Peace as a surprise, peace as a disturbance: the Israeli–Arab conflict in official documents

Abstract

The main question that is discussed in this paper is the way in which the Ministry of Education in Israel dealt with the changes in the political reality, and the shift from violent relations towards the possibility of peace agreements between Israel and its neighbours and the Palestinians. Drawing on the analysis of official documents – Director General Directives (DGDs) – this paper asks how the possibility for peace was understood by the Ministry of Education and how the role of the education system and educators was defined. It also asks to what extent changes in the political reality have altered the dominant discourses (militarism and peace‐loving society) while making room for a more positive form of peace education. The analysis reveals that the changes in political reality have led to the articulation of two unique responses, alongside the dominant discourses. They are peace as a surprise and peace as a disturbance. This paper focuses on these two responses and the ways in which they correspond to the militaristic culture and the image of Israel as a peace‐loving society, and how they might shape peace education.

Keywords:

• peace as a surprise
• peace as a disturbance
• Israeli–Arab conflict
• official documents

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Open University and to the Tammy Steinmetz Centre for Peace Research for their financial support. We also thank Michal Mor, Mohammad Massalha, Gili Hartal and Racheli Hartal for their assistance in collecting and sorting out the data.

Notes

1. The Israeli–Arab conflict denotes the relationship between the State of Israel and its Arab neighbours; the Israeli–Palestinian conflict refers to the more specific dispute between Israel and the Palestinians over the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While “the national conflict” commonly stands for the rift between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. All three are seen, jointly or separately, as “THE Conflict”.

2. Although the majority of school children in Israel are enrolled in the state education system, and the DGDs analysed here apply to all state schools, the Israeli education system is far from providing any form of common education. In fact it is divided into the following sectors: general state education which caters for the Jewish secular population; state religious education that serves the Zionist‐religious population; the Arab state education system; and the independent Jewish ultra‐Orthodox school system. To a great extent the Israeli state education system is segregated along the lines of nationality, religion and religiosity.

3. Looking for the ways in which the conflict is discursively constructed we focused our initial analysis on the following themes: responsibility for the conflict; the historical narrative of the conflict (i.e. how it is contextualised and what events are seen as leading and linking to it); who are the “us” and “we” in the text and how they are constructed; universality verse uniqueness – is the conflict constructed as universal or unique, is it seen as normative or as deviation; is the conflict presented as a disturbance or part of the social order; is it constructed as static or dynamic (changing); is it constructed as solvable and if so what is seen as a desirable solution; what are the terminology that is used to describe the conflict. We also focused on other set of categories aiming to unpack the educational dimension of the texts. Here we looked for the ways in which the role of the education system and educators is defined in relation to the conflict. What the perceived role of the education system in “solving” the conflict, what is defined as education practice in relation to the conflict and to what extent the education system is seen as having the ability to generate change and what kind of change. We also used Davies typology and other classification (such as conflict management/resolution) to identify different pedagogies.

4. In Israel military service is compulsory for both males and females (three and two years, respectively). Upon completion of the obligatory three years service the majority of males also serve at the reserve force until turning 45. As a result the Israel Defence Force (IDF) is often referred to as “the military of the people” and Israel is described as “a nation in arms”. However several groups are exempt of this compulsory service: the Palestinian citizens whose national allegiance with Israel’s “enemies” makes them “unfit” for military service (some other non‐Jewish groups such as the Druze and the Bedouins do serve in the army); and religious females and ultra‐Orthodox males are often exempt too.

5. On the culture of heroism in schools see: Lomsky‐Feder (2004) Ben‐Amos (1999) and Gor (2005).