Course Description
This course offers a unique opportunity to experience the challenges and complexities of shared society and coexistence in Israel/Palestine, the Holy Land for Jews, Muslims and Christians, a homeland shared and claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians. The course will focus on activities carried out by nonprofit organizations operating within the Israeli civil society dealing with issues related to shared society and to the protection and advancement of the civil and human rights of different populations, with special emphasis on the Arab-Palestinian population in Israel. These activities include educational and social services programs, equality before the law, community work and advocacy activities, prevention of systematic discrimination based on ethnic and religious affiliation, aimed at creating dialogues and building co-existence among the different populations in the Israeli society and in Palestine.
The class will focus on individuals and organizations that work to protect the Arab minority, both within the so-called Green Line and also in the occupied territories, on subjects such as safety, legal rights, access to quality services, freedom of travel, and coexistence. The Israeli nonprofit sector is one of the most complex in the world in terms of the number of its organizations, the size of activities and the variety of fields covered by its organizations, given the relatively small number of citizens. In the last decade, a growing number of organizations including nonprofits, social enterprises and philanthropic foundations are dealing with issues related to co-existence and the social and political situation of the Arab-Palestinian population in Israel. While co-existence of populations practicing different religions is a prominent issue in Israel, its complexities are shared in other societies around the world, including the USA. Many nonprofit organizations in the USA are also building co-existence among populations of different religious and ethnic backgrounds; lessons from this course may be transferable to the American reality.
This course is designed to introduce students to the key issues of civil society activities for shared society and human rights in Israel, enabling students to learn about the challenges and complexities of promoting coexistence in Israel - where civilizations, religions, national identities and ideologies converge. Through a series of in-class lectures and discussions, reading material, pre-recorded lectures, virtual and in-person field study, students will be able to learn about and observe a variety of social initiatives, communities, people, narratives and perspectives on civil society activities in the field of co-existence and on the complexities involved in the work towards shared society. The course provides opportunities for meetings with people who lived the power imbalance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, civil society activists, leaders of nonprofit organizations and communities, government officials, and professional experts. These diverse educational methods are aimed at enhancing the students’ understanding regarding social and human rights of Palestinians within Israel and in the occupied territories and to assess the groups that are active in protecting those rights.
Students will be introduced to the competing narratives of a conflict and how these narratives are used to sustain the conflict and power imbalance. The course will discuss and analyze different issues and problems involved in civil society activity for co-existence in a comparative-international perspective, enabling students to gain a broad understanding of this topic.