Arab-Jewish socio-spatial relations in Arab adolescents' representations

Abstract

It seems that beyond differences among the drawings several generalisations may be made, relating to the ethno-spatial relations in Israeli Palestinian adolescents' perceptions, two years after the emergence of the uprising. - Israeli Palestinian adolescents tend to adopt a nationalistic identity that to a large extent denies its Israeli civilian component, and thus tends to deny any shared identity with the Jewish sector. This is a shift from the Israeli Palestinians' political consensus which stresses the struggle for civilian and social equality. - The Israeli Palestinian adolescents fully identify themselves with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, perceiving the uprising there as the major source of stimulation for the formation of a Palestinian identity. - The PLO is perceived as the only political leadership which supports the Palestinians, including Israeli Palestinians, and offer a tangible sense of control over their destiny. - The Palestinian identity crises (incuding the Israeli Palestinians) will be solved through the PLO military struggle for independence and peaceful compromise with the Jewish state. - The elder adolescents, who have developed more sophisticated spatial abilities and have crystalised their collective identity, tend to attribute Palestinians and Jews with separate territorial bases, while the younger ones tend to ignore the territorial aspects of identity and inter-group relations. - The compromise will lead to coexistence between two separate political identities which split the territory west of the Jordan river equally. - The adolescents at the age of 13–14 represent strong awareness of the Palestinian national struggle and they clearly identify with a tendency to separate themselves from the Israeli state and join a Palestinian identity led by the PLO. If this is the milieu in which they form their identity for the future, one may conclude that the uprising succeeded in increasing unity and solidarity at least between the Israeli Palestinians and the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories around a more crystalised and determined national identity.