Narratives of a Conflict

Abstract

In the past two decades, a number of Palestinian and Israeli historians and activists have tried to bridge, or at least narrow, the gap between the each side’s depiction of the history of the conflict and description of the other’s role in perpetuating enmity and mutual hatred. These attempts have been made in the belief that the reconciliation of antagonistic narratives is a precondition for appeasement.

The first part clarifies terms, classifies narrative types, and discusses the complex interrelationship between collective and popular narrative and academic historiography.

The main body of the article focuses on the attempts to bridge over the conflicting narratives. The value of these experiments is explored. Also discussed are experiments at peace education to promote universal humanistic values and the efforts by authors, neither Israeli nor Palestinian, to write a “neutral narrative”. The main conclusion is that bridging over the conflicting narratives fails as a precondition for peace-making, though it may eventually be an outcome of conciliation. Nevertheless, such a dialogue seems to be valuable in awakening each party to the other’s point of view. Finally, certain aspects of the enemy’s narrative are presented that should be challenged in the ongoing attempt to explore the conflicting positions.