The Britain-Palestine Friendship Forum

www.twinningwithpalestine.net

In October 2004, a workshop on Twinning with Palestine at the European Friendship Forum brought together a number of different groups who were working on some sort of twinning project with Palestine, and people from Palestine who commented on the usefulness of this sort of project and asked for some sort of co-ordination so that there was not repetition and that villages and refugee camps as well as the main towns could find friends and supporters in Britain.

In September 2005, the Twinning with Palestine conference in Camden brought together representatives of nearly 20 groups across Britain who were at some stage of making friendship links. This included towns with established twinning links,  groups who had well-established informal friendship links with towns, villages and refugee camps, and  others who were at the initial stage in making links. Palestinian visitors again told us how useful this sort of initiative was, and following useful discussion in workshops about twinning work in Britain and twinning work in Palestine, it was agreed that a small group would meet to organise a website and a new meeting for one person from each twinning group, with a view to setting up a network. The working title for this network would be the Britain-Palestine Friendship Forum.

This network is not to replace or compete with other Palestinian solidarity movements. It is specifically to help groups to make twinning links with Palestinian communities - where “twinning” includes both formal and informal links with specific organisations, and includes a focus on grassroots links.  The network aims to promote the development of twinning links, helping groups to find partners and avoid duplication; and to encourage groups to help each other through the sharing of experience and information.

Further conferences have been held in London (October 2006) and in Bethlehem (April 2006) and Ramallah (April 2007).