Joint Israeli-Palestinian Research Group Endorses Concept Behind New Israeli-Arab Textbook

Meeting today in Braunschweig, the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) and the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI) expressed strong support for Israeli Education Minister Yuli Tamir`s approval of a new approach for the teaching of history in Israeli Arab schools. The new approach, according to Minister Tamir, presents "both the Israeli and Palestinian versions" of Israel`s creation in 1948, providing for the first time some space for Israeli-Arabs to give expression to the conflicts that exist in their identity as Palestinian Arabs who are citizens of Israel.

20 high school teachers from Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories attended the seminar this week in Braunschweig. They are part of a project that is creating and testing "dual-narrative" history texts and teaching methods throughout the region; the project is currently funded by the European Union and jointly conducted by PRIME and GEI.

The new Israeli-Arab textbook is a positive first step,- according to Dr. Dan Bar-On, the Israeli co-director of PRIME and a prominent Holocaust scholar. "But we would also like to see the dual-narrative approach applied more broadly.  The PRIME project aims to change the way the history of the region is taught in all Palestinian and Israeli schools."

Dr. Falk Pingel, Associate Director of the Eckert Institute, emphasized that using the dual-narrative approach, rather than presenting a single national perspective, allows students not only to learn what shapes one`s own understanding of historical events, but to confront the historical perspectives and contexts that shape the other`s differing understanding of those same events.

This means not only teaching of the Naqba ("the catastrophe" of 1948 according to the Palestinian view) in Israeli schools, but also teaching the Holocaust in Palestinian schools. However, "the situation is not symmetrical in the two societies and school systems at the current time", said Dr. Sami Adwan, PRIME`s Palestinian Co-Director and a prominent educator. "It is more difficult to teach the Israeli narrative in Palestinian schools while Palestine is under occupation."

The goal of the project is not to create a single "bridging" historical narrative that is shared in common by both communities, according to Dr. Achim Rohde, project director for the Eckert Institute.  "The goal is to question stereotypes and build more nuanced understanding of the experience of the "other." Such mutual understanding and tolerance of differences - rather than an impossible common ground - will be the essential foundation for sustaining any future peace agreement between two separate and independent states: Israel and the future independent Palestinian State according to UN resolutions."

Background on PRIME

PRIME is a joint Israeli and Palestinian research organization. Its co-directors are Sami Adwan, Prof. of Education, Bethlehem University and Dan Bar-On, Prof. of Social Psychology, Ben Gurion University. One of the original Wye River grantees, PRIME has received funding from the US State Department, the US Institute of Peace, the German Foreign Office in cooperation with the Georg Eckert Institute, and the European Union.

PRIME's research focuses on how to create a new social infrastructure capable of sustaining peace in each community in parallel with the implementation of formal political agreements that will enable the establishment of a Palestinian State alongside the State of Israel. The need for such efforts was underscored by the failure of the Oslo accords that revealed the inherent weaknesses in "top-down" peace negotiations unsupported from the "bottom-up."

PRIME's work is based in part on Prof. Bar-On's pioneering research on methods of reconciliation between the children of Holocaust survivors and children of Nazi perpetrators and how these techniques (called To Reflect and Trust or TRT) might be applied in other post-conflict situations. PRIME's projects also draw much from Prof. Adwan's research on Palestinian and Israeli school textbooks and his experience with people-to-people dialogues in the region.

PRIME's co-directors are recipients of numerous awards, including joint Fulbright Fellowships to Monmouth University in New Jersey (2007), the inaugural Goldberg Prize for Middle East Peace from the Institute of International Education (2005), and recognition by the European Association for Education of Adults (2005) and the Alexander Langer Foundation (2001).

Background on Georg Eckert Institute

The Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research (GEI) was formally founded in 1975. After 1945, Georg Eckert, a Braunschweig historian and later the chairman of the German UNESCO Commission, made a major effort to contribute to reconciliation and peace education by organizing bi- and multilateral textbook conferences with Germany's neighbors and especially with her previous enemies. Important steps on the long path to international understanding include the 1951 'Franco-German Agreement on Controversial Issues in European History' (German-French Textbook Project) and the 1975 'Recommendations for History and Geography Textbooks in the Federal Republic of Germany and the People's Republic of Poland.' (German-Polish Textbook Commission). The latter generated a long and sometimes embittered controversy. In 1985, German and Israeli scholars agreed on the 'German-Israeli Textbook Recommendations'. Since the 1990es, the GEI is involved in Israeli-Palestinian project groups working on mutual textbook and curriculum analysis as well as the development of joint teaching material.

The GEI gathers together academics from a wide variety of disciplines as well as experts on textbooks and teaching. It develops recommendations for the improvement of teaching and learning media for the subjects of history, civics and geography with the aim to foster intercultural and international understanding. The GEI thus encourages a reflected interaction with cultural differences that is significant from an academic as well as from a social point of view.

Since October 2006, Simone Lässig has been the director of the Georg Eckert Institute and professor of Modern History at the University of Braunschweig.

For further information, contact:

Verena Radkau (radkau(at)gei.de) - Dr. Achim Rohde (rohde(at)gei.de)

Robert Loeb, PRIME Liaison, (RLoeb@AOL.com)

27. Juli 2007