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Teachers, business leaders, and even ex-soldiers have started dozens of new bipartisan NGOs--some Palestinian, some Israeli, and some both—and all committed to replacing ‘Us v. Them’ with ‘Us and Them.’
Empathy is not a common trait between Israelis and Palestinians. They have a stake in the same piece of land, and two completely different justifications for it. Even their history books tell different stories. According to a five-year study of Israeli and Palestinian textbooks conducted by the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy
Land, children on both sides of the conflict, starting at about age five, are taught wildly different versions of the same historical events, with each side’s version ignoring the other side almost completely.
“The other is just not there,” says Sami Adwan, a Palestinian who along with an Israeli and an American
conducted the three-year study. Each side’s history books, he points out, ignores the religion, culture, economy and daily activities of the other. Israeli history book fail to mention the Palestinian Nakba; Palestinians omit the Holocaust. They are not even represented on each other’s maps.“There’s no description of them as individuals,” Adwan says. “There’s no description of their suffering, and in that sense, education continues to be used as a means to garner more support for political ideology.
”The Council initiated the study to combat the logjams and stalemates that the region’s competing ideologies so frequently create. Other projects include a young religious leaders program to build mutual acceptance and
respect between the two factions. But by far the most interesting thing about the joint Israeli-Palestinian Council is that it is not unique.
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