Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Group Peace Education Tactics and their Effectiveness

Abstract

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a persistent and punishing struggle that deeply affects the lives of Jews and Arabs in the region through constant trauma, a devastating occupation, the deaths of combatants and civilians alike, combined with political negotiations and interventions that so far have proven fruitless in achieving a viable solution. In large part, this failure is due to extreme distrust between the populations. This thesis examines several non-militant solutions for easing tensions between the sides: (1) a discussion of how intergenerational trauma affects Israelis and how this insight could help understand the Israeli psyche and therefore aid in peacekeeping arrangements; (2) examination of policies from the Israeli Ministry of Education, revealing intentional deficits and reiterated prejudices that make the school system a perpetrator instead of a solution for bridging cultures; (3) a short review of various peace proposals offered over the years with their respective challenges; and (4) an analysis of the strategies of person-to-person peace-building organizations that use similar humanizing methods, including Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence, Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam: Oasis of Peace, and The Parents Circle–Families Forum (PCFF). The thesis also includes first-person narratives from veterans of the front lines of the conflict, which help connect on-the-ground reality to the theoretical framework that is discussed here. Thematically, the ability or inability to communicate, through language barriers, physical barricades, or hate, drives the subject of this thesis.