Does Peace Education Make a Difference in the Context of an Intractable Conflict?

Abstract

Peace education in regions of intractable conflict faces a number of severe challenges, such as conflicting collective narratives, shared histories and beliefs, grave inequalities, excessive emotionality, and unsupportive social climates. In this light, the chances of success for peace education programs are rather slim. A series of quasi-experimental studies carried out with Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian youngsters revealed that despite the ongoing violence, participation in various programs yields positive attitudinal, perceptual, and relational changes manifested in, for example, more positive views of peace, better ability to see the other side's perspective, and greater willingness for contact. These changes depend on participants' initial political views, and thus, as found in one study, play an attitude-reinforcing function, but, as found in another study, prevent the worsening of perceptions of and attribution to the other side, thereby serving in a preventive capacity.