abby chill's List: Conflict Management and Culture

• First, it is important for my generation to question the  official historical "facts" that generally serve as a framework for discussion  of the conflict. These "facts" have been internalized and are now considered to  provide the background to the debate instead of being subject to debate  themselves. We don't realize that what we assume to be "facts" are frequently  only our own narrative, and this greatly restricts our ability to think about  the conflict openly and critically.
       

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  In a  Doubt Forum, Israeli and Palestinian youth could post articles, pictures and  their own opinions and feelings, as well as ask others questions about the way  they experience the conflict. Exposure to a diversity of information would  encourage greater skepticism of the way their respective societies represent the  conflict.
  
• Second, the concept of collective identity should be questioned. The conflict is  deeply personal to many people, yet the emotions regarding it are often  experienced communally. In both societies there is a sense of insecurity, which  leads to a feeling that nationalism is necessary to keep the state - or the  struggle for one - alive. When collective identity plays such a central role,  distinguishing between individuals and their actions or communities becomes  difficult. Furthermore, over-identification with one's society or government  does not enable one to examine critically that society's actions, as the subject  becomes emotionally loaded.
  
  The Doubt Forum would help undermine  collective identity and reveal the individual voices within the two societies.  Breaking down collective identity would highlight the common denominator of  human experience shared by Israelis and Palestinians. Finding this common  denominator would promote understanding of the "other" and create a platform  from which to debate the conflict effectively.
  
  
• A joint Israeli-Palestinian Doubt Forum that questions the notions of fact,  collective identity and personal responsibility would provide a way for  Palestinians and Israelis to interact and recognize each other's humanity -  allowing them to meet somewhere other than on opposite sides of a checkpoint.  This, in turn, would allow us the freedom to think as individuals - not as  nations - and come up with original solutions to the conflict. Interaction in  the Doubt Forum would help us question the "facts" and demonstrate the plurality  of voices present in both societies. The Forum would strengthen individual  identity and empower young people to effect change. With the heightened  consciousness, new perspectives, and confidence that the Doubt Forum would give  them, young people could make peace possible.
  

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• The contrast between a Ph.D. in genetics and life in a Bedouin village in the  Negev desert could hardly be more striking. The only way for Abu-Saad, now 36,  to escape her solitary life would be to marry one of her late husband's married  brothers and resign herself to second-wife status. If she were to marry outside  the family, her children would be taken from her and given to her in-laws to  raise. Yes, she says with a shy smile, she accepts the custom by which the  children go to the man's family, and would never violate it.
  
  "The  woman's honor and the children's future are the most important things for me."  The word "honor" repeatedly punctuated all the interviews with the educated  women, as it does Abu-Rabia-Queder's book.
  
  
• Sagy also speaks of a certain bewilderment and confusion about their identity  experienced by many of these women in the wake of their encounters with Jewish  society, which they cope with by adhering more strictly to the rules of their  traditional society. "This enables them to live in two worlds that are close  physically but very far apart in their worldviews, values and behavioral codes.  It also ensures continued support for their choices at home. The few who try to  violate the strict rules are punished severely," Sagy explains.
  
  If a  woman is rumored - generally wrongly - to have violated the rules, she is barred  from leaving the village and may face harassment and even physical violence. In  some cases she will be forced into marriage and sent back to the flocks and the  cooking pots. One respondent related that she had asked herself whether she  would not be better off acting like most of the village women, "wearing a head  scarf, praying and fasting and going on the hajj four times, and nothing more."  
  
• The female Bedouin students are a minority in a traditional society that is a  minority within Arab society, which is itself a deprived minority within Israeli  society. In addition to all this, higher education generates tension within  these women between modern values such as individualism and freedom of choice,  and conservative ones such as obedience to tribal leaders and the suppression of  personal desires. That tension transcends social classes and blurs the  differences between poor village girls and affluent city-dwellers.
  
• After acquiring higher education, like many Bedouin women of my age and  generation I found myself struggling with the prohibition imposed by Bedouin  society against freely choosing a partner from outside the tribal borders," she  writes in her book. "The resulting struggles and all they entailed triggered a  powerful conflict in me: On the one hand I continued to belong socially and  culturally to Bedouin society in the Negev. Thus, acquiring higher education  contributed to my professional advancement but [on the other hand it created] a  deep disparity between my professional and my personal life, because while I was  able to realize my desire to choose a profession I was not free to choose a life  partner."
  
  In one case Abu-Rabia-Queder was unable to maintain the  necessary academic distance. The interviewee related that after she gave up the  man she wanted to marry, because her parents considered his family "inferior,"  and married a man they chose for her, she fell into a protracted depression and  went back to wearing traditional dress. "I was so emotionally involved in her  story that I couldn't help myself, and at the first word I burst into tears,"  Abu-Rabia-Queder says. "I felt that our personal encounter, which stemmed from  the research encounter, empowered us both as Bedouin women." The research  subject advised the researcher to behave as she had not dared: "Always look  good, don't show anyone from [Bedouin] society that you are underprivileged,  don't show them that they won."
  

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