, when it presided over the County of Jaffa and Ascalon.
The Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information is a joint Israeli/Palestinian NGO and public policy think tank based in Jerusalem working towards building partnerships in Israel/Palestine. Under shared Israeli-Palestinian leadership, IPCRI carries out research and projects in various fields from economic development to environmental sustainability. IPCRI also facilitates public outreach and track two negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
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Ajami is a predominantly Arab neighborhood in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel, situated south of Old Jaffa and north of the Jabaliyya neighborhood on the Mediterranean Sea.
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