cross-posted at Daily Kos
If Israelis and Palestinians are unable to agree on their tragic mutual history, maybe they can benefit from learning how the other side views it. That, in a nutshell, is the premise behind a new series of workbooks, whose third volume is to be published in the coming weeks, presenting the central historical narratives of Israelis and Palestinians side by side.
So reports Ha’aretz in a fascinating article by Or Kashti about the high school curriculum efforts of the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East and its co-directors, Prof. Sami Adwan, Department of Education, Bethlehem University, and Dan Bar-On, of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
For more about the curriculum and the two co-directors, please read on.
PRIME’s own description of the “Shared History Booklet Project” appears here.
Just Vision presents interviews from 2005 about the project with both Adwan and Bar-On.
Through his work with PRIME, Sami Adwan is pioneering an educational model that enables both Palestinian and Israeli educators to create school history curricula that includes both historical narratives in a single textbook. Sami was born in a village north of Hebron and finished his PhD. in the United States. He has published widely on the role of education in peace building. His encounter with Israeli soldiers while in prison for being a member of Fatah during the first intifada made him realize that denial and avoidance would not help to improve the situation, but rather discovering the other.
Dan Bar-On began his involvement in dialogue and conflict resolution through working with children of Holocaust survivors and children of Nazi perpetrators. After the Oslo process Dan met and began working with a group of Palestinian and Israeli academics who formed PRIME, the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East. PRIME’s group of teachers and historians has created a high school history text that presents the Israeli and Palestinian historical narratives side by side.
Each page of the three history workbooks, Kashti reports, “is divided into three sections of equal size: the Israeli narrative on the right, the Palestinian on the left, and in the middle, empty lines for students to write their own reactions to the historical descriptions.”
The teachers worked in national and cross-national groups. At the first stage each chapter was written by the Israelis and the Palestinians separately; afterward the teachers discussed the different versions. At the second stage, the draft underwent extensive discussion, in which all the teachers took part.
Throughout the project, participants adhered to the principle on which Bar-On and Adwan had decided at the beginning: No one had a veto over what is written. One could only explain one’s opposition, debate it and hope that the other side accepted the objections.
In the past year, 14 teachers from each side have used the workbooks. Prof. Adwan estimates that a few thousand Palestinians have been exposed to at least some of the content. “There have been students who refused to study the Israeli narrative, and who left the classroom,” he explains. “Some said Israeli history is propaganda and twists what really happened. Others wondered if the Israelis really teach the Palestinian narrative. But there have also been more understanding responses.”
According to Rachel Zamir, a history teacher at Tel Aviv’s Rogozin High School, students very quickly grasp the basic idea of the project. “Usually one lesson is enough for them to understand that every chapter in history has a number of points of view. For me, as a history teacher, the very fact that students understand that one place can have two names depending on national allegiance, is already a success,” she notes.
After studying the two narratives, the students in the younger classes are asked to write two articles, one for a Palestinian newspaper, the other for a Jewish one, before the establishment of the state; or to draw one poster for Independence Day and one in memory of the Nakba. At the end of each period of study, Niv Kedar, a history teacher at the Givat Brenner regional high school, elicits feedback from his students. He says almost all agree that the Palestinian narrative should be taught. In answer to a question as to whether they were surprised at the narrative of the other side, many responded that it had a lot of logic. “If I were on the other side, I would want the same thing,” one student wrote. Another wrote, “I’m sure that if I were in their situation, without a state, I would behave in the same way.”
Here are examples of the contrasting Israeli and Palestinian presentations of events:
Zionism
Israeli: “The national movement of the Jewish people. Developed in Eastern and Central Europe as a result of disappointment with emancipation, continued antisemitism, the impact of other national movements and the continuing bond between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel.”
Palestinian: “A colonialist political movement ascribing a national character and racial attributes to Judaism … Led to Jewish immigration to Palestine, claiming historical and religious rights.”
The Balfour Declaration
Israeli: “The first time any country supported Zionism… Expressed the support of the British government for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.”
Palestinian: “The unholy marriage between British imperialism and the colonialist Zionist movement, at the expense of the Palestinian people and the future of the entire Arab nation.”
The War of Independence/The Nakba of 1948
Israeli: “On November 29, 1947, the United Nations approved by a large majority the proposal for two independent states alongside each other (Resolution 181). The Jewish community celebrated that night with dancing in the streets. However, the next morning acts of terror began, carried out by the country’s Arabs and volunteers from Arab countries, who did not accept the Partition Plan.”
Palestinian: “Resolution 181 of the United Nations on the division of Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, symbolized on the one hand the beginning of the countdown to the establishment of Israel, on May 15, 1948, and on the other hand the beginning of the countdown to the Nakba of 1948, the uprooting and exile of the Palestinian people.”
The origin of the refugees/The events of the Nakba
Israeli: “During the war a number of massacres, robberies and rapes were carried out by Jewish fighters. The best known massacre was at Deir Yassin, where 250 Arabs were murdered by Irgun and Lehi fighters. The incident was roundly criticized in the country and harsh public debate broke out.”
Palestinian: “The actions of the Zionist gangs were intended to sow terror among the Palestinian inhabitants to cause them to abandon their villages, especially after the massacre at Deir Yassin.”
The Six-Day War/The June 1967 war
Israeli: “The war began on June 5, 1967, and ended six days later, on June 10, 1967. Israel fought three Arab countries: Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and attained a victory that became a landmark in Zionist history. The backdrop to the war’s outbreak was the relationship between Israel and the Arab countries in the 1960s.”
Palestinian: “The war that Israel started against the Arab countries is known as the ‘June 5 aggression’ because Israel was the initiator of the declaration of battle and opened an offensive.”
The first intifada
Israeli: “On December 8, 1987, an Israeli truck hit a Palestinian car in the Gaza Strip, killing four occupants of the vehicle. The Palestinians claimed the act was intentional and deemed it malicious murder.”
Palestinian: “On December 8, 1987, the day the intifada broke out, an Israeli truck driver in Gaza intentionally ran into an Arab car, resulting in martyrs’ deaths of a number of Palestinians. After news spread of the incident, huge demonstrations broke out all over the West Bank and Gaza.”