Palestinian-Jewish Bilingual Education in Israel: Its Influence on Cultural Identities and its Impact on Intergroup Conflict

This paper reports on a rather small cross-sectional study conducted with students studying in an integrated bilingual Palestinian-Jewish school and with similar age students studying in standard segregated Palestinian-Jewish schools in Israel The interviews performed allow us to become acquainted with the childrenʹs conceptions of issues regarding their own Jewish and Palestinian cultural identity as these are shaped through the interaction in school and the larger communal context and how they envision the conflict and their present and future relations with the ʹotherʹ. The study was conceived as a first step towards a longitudinal study on the long-term influence of bilingual education on students, their cultural identities and their perceptions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. All in all we believe our study contributes valuable information on the potential of bilingual education to shape identities in conflict-ridden environments and the possibility of healing through these educational efforts.