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This study aims to examine the responses and perceptions of Israeli Arab teachers toward multicultural and educational issues concerning Jewish–Arab relations.

This study is a qualitative research. The study included 44 novice Arab teachers, who teach Hebrew in the Arab sector and are currently studying toward their masters’ degree at a teacher education college in northern Israel. The teachers were asked to read the novel Nadia by Galila Ron Feder–Amit. Published in 1985, the novel describes the complex integration of Nadia, an Arab village girl, into a Jewish boarding school, and it is narrated in first person. After having read the novel, the teachers were requested to answer the writing task, which addressed the character of the protagonist, the issue of teaching the novel in the Jewish and Arabic educational systems and the anticipated responses of Jewish and Arab students to the novel.

Phenomenological analysis of the teachers’ responses found that the reading experience was complex and resulted in a variety of responses toward the protagonist. Some were based on identification and appreciation, while others on criticism and judgment of the heroine’s restraint vis-a-vis the racism that she was experiencing. However, most of the teachers demonstrated moral courage and thought that the novel should be taught, as they viewed it as a bridge leading to understanding between the two nations. The teachers anticipated conflicting responses of Jewish and Arab students to the novel, according to the students’ political views and values.

These findings indicate that the educational system should include political texts relating to the Jewish–Arab schism, especially texts that voice the Palestinian narrative. This view differs from the current situation in both sectors, whereby the tendency is to avoid political texts while ignoring the Palestinian narrative.

The study shows that the reading experience of a political novel affords various and often contrasting responses with the teachers facing the didactic challenges. The teachers who participated in the study anticipated complexity of the reading and teaching process, yet were not deterred by it, particularly in view of the novel’s messages – striving to understand the “other” and to bridge a discourse between the nations.

Attitudes toward minority employees are hard to predict, and there is no enough information about the variables that are associated with increased and decreased prejudice toward them. The Jewish and Arab education systems in Israel are, for the most part, segregated, which may potentially contribute to prejudice and alienation between the two populations. The integration of Israeli–Arab teachers in Jewish schools has been suggested to reduce prejudice. The current study sought to examine Israeli teachers' attitudes toward the inclusion of Arab teachers in Jewish schools (AJ) and its relation to degree of religiosity, minority status and demographic variables.

A total of 1,644 teachers completed an online 22-item questionnaire that surveyed background variables such as gender, mother tongue, seniority and degree of religiosity, the two independent variables, religiosity and minority status, and the dependent variable, attitude toward the inclusion of AJ.

Overall, teachers exhibited positive attitudes toward the integration of AJ. Multiple linear regression indicated that among Jewish teachers, the degree of religiosity was the strongest predictor of the teachers' attitudes toward inclusion but was a poor predictor among Arabs. Conversely, minority status was the strongest predictor among Arab teachers but was a poor predictor among Israeli Jews. Not only did religiosity differ in its prediction of attitudes among Arabs and Jews but also the patterns of religiosity were quite different among these two groups.

While the overall sample was wide, the specific minority groups that were examined were small and did not allow deep exploration of minority nuances. The study's generalizability is hampered by the given exceptionality of the Israeli context, where “Church” and State are not separated. Religiosity was examined in a unidimensional way and failed to explore other related factors that may be relevant, such as political inclination.

The study further refutes the notion of commonality among minorities. It proposes to place more emphasis on religion's role in attitudes toward minority employees. Further research into the role of religiosity in Israeli Jews' attitudes toward Arabs is needed.

The findings suggest that the degree of religiosity might be a central factor in Israeli Jews' attitudes toward the Arab minority in general.

The research calls attention to the association of Judaism and nationalism as well as segregation, contributing to negative attitudes and prejudice toward the Arab minority. Unlike previous research using contact theory, the authors call attention to the importance of examining willingness to make contact prior to examining the impact of contact itself.

This paper aims to present findings from a research project that examined the contribution of a third partner in an encounter among three groups: Palestinian/Arab–Israelis, Jewish–Israelis and Germans. In recent decades, planned intergroup encounters have played an important role in conflict management, reconciliation and peace-building. Nearly all models use a dyadic structure, based on an encounter between two rival groups mediated by a third party.

The study was based on a year-long academic collaboration and two encounters between social work students from Israel and Germany (15 each). The central issues addressed were personal and collective identity; personal, familial and collective memory; and multicultural social work practice that were present in the encounter with the “other”. Participants were heterogeneous in terms of gender, ethnic background and religion, inviting exploration of personal and professional meanings. Using 15 in-depth interviews with Israeli participants, we identified and analyzed the personal and interpersonal processes occurring during these encounters.

Jewish and Arab participants positioned themselves vis-à-vis the German group in two main configurations (singular identities and multiple multifaceted identities), which alternated according to the contexts to which the larger group was exposed, and in congruence with the developmental stage of group work.

The findings suggest that a “third” partner can significantly contribute to an intergroup encounter by reflecting on the relationship created between rival parties to a dyad, thereby helping them deconstruct their binary “us-versus-them” relationship.

Intractable conflicts are characterized as protracted, irreconcilable, violent, of zero‐sum nature, total, and central. They are demanding, stressful, exhausting, and costly both in human and material terms. Societies involved in this type of conflict develop appropriate psychological conditions which enable them to cope successfully with the conflictual situation. The present paper proposes the following societal beliefs which are conducive to the development of these psychological conditions: beliefs about the justness of one's own goals, beliefs about security, beliefs of delegitimizing the opponent, beliefs of positive self‐image, beliefs about patriotism, beliefs about unity and beliefs about peace. These beliefs constitute a kind of ideology which supports the continuation of the conflict. The paper analyzes as an example one such intractable conflict, namely the one between Israel and Arabs, concentrating on the Israeli society. Specifically, it demonstrates the reflection of the discussed societal beliefs in the Israeli school textbooks. Finally, implications of the presented framework for peaceful conflict resolution are discussed.

Minority teachers is a growing phenomenon that is encouraged as part of a quest to diversify teaching staff. Among minority teachers, there exists a group of boundary-crossing teachers whose “otherness” contrasts with the different student population and/or staffroom composition. The study aims to examine parent, teacher and student attitudes toward teachers crossing two types of “borders” that are central to Israeli society: the Jewish-Arab rift and the religious-secular rift.

A representative sample of 182 Jewish Israeli parents, 201 Jewish Israeli students grades 10–12 and 101 Jewish Israeli teachers completed questionnaires regarding their attitudes toward boundary-crossing teachers.

The overall attitudes toward cross-boundary teaching were positive. Attitudes were found to be associated with political affiliation, religiosity and age. The more left-wing participants were, the less religious and older the more they supported boundary-crossing teaching. Students were significantly less supportive of teachers crossing the Jewish-Arab divide compared with adults. The attitudes toward boundary-crossing ultra-orthodox teachers in a secular school showed a distinct pattern, as it received support from all divides of the research participants.

The findings point to the vicious cycle of segregation in Israeli society whereby the lack of contact between Jews and Arabs leads to intergroup anxiety which in turns leads to less support in further contact through boundary-crossing teaching, especially among high school students.

The minority teachers’ literature often refers to the need to diversify the teaching staff or examines teachers and their relations with students. This study if the first to examine how other stakeholders’ view the idea of minority teachers.

This paper explores the possibilities of federalist and multicultural theory as a basis to generate perception change within Israeli‐Jewish society. In an innovative course, student subjects were exposed to the narratives of a variety of subgroups, participated in a workshop, and studied various examples of federalism and multiculturalism as an alternative to Israel's historic melting pot model. Their opinions on Israeli society and cultural outlook were analyzed based on qualitative methods and consensus theory (which is being introduced as a measurement of attitudinal change). The data indicates that the course was able to generate empathy for the “other,” encourage the students to identify commonalities between disparate subgroups and to consolidate the consensus and change some opinions toward a more federalist multicultural viewpoint. Based on this experiment, we suggest that there is a foundation to consider a federalist multicultural model as a vehicle to reduce social tensions in Israel and elsewhere.

The theoretical conceptualization of boundaries is proposed as a useful approach to study diversity in organizations.

Two types of diversity in health-care organizations – functional diversity and social category diversity – are compared, drawing on two extensive studies of Israeli hospitals. One study addresses the boundary between the medical professions and complementary medicine and the other examines the boundary between Israel's Jewish ethnic majority and the Arab minority.

With regard to functional diversity, boundary-work is used to draw, redraw, and maintain the boundary between biomedicine professionals and complementary medicine practitioners. With respect to social category diversity, boundary-work is employed to blur the boundary between Jewish and Arab professionals working within the organization and the ideal of professionalism is used as a boundary object to blur this ethno-national boundary.

This typology is offered in the hope of providing greater theoretical insight into the study of organizational diversity in the context of power relations.

This chapter examined how ethnicity and culture affect perceptions and practices of social justice leadership in Jewish and Arab schools. Four female principals’ were interviewed. Key findings revealed that the principals’ background contributed to the shaping of their awareness and commitment to implementing principles of social justice in their schools. Although these female Jewish and Arab principals have grown up and developed in the same life circles as male principals, their experiences were highly influenced by gender, ethnicity, culture, and special circumstances that position them in situations that they see as unjust. Implications are discussed.

What are the consequences of urban life in an ethno-nationally contested city? How do everyday practices confront municipal strategies that attempt to control such urban situations? Focusing on urban life in which daily negotiation of ethno-national differences occurs, this chapter considers the nuances of urban politics and the use and meaning of the urban space, i.e., the micro-politics and the social dynamic of place-making, and their role in the struggle for urban citizenship in an ethno-nationally mixed city. Discourse analysis and ethnographic encounters define the annual Holiday of Holidays festival in the Israeli–Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Nisnas as integral to Haifa's strategy for promoting itself as a site of coexistence. The neighborhood serves the entire city in that its “Arab” urban space has become the emblem of that coexistence. This manipulation by the municipality is, however, not reinforced by urban regeneration and heritage management of the local Palestinian community. Nonetheless coexistence discourse is also employed by the residents themselves, suggesting a more nuanced understanding of the role of urban space in promoting the city, as well as of concepts of local identity and citizenship.