Four major challenges facing peace education in regions of intractable conflict

While peace education all over the world faces numerous challenges, such as conflicting collective narrative, historical memories, contradictory beliefs, sever inequalities, and more, there are at least four additional major challenges that transcend challenges of content and method. Four such major challenges that pertain to the very core of peace education are discussed. They are: (a) The creation of a "ripple effect" whereby the impact of peace education programs spreads to wider social circles of society; (b) increasing the endurance of desired program effects in the face of their easy erosion; (c) the need for differential programs, given the differences in culture and in the role that each adversary plays in the conflict; and (d) the need to find ways to bridge between general dispositions, principles and values and their application in specific situations where competing motivations are dominant. It is argued that the four major challenges are common also to other kinds of programs: Human rights, anti-racism, tolerance and such as they many are carried out in socio-political contexts that negate the messages of the programs. 3 Peace education in regions of intractable conflict is often carried out in socio-political contexts that essentially negate the messages of such programs (e.g., Barash, 1997). Overcoming societies' opposition is one of the major justifications for those programs. But societal opposition to what has been described as a subversive activities during ongoing intractable conflict (Minow, 2002) is not the only challenge peace education faces: Contradictory collective narratives, charged negative emotions, sever inequalities, and more (Salomon, 2004; Salomon, 2006). Some of these are dealt with head on, as is the case of historical memories that fuel the conflict (e. However, there are other challenges that need to be dealt with. Four such challenges are discussed in this paper as they appear to concern the very heart of peace education. The discussion of the four major challenges is based on research and experience of peace education in Israel/Palestine, but seems to be of a much more general relevance to other settings and locations where peace education is carried out within the context of an intractable conflict. The challenges are as follows: (a) The need to create a societal "ripple effect" whereby the impact of peace education programs spreads to wider social circles of non-program participants; (b) increasing the endurance of desired program effects in the face of their easy erosion; (c) the need for differential …