School for Peace
The School for Peace offers ground-breaking training in conflict management and resolution through facilitated Jewish-Arab encounters. The school’s widely imitated workshops are premised on the idea the conflict is fueled by interactions between groups, not between individuals. Co-led by Arab and Jewish facilitators, workshops focus on uncovering the beliefs associated with group identity in order to challenge those constructs.
History and Methodology
Since its founding in 1979, more than 65,000 Arabs and Jews have attended School for Peace programs on the Village’s main campus and at satellite locations in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and beyond. Unaffiliated with the Israeli government, the school relies on funding from foundations, Friends of the Village associations worldwide, and participant fees. Leadership alternates every few years between an Arab director and a Jewish director, and staff comprise an equal number of Jewish and Arab facilitators.
The school’s method is based on years of research, theory, and development in the field of conflict resolution, and is guided by four basic premises:
The perceptions and beliefs on which a person’s identity and behavior are constructed are firm and deep-set, and are usually difficult to change.
The conflict is based on the meeting point between two national groups, and not individuals. The national group is something essential, beyond the sum of all the individuals who compose it.
The dialogue group is a microcosm of society, and therefore can be used as a learning and teaching tool.
Members of the dialogue group remain connected to and affected by reality outside of the facilitated conversation.
School of Peace facilitators encourage a critical look at social structures, emphasizing the everyday consequences of minority-majority relations for those on both sides of the conflict.
Programs and Impact
Since the late 1970s, the School for Peace’s work has evolved from shifting perceptions to inspiring direct action. Current initiatives include:
Training a range of professionals, including doctors, teachers, attorneys, policymakers, and civil servants, in conflict mediation and resolution
Empowering change agents to organize their communities around actionable plans for collective social and environmental good
Developing courses for Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, Ben Gurion Universities, and other higher-education institutions
Organizing tailored workshops for women and teenagers on both sides of the conflict
The School for Peace also teaches a course in partnership with the Arab Center for Alternative Planning that addresses equitable consideration for Jews and Arabs in engineering and urban planning projects. Its partnership with Ramallah, a Palestine-based peace organization, offers a sixteen-month course for emerging political leaders in the region. School for Peace staff have been invited to work with groups in conflict in Cyprus, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and other locations around the world.