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INTRODUCTION
The Jewish Arab Center (JAC) is an interdisciplinary research institute
within the University of Haifa, internationally renowned for its work in
promoting Jewish-Arab cooperation.
Over the last few years we have strived to establish corporation between
Jews and Arabs as equal partners in all our activities. With this in
mind, we have encouraged initiatives in three major spheres of
activities:
Research: The JAC supports and publishes research on Middle East affairs
such as conflicts and conflict resolution, social change, culture,
economic aspects of the region, and the complexity of Jewish-Arab
relations. We provide a venue for conferences, seminars and other
academic events in order to disseminate knowledge and create a
meaningful dialog concerning Arab-Jewish coexistence.
Senior JAC research associates have been involved in promoting a
dialogue in the Middle East. Towards this goal, a network of political,
social, cultural and academic relationships has been created among
academics, strategists and policy-makers in Jordan, the Palestinian
Authority, Egypt and Morocco, as well as in Israel.
Student Activities: A primary goal of the JAC is to help the University
of Haifa to become not just an institute of higher education for Jews
and Arabs alike, but also a forum where students from different
backgrounds can find new ways of living together and understanding each
other better. To further this goal, we offer various social, cultural
and educational activities related to Jewish-Arab relations to all
University students.
Social Responsibility: The JAC’s involvement in both research and
student activities lead to our third area of activities, which is social
responsibility. We contribute to fostering mutual understanding between
Jews and Arabs, both on campus and in Israeli society in general, and
lend encouragement and support to initiatives leading to involvement in
the community and in society in an effort to effect changes for the
better in Arab-Jewish relations.
Background
In the early 1970s, the fledgling University of Haifa realized the
potential for either conflict or cooperation between Jews and Arabs on
campus. It was therefore decided to establish a center specifically for
dealing with this issue, to be the catalyst for bringing together
students from different backgrounds and origins so that they could get
to know each other on a personal level outside the classroom. The
University also took steps in preparing promising members of the Arab
minority for academic study, and here the JAC would play a key role.
The Jewish Arab Center was thus intended and planned to become than
either a social welfare unit or an academic think tank. It was to be a
forum for ideas and the practical application of those ideas. The
framework also included a students’ club operating mainly under the
auspices of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, while The Gustav Heinemann
Institute of Middle Eastern Studies provides a context for the JAC for
conducting and publishing multi- and inter-disciplinary researches.
Aims and Objectives
The JAC is involved in ongoing research and current affairs, and its
activities are intended to encourage and support equitable coexistence
between Jewish and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, including:
Providing an umbrella organization for researchers from different
disciplines and other countries to meet, exchange information, conduct
studies and disseminate knowledge.
New academic programs, especially Peace Studies, to include matters such
as Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation;
Promoting Bilingual Education, both through research and through various
social and educational initiatives;
Enhancing relevant data collection and developing a center that would
provide information and guidance to researchers in fields related to
Arab-Jewish issues;
Establishing an operative basis for managing a broad, multidisciplinary
research effort on the subject of civil society in Israel;
Strengthening ties between Jewish and Arab students, and illuminating
their common interests;
Training future leaders from the Arab and Jewish student population;
Enhancing, through partnerships and joint ventures between the
University and the Jewish and Palestinian Arab communities in Israel,
the connections between the University and other academic organizations
and with local and international NGOs with similar interests.
RESEARCH
Bilingual Education in Israel
This unique project, sponsored by the generous contribution of the Zeit
Foundation, is planned for 3 years and began this year (2005). It offers
a comprehensive approach to bilingual education in Israel. Currently,
Arab and Jewish schoolchildren are educated in separate schools, each
with its own national and religious affiliations and linguistic
heritage. There are great differences in their curricula, especially in
regard to history, culture, and religion. We believe that there is an
urgent need for a bilingual, bicultural syllabus that will ensure full
educational integration at all levels of schooling for Jews and Arabs
alike. The project’s aim is to challenge and bring an end to
segregation, inequality, and the absence of common ground where children
and adults can learn together. We seek to influence public opinion and
policy making in pursuit of these objectives.
The Index of Jewish-Arab Relations in Israel
Prof. Sammy Smooha’s index is part of a project run jointly by the JAC
and the Citizens’ Accord Forum for Jews and Arabs in Israel (CAF), and
has now been published for the second year. The objective is to present
an up-to-date picture of the two populations, and of the changes
occurring in them throughout the years. Both the index research and the
earlier one relate to subjective public opinion, but in the future, the
index will also include a socioeconomic equality index comprising, among
other data, demographic variables, education, poverty and unemployment,
governmental representation, discrimination and bilingualism. All this
is intended to increase public awareness of coexistence issues, and to
serve as a gauge of changes in attitudes and mutual relations.
Psychoactive Substance Use
The current study is part of a series of research projects undertaken by
Dr. Faisal Azaiza dealing with psychoactive substance use among
adolescents. Its goal to examine use of psychoactive substances and
attitudes towards this usage among Arab adolescents, both high school
students and dropouts. The research on Arab students is based on data
collected from 3,000 Arab adolescents who were sampled, using a cluster
method, from 60 schools in the Galilee, the Triangle and the Negev
(including mixed cities). The research on Arab dropouts is based on a
sample of 500 Arab adolescents sampled from the pool of dropouts in the
same regions. The sample of Druze adolescents was proportionately
smaller and came mostly from the Galilee, where most of the Druze in
Israel reside.
Women's Empowerment via University Studies: the Case of Religious and
non-Religious Jewish and Muslim Women-Students.
This study, which is being conducted by Prof. Rachel Hertz-Lazarowitz,
is affiliated with the Jewish-Arab Center and has received a grant from
the ISF.
Because more women in general and more Muslim women in particular are
entering Israeli universities, the project sought to study these path
breakers. Four groups of women (100 women in each group) are to
participate in the study, assigned to groups based on religion (Jews and
Muslim) and religiosity (religious and non religious). The women will
report on their personal, academic, and feminist empowerment strategies.
The study uses integrated methods of closed measures and interviews. It
is the first study examining these groups of women within academia.
PROGRAMS AND
PROJECTS
Peace Studies
The JAC is part of an initiative to open a new, multidisciplinary and
multicultural MA program in Peace Studies at the University of Haifa. It
has been approved by the University of Haifa’s Rector and will be led by
Prof. Gabi Salomon, in collaboration with Dr. Faisal Azaiza, Head of the
Jewish-Arab Center.
This English-language program would be open to Israeli, Palestinian, and
foreign students who are interested in taking advantage of the
opportunity to study within a unique learning environment: a region that
is in the midst of an ongoing conflict, a city that is known for the
coexistence of members of various religions (Haifa), and within the
multicultural context of the University of Haifa.
The Peace Studies program would seek to train researchers in the field
of conflict and conflict resolution; to train experts in combining
academic and practical approaches of conflict resolution, education for
peace, and negotiation between adversarial sides in a conflict; and to
develop leadership that can lead organizations and society toward a
peaceful future.
The proposed program would focus on four areas: conflicts and their
development, with an emphasis on the conflict in the Middle East;
various approaches to conflict resolution and striving for peace, their
success and failure; quantitative and qualitative research methods; and
field experience in relevant aspects, including observation, meetings
with policy makers, and closely following peace talks. Interaction
between students of different cultural and religious backgrounds should
further enhance the learning process.
Leadership workshop
This workshop was comprised of 15 on-campus meetings of 10 Jewish and 10
Arab students who received scholarships from the Landa Fund for this
purpose. The workshop was conducted by two professional instructors. The
participating students learned to move from alienation to openness and
acknowledgement of each other. This was achieved by the students getting
to know each other’s culture, including identity and religion; learning
to cope with conflict; developing interpersonal intra-group and
inter-group dialogue; communication skills; promoting collaboration
between Arab and Jewish students on campus in developing programs that
promote these issues, from a comprehensive view. This view integrates
academic research and the creation of suitable study courses with the
development of an array of social activities for the Jewish and Arab
students, aimed at creating social leadership among Jews and Arabs that
will lead to new horizons in Arab-Jewish relations.
Promoting dialogue of teachers and pupils in a multicultural community
This joint project of the JAC and the Faculty of Education, sponsored by
the generosity of the Zeit Foundation, was conducted over a 5-year
period, ending this year. Its goal was to bring together a group of
teachers and pupils representing the multicultural diversity of Israeli
society, and to engage them in relevant workshop activities and in
fostering ongoing dialogue.
Civil Society
The goal of the civil society project, currently in the planning stages,
is the establishment of an operative basis for managing a broad,
multidisciplinary research effort for the civil society in Israel. The
goal of the research framework is to present, define and discuss
possible courses of action in a multi-annual format that advances the
development and strengthening of the civil society in Israel.
According to our approach, this mechanism can reach harmony only via a
research approach that gives extra weight to the mutual relations
between the state (which influences the breadth of autonomy where the
civil society develops), the organizations that work within the frame of
the civil society (as a means of expression for the individuals who are
members in these organizations) and to the research staff (whose goal is
to assist in examining and developing the occurring processes in the
civil society). Additionally, the starting point in this research
proposal is that in order to achieve its goals, the civil society
framework must be perceived as a totality where each aspect is
inter-related, in which an “open” dialogue must occur among the three
relevant players (academy, state, and individual).
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