Building a reality of peace and reconciliation through school textbooks: lessons for the Israeli–Palestinian case

This article shows that effective reconciliation and peace-building require teaching children a constructed narrative based on the opposing stories, especially with regard to an intractable conflict such as the one that characterizes the Israeli–Palestinian case. Textbooks play an important role in any country when it comes to creating collective memory and political consciousness. They change over time, according to political and social powers within that nation, and can support and inspire processes of war or peace education. In a transition period between war and peace, for example, one can distinguish differential trends of texts that convey acceptance, tolerance, minimization of stereotypes and reduction of war imagery compared to the preceding period–all in the service of building a reality of peace and reconciliation.