Overcoming Emotional Barriers: Building Dialogues Between Jewish and Arab Students in Israel

Encounters between Jewish and Arab students who meet in Israeli institutions of higher education are overshadowed by a bitter, ongoing conflict, making them highly charged. Consequently, students and lecturers prefer to avoid dialogue, or any interaction, that may bring ‘the Elephant’ into the room. This aim of this presentation is to present a model for intervention aimed in overcoming this barrier to dialogue. On the basis of previous experience, we assumed that two conditions would increase students’ willingness to enter into dialogue: 1) focusing on the ‘here and now’ rather than on the broad Jewish/Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict; 2) framing the process as working towards a better future rather than focusing on the past. The intervention took place in the form of a two-semester research seminar that we facilitated in four different groups of students. Palestinian-Israeli tense issues arose spontaneously in all groups, several times a year, often leading to the expression of strong and unpleasant emotions, to the extent that we feared students would not want to continue studying together. However, these crises were important step in the process of promoting openness and rapport. We will present the model of seminar and focus on the four ‘tools’ that we believe helped the students deal more effectively with the unpleasant emotions: (1) the co-instruction, by both Jewish and Arab facilitators; (2) using research as a tool (3) introducing constructionist conceptual framework (4) practicing reflexivity and dialogue.