Abstract
Throughout their years in the primary and secondary education systems in Israel, Palestinians and Jews do not meet, not because they chose to refrain from meeting, but rather because the societal and political structure around them insisted on keeping them “safe”, in the dark, and in two separate education systems. For most of them, their first encounter as young adults takes place on the college campus. Nevertheless, most academic settings in Israel rarely relate to nor leverage this encounter. Against a backdrop of violent conflict, distrust, and prejudice, relations between Palestinians and Jews in Israel continue to deteriorate, and the university encounter becomes meaningless and fleeting. Academic institutions in Israel, we believe, cannot be divorced from the Israeli political apparatus and its connectedness and contributions to the “Jewishness” of the state, and the ongoing conflict. The Hebrew University was established and is supported by Jewish and Zionist actors. The website of the Hebrew University states the following:This chapter is based on an action-oriented study (Lewin, 1946), designed and carried out in tandem with faculty members of 13 community-engaged courses in 11 institutions of higher learning in Israel (see Appendix), all part of the Campus–Community Partnership for Social Change (hereafter, the Partnership). The aim of this study is to analyze how academic community-engaged courses affect students, and how and whether they can promote education toward justice (let alone transformative justice) in the context of a continued conflict. Our intention was not only to generate theoretical understandings of how shared community engagement can improve intergroup discussions in conflict-torn societies, but also to identify the main difficulties of transformative learning in a conflict zone.
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Notes
- 1.
This research was carried out thanks to a grant from the US Institute for Peace.
- 2.
Druze students are a separate minority group who, although Arabic speakers, sometimes find themselves isolated from both Jews and Palestinians on campus (especially those from families that serve in the Israeli Army).
- 3.
This was also apparent in the responses of Ethiopian and Mizrahi respondents—otherized groups among the Jewish students. In the Community Interpreting course, students of Ethiopian background referred to discrimination and prejudice (real or perceived) against their group as reinforcing their sense that “their people” have much in common with the Arabic speakers—at least in the context of language rights. This was also clear from reports written by some of the Russian speakers, though to a lesser extent.
- 4.
This research was made possible thanks to a generous research grant of the US Institute for Peace (USIP).
- 5.
Some of the community interpreting students reported that the course had also enhanced the level of their mother tongue, which they had tended to neglect.
- 6.
For more details on the law, see here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/israel-adopts-controversial-jewish-nation-state-law. Accessed August 31, 2018. Adalah, here: https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/9569. Accessed August 31, 2018.
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Appendix: List of Community-Engaged Courses
Appendix: List of Community-Engaged Courses
At: www.partnership.huji.ac.il
Image and Reality in East Jerusalem
Miki Kratsman and Chen Shapira
Department of Photography, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design
Miriam Shlesinger, Michal Schuster, and Tanya Voinova
Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Bar Ilan University
Dalya Markovich and Asmahan Harzallah
School of Education, Beit Berl College
Education for Social Justice, Environmental Justice and Peace Education
Hagith Gor Ziv, Galia Zalmansson, and Gal Harmat
Kibbutzim College of Education
Education with a View Towards the Community
Tamar Hagar, Yael Efron, and Tufaha Saba
Department of Education, Tel-Hai Academic College
Feminism, Accessibility, and the Law : Marginalized Populations in Jerusalem
Orly Kuzin-Malachi and Shiran Reichenberg
Edith Blit-Cohen
School of Social Work, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Leadership and Social Change
Ariela Bairey Ben Ishay and Moti Gigi
Department of Administration and Public Policy, Sapir Academic College
Legal Feminism and Social Change
Dana Myrtenbaum, Nur Falah, Sagit Mor
Faculty of Law, University of Haifa
Planning, Sustainability, and Human Rights: Theory and Practice—The Right to Adequate Housing in Jaffa Gimel
Tovi Fenster and Tal Kulka
Department of Geography and the Human Environment, Tel Aviv University
Planning with the Community: Concepts, Tools, and Strategies for Action
Rachel Kallus and Emily Silverman
Department of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
Rights of the Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel
Yousef Jabareen and Ilan Saban
Faculty of Law, University of Haifa
Strengthening the Welfare of Women Through Awareness and Empowerment
Ariella Friedman and Abeer Halabi
Department of Behavioral Sciences, Zefat Academic College
The Unit for (In)formal Architecture Studies
Senan Abdelqader and Yael Padan
Department of Architecture, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design
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Golan, D., Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. (2019). Engaged Academia in a Conflict Zone? Palestinian and Jewish Students in Israel. In: Markovich, D., Golan, D., Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. (eds) Understanding Campus-Community Partnerships in Conflict Zones. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13781-6_2
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