Our Mission

To build trusting, cooperative, enduring professional and personal relationships between Israeli and Palestinian science scholars so they can help bend the arc of history toward constructive relations between the two peoples.

STEP accomplishes this mission by funding the education of pairs of Israeli and Palestinian students (one Israeli and one Palestinian from West Bank or Gaza, per pair)  to work on joint research projects together, for the full length of their graduate degrees (PhD, MS, MD/PhD), at major Israeli universities.

By overcoming scientific obstacles and advancing toward their degrees together, they further their careers, develop new frontiers in science and medicine, and attain professional and societal positions from which they accelerate positive relations within the STEP family, their laboratories, departments, and universities as well as between Israeli and Palestinian societies.