USAID awards $8 million in grants to strengthen Israeli-Palestinian cooperation

The US Agency for International Development announces the recipients of three more congressional grants totaling $7.8 million aimed at strengthening Israeli-Palestinian dialogue programs and Palestinian business development.

The grants are the result of the Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA) passed by Congress in 2020, earmarking $250 million over five years to support people-to-people peacebuilding efforts.

The US already began divvying out the first grants last year, and is now continuing with three more. The grants are announced during a visit to Israel and the West Bank by former congresswoman Nita Lowey, who championed the MEPPA act along with George Salem, who heads the MEPPA advisory board that makes recommendations to the USAID regarding which groups should receive its grants.

The first of those, totaling $1 million over two years, will go toward ‘Making Peace,” an initiative of Reut USA which works to “connect Israelis and Palestinians and leverage engineering innovations and additive manufacturing tools, like 3D prosthetic printing, to create and disseminate affordable solutions for the elderly and disabled,” USAID says.

Project Rozana’s Palestinian-Israeli Specialist Nursing Hub will receive $2.3 million over the course of three years in order to create a “systematic approach to cross-border cooperation as a form of health diplomacy and a way to improve health delivery,” according to the USAID.

A final grant of $4.5 million over three years has been awarded to the Next Generation Accelerator, which “offers an intensive three-month entrepreneurship training and follow-on support for over 120 Palestinian and Israeli youth fellows who will build personal connections through their work together.”