Historical Consciousness in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: How the Construction of Conflict Narratives Deepens Existing Fault Lines

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Chapter 2, Conflictual Use of History in Israel and Palestine:
In 1983, Amos Oz wrote that "[f]or us, history is interwoven with biography [...] history is biography" ("In the Land of Israel" 238). The statement highlights the significance of history for the lives of people in Israel and Palestine and how their understanding of their own history shapes not only their own life but the life of the conflict. According to Daoudi and Barakat, the way historical narratives create and delineate identity presents a major obstacle towards resolving the conflict (53), a notion that is also raised by Rouhana and Bar-Tal who note that even when practical agreements can be achieved, their implementation often depends on whether they can be incorporated into the narratives of each side (768). Ultimately, then, it is these closed and exclusive narratives that lead to conflict resolution being approached in a zero-sum way (Hermann and Newman 108) in which each gain of the other side is a loss of one's own.
Despite diversity in different groups and actors on both sides, "when reduced to their essential elements, [...] there are only two master narratives" (Scham et al. 2), the truth of one, both or neither are difficult to establish (Daoudi and Barakat 59). This is to a large extent because people on both sides "seek and process information in selective and biased ways" (Rouhana and Bar-Tal 766) as a result of an initial biased selection of information, biased interpretation of this information and biased elaboration of the story inherent in this information (Rouhana and Bar-Tal 766). These narratives make sense to the people that incorporate them into their own self-understanding, meaning they are rarely examined critically (Daoudi and Barakat 58).
At the heart of the problem lies the assumption that the land belongs to one and not the other group (Daoudi and Barakat 60), with the essential question being if the State of Israel should have been created and might

Larissa Saar, M. Phil., studierte in Bonn und Dublin Anglistik, Politikwissenschaften und Internationale Friedensforschung. Inhaltliche Schwerpunkte bildeten hierbei internationale Politik, der Einfluss von Religion und Ethnie auf politische Konflikte und Literaturwissenschaften. Durch studienbegleitende Forschung und Studienreisen erwarb die Autorin tiefgreifende Einblicke in die Region. Ihr besonderes Interesse am Zwischenspiel von Literatur, Geschichtsschreibung und Politik bilden die Grundlage für die Thematik des vorliegenden Buches.