For over two decades the School for Peace at Neve Shalom/Wahat al‐Salam has been bringing together Jews and Arabs for dialogue workshops. This article examines the unique approach that the School for Peace has developed over the years in the light of existing theory in the field and of existing research in the field of social identity construction and majority‐minority relations. The article then shows how processes that take place in our encounter workshops may even shed light on the Jewish‐Palestinian conflict from 1948 until today. Understanding these processes is essential to any attempt at building a more humane society based on equality and justice between the two peoples.

This study grapples with the question of majority-minority relations in conflict-ridden societies. The ethnographic study analyzed data gathered in a dialogue course conducted at an Israeli university among Jewish and Palestinian students, all citizens of the State of Israel. The authors identified 4 different and interrelated components of threat as these were perceived by the Jews participating in the dialogue: a permanent existential threat, the realistic threat from Palestinians, the threat to Jewish hegemony in the State of Israel, and the threat to the moral worth of the Jews' national identity. The authors describe each of these components, how they interrelate, and also the changes undergone by the Jewish participants in the dialogue.

This study addresses the question of majority-minority relations in situations of intractable conflict (Bar-Tal 2000). The study focuses on processes involved in the majority Jewish group’s construction of images of the Palestinian minority group, all citizens of Israel, while participating in a structured dialogue encounter conducted at Tel Aviv University in Israel. In this dialogue, it was observed that negative inhumane images that the Jews have of the Palestinians were notably expressed by the Jewish group in three situations: to cope with distress when their morality was challenged by the Palestinian group; to preserve the Jewish group's superiority and hegemony in Israel; and to preserve or restore the Jewish group's power. The study also examines the gradual processes of change that the Jewish group experienced while becoming aware that dehumanization strategies are practices that preserve dominance. This study contributes to a better understanding of the importance of addressing the iconic representations and images that majority groups hold of minority groups, and suggests the need to challenge the practice of power through the use of these representations and images when facilitating group encounters.

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