The initiative to launch a programme of academic cooperation with the Palestinian universities was taken at an international solidarity conference convened by several European universities - members of the Coimbra Group - at the University of Sienna in August 1991 when most Palestinian universities were closed. Soon afterwards, at a ceremony held in Jerusalem, on 1 November 1991, the rectors and presidents of twelve European (Barcelona, Coimbra, Granada, Krakow, Leiden, Leuven, Louvain, Namur, Pisa, Salamanca, Siena, and Viterbo) and their colleagues from six Palestinian universities (Al-Quds, An Najah National, Birzeit, Bethlehem, Gaza Islamic, and Hebron), signed an agreement to officially launch the Programme for Palestinian European Academic Cooperation in Education (PEACE).

PEACE is based on the principles of the right to education and the right to culture, as proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966), the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960), and on the right to academic freedom, as defined in the Lima Declaration on Academic Freedom and Autonomy of Institutions of Higher Education (1988), and in the Magna Charta of European Universities (1988).