Peace Education: Lessons Learned in Israel/Palestine, Research on

Abstract

Abstract The variant of peace and coexistence education in Israel between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs and between the former and Palestinians is typical of such programs in regions of intractable conflict and prolonged intense interethnic tension: Northern Ireland (“Education for Mutual Understanding”), Bosnia‐Herzegovina (“Education for Peace”), Kosovo, Congo (International Peace Education Development), and such. Some see this brand of peace education as the prototype of the field entailing all that makes peace education what it is, much in line with the 1998 United Nation's Resolution on the Culture of Peace : “… an integral approach to preventing violence and violent conflicts, and an alternative to the culture of war and violence based on education for peace” (p. 1). Central to this brand of peace education, and the attribute that makes it seen as the prototype, is the desire to change minds and hearts between real adversaries who pose a perceived collective threat to each other. Programs of this kind are not designed primarily to resolve a conflict, leaving it to political and social forces, but to mainly change attitudes toward, perceptions of, attributions to, stereotypes of, and the prevailing dehumanization and delegitimization of the collective adversary.