The Ford Foundation has played a central role in the evolution and development of Israel's civil society sector, now a dominant force in helping the nation confront its many challenges. The foundation has spent a total of $50 million in Israel since 1948, with a focus on human rights and the search for peace.

Most recently, the foundation announced a major grant of an additional $20 million to the New Israel Fund to establish a new peace and social justice donor advised fund that will support organizations in Israel working to strengthen democracy and advance human rights, equality and peace for all Israelis. The five-year grant will shift future grant making from the foundation's New York City headquarters to the New Israel Fund, an organization that plays a vital role in Israel.

From 1948-1985, Israel's unique pool of research talent presented an unusual opportunity to facilitate scientific and technical research that could contribute not only to the development of Israel, but could also be of potential benefit to other countries in the Middle East and Africa. Grant making focused on supporting university-based scholarship and research, primarily through competitions organized by the foundation-sponsored Israel Foundation Trustees (IFT). To date, nearly $10 million has been distributed through the IFT, making the foundation one of the leading international funders of scholarly research in Israel.

From 1985-1995, a broader Israel-based portfolio emerged, with a diverse set of grantees and programmatic approaches. Grant making was focused on advancing civil rights and social justice, and on international affairs. During this period, a decade-long strategy was initiated to support curriculum development, research and action-oriented programs to explore various aspects of relations among the Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel and encourage positive interaction between them. Grants also supported research on Arab-Israeli relations and "track-2" meetings to advance the search for regional peace.

Since 1995, grant making addresed three major challenges confronting Israeli society: the need to protect civil and human rights; glaring inequities faced by the country's minority population; and ongoing conflict between Israel and its neighbors.

• Promoting civil rights and human rights in Israel. The primary goal of this work has been to expand the scope and extent of legal protection of basic rights, while also strengthening constituencies working to advance these protections.
• Promoting equity and equal opportunities for the Palestinian minority within Israel. The primary goal of this work has been to strengthen the ability of the minority community to organize, advocate and press for changes in public policy and law to improve its status.
• Furthering the search for a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The primary goals of this initiative have been to support activities designed to get the peace process back on track, advance unresolved final status issues; promote broad public discussion and constituencies within Israel for these options; and enhance Israeli's knowledge of Palestinian society.

Achievements of the Israel Program
Ford Foundation support for human rights in Israel represents by far the single largest source of sustained funding for this sector. Recent grants have supported the flagship nongovernmental organizations working to advance a broad-based civil rights agenda within Israel and human rights for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories through monitoring, documentation, advocacy, public education, research and litigation. Support has also been provided to a number of organizations seeking to protect the rights of particularly vulnerable populations—women, foreign workers and the Palestinian minority within Israel. Cognizant of the importance of encouraging a new generation of theorists and practitioners, the foundation has played a major role in advancing university-based training and research at the country's major institutions of higher learning.

New possibilities for advancing minority rights have developed as a result of intensive foundation support for the emerging Palestinian Israeli civil society. As these NGOs have expanded from working within local spheres to operating on a national level, they have begun to nurture the development of a newer, more sophisticated generation of leadership. Recent grants have included support to a new minority civil rights organization, the first of its kind founded and led by Palestinian Israelis, which has already secured a number of precedent-setting Supreme Court rulings. The foundation has also supported a multi-year public campaign to promote affirmative action policies in government and the private sector. Other grants have been made to support new organizations seeking to develop and analyze applied knowledge about the policy needs of the Palestinian minority.

In the field of peace promotion, foundation-supported "track-2" meetings were influential in helping Israelis, Arabs and Palestinians break through the psychological barriers that have served to sustain the conflict. The foundation has supported organizations seeking to build constituencies for peace within Israel through public education and community organizing. Finally, the foundation has been a leading supporter of efforts to better inform the Israeli public about Palestinian and Arab society through a university-based Palestinian studies center and other academic and media projects.

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