Narratives in conflict: A postcolonial interpretation of youth encounters between Jews and Palestinians from Israel

Abstract

In this article we share findings from research on encounters between Palestinian and Jewish youth from Israel. Our findings are based on narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with 100 young people who participated in structured encounter workshops during 2003–2006. While previous research on such encounters has been based on paradigms from social psychology, our analysis employed themes drawn from postcolonial literature. We found that this literature helps make sense of the experiences that the young people had in the encounters, how they perceived the relations between the two groups, and how their narratives relate to the wider context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.In general, Palestinian participants feel as if they are transparent and excluded by the State. In the encounters they want to show that they are neither primitive nor violent, as the Jews tend to regard them. The Jewish participants' motivation is to get to know “the natives”. This acquaintance helped them identify with the Palestinians' hardships, while at the same time seeing them as members of a more primitive culture.