The Jewish‐Palestinian Encounter in a Time of Crisis

Abstract

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.

Dialogue with Conflict: Education and Conflict Coping in Israel1

“…This leaves the rest of the encounter in the dark ages of Zionism, with which there is no other response to than a similar, narrow Palestinian nationalism* the backlash of the intergroup approach, a bit too uncritically endorsed in e.g. Halabi & Beck-Phillips, 2001;Halabi & Sonnenschein 2004, and more interestingly questioned by Sagy (2002) and indirectly by Shuli Dichter (2001, interview).…”

“…The workshops at Givat Haviva *a centre for peace and conflict-related educational and cultural programs, including language and art courses*will be presented here. The purpose of the article is to illustrate*through the display of ethnographic footage and commentary*some of the key obstacles to dialogic engagement (Bakhtin, 1981), the problems of and potentials of narrative reconfiguration (Ricoeur, 1983(Ricoeur, , 1996 in projects adopting the intergroup approach, one of the dominating paradigms in the conflict education industry in Israel (Hewstone & Brown, 1986;Halabi & Beck-Phillips, 2001;Halabi & Sonnenschein, 2004 …”

“…This is not to be confused with a level that avoids the macro conflict. We could call this the interpersonal level (opposed to the present intergroup approach, explained and favoured by Halabi & Beck-Phillips, 2001, Halabi & Sonnenschein, 2004 although it is still about conflict and groupformations, but addressed through the individual human being. Together with the existing social approach, we are close to what Sagy (2002) calls the interactionist approach.…”

Adolescents Exposed to 7 Years of Political Violence: Differential Relations Between Exposure and Its Impact for Jewish and Arab Israelis

“…At the base of their status as Israeli citizens, Arab Israelis have an overlapping mix of different identities including Israeli, Arab, Palestinian, and religious affiliation (Halabi and Sonnenschein 2004;Suleiman 2004). The complex geo-political context of the Middle East produces a clash between these four identities.…”

Negotiating the past, imagining the future: Israeli and Palestinian narratives in intergroup dialog

“…The fact that dialog sessions were conducted in English, a non-native language for a majority of participants, is worth noting. Scholars have pointed out that the privileging of one language-in most cases Hebrew-can exacerbate power asymmetries within the contact setting (Halabi & Sonnenschein, 2004b;Halabi & Zak, 2004). The use of a common, third-party language may therefore be advantageous within the dialog setting.…”