HAMBURG: Sami Adwan was born in 1954 in a village near Hebron on the West Bank. He spent his childhood under Israeli occupation, and for a long time thought of the Israelis the same way most do in Palestine: They are the reason for all my misery, for all my suffering. When studying in the United States, he even avoided lectures where he knew he would encounter Jewish students.
At that point, he had never spoken to an Israeli; he didn t know them as civilians, only as soldiers. He didn t want to know them.
Now Adwan is co-director of an Israeli-Palestinian peace research institute and is working with Jewish teachers and historians on writing an Israeli-Palestinian history book on the Middle East conflict. He is a bridge-builder. But how did he get here?
Sami Adwan returned from the United States in the late 1980s, taught at Hebron University, became a member of Fateh and was swiftly arrested by the Israelis. At that time, Fateh was still considered a terrorist organization. During his first week in prison, he didn t know the charge against him. His image of the enemy was confirmed.
But then something happened that didn t jibe with his worldview.
He overheard an argument between two Israeli soldiers about a document that Adwan was supposed to sign. “We can t force him to sign something he can t read, said one. Adwan understood just enough Hebrew to realize that a Jew was standing up for his rights, for the rights of a Palestinian. Later he saw an Israeli soldier bringing the prisoners water, although his superior had forbidden it.
“These experiences changed my life. He realized that not everyone was the same. He wanted to find out more about the Israelis, to talk to them. When after six months Adwan was released, he worked to launch a dialogue.
He met with Israeli academics and got to know the psychologist Dan Bar-On from Ben Gurion University. Bar-On had caused a worldwide sensation by setting up meetings between Holocaust victims and children of Nazi criminals. Together, Bar-On and Adwan founded the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) and began work on their concept for an Israeli-Palestinian history textbook.
“What is taught in the schools can either foment conflict or contribute to finding a solution, says Adwan.
Bar-On and Adwan were not so presumptuous as to try to find a mutual interpretation of the Middle East conflict. They merely wanted to place the Palestinian point of view next to that of Israel. This would help to open the eyes of both.
The three volumes now show the Israeli view of things on the left side, with the Palestinian standpoint on the right. In the middle there is space for notes, room for the pupils’ own thoughts. The work includes such examples of 20th-century Israeli-Palestinian history as the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which promised the Jews their own nation, the period of uprisings against the occupiers known as the Intifada, and the wars of 1948 and 1967.
It was not difficult to agree on the dates, but it was hard to accept the others’ interpretation of them. “One person s terrorist is another person s hero, comments Adwan.
Dan Bar-On, who died in autumn 2008, was interested in the “disarming of history . The fact that this disarming must begin at school is something Adwan is more convinced of than ever after his analyses of Palestinian and Israeli history textbooks.
“There is no acknowledgement in these books of what the others have suffered. No recognition of their rights, their history, their culture. The Holocaust hardly appears at all in the Palestinian books, while the Israelis ignore the expulsion of the Palestinians. In the maps the cities and villages of the other side are nowhere to be seen. Schooling is therefore part of the problem , says Adwan, “and not part of the solution .
The new textbook, designed for upper school pupils, is called “Learning each other s historical narrative . A dozen teachers in Israel and a dozen more on the West Bank are now working with the texts at selected schools. But not during regular classroom instruction, as the history book is not part of the official curricula. The respective ministries ignore but tolerate it.
The Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig offered neutral ground on which the Palestinian and Israeli teachers and scholars could regularly meet for seminars stretching over several days.
Before work on the content began, the teachers spoke with each other about their everyday lives. Some told of their fear of suicide attacks, others about the humiliations of occupation.
Yiftach Ron, who teaches at an Israeli school, says he has a problem with how Israeli society treats Palestinians. He thought that working on the project was the best way for him to solve this problem. Some of the Palestinian teachers received threats from parents when they found out what their children were learning at school. Friendships have grown between some of the participants, but some have had to withdraw because they could not bear the emotional strain.
Like the teacher whose blind cousin earns his living from a kiosk. When Israeli soldiers bulldozed the kiosk, the teacher said: “I can t work with you all anymore; otherwise I won t be able to look him in the eye. Another reports that one of his pupils was shot.
During the latest war in Gaza people on both sides were speechless. All work was suspended, meetings cancelled and conferences postponed. Now the participants have pulled themselves together again.
And what about the pupils? Maysoon Husseini and Yiftach Ron have for the most part had good experiences in their classrooms. Others report that the pupils in Israel often find the Palestinian interpretation of history in the book too emotional, verging on propaganda. Many Palestinian pupils say that, even if they do develop more understanding for the Israeli view of history, it will hardly change anything about their situation.
The evaluation is still in progress, and at the end of July the project is to be presented at an international conference. Adwan remarks that most of the pupils are now less sweeping in their judgments, more cautious in their assessments of the “others . It s a start. “All we can do is hope, he says.
Arnfried Schenkwas born 1968, studied politics and is a journalist with DIE ZEIT, in the educational department (Chancen). This is an adapted version of an article originally published in DIE ZEIT/Qantara.de. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews) with permission from DIE ZEIT and Qantara.
