Thursday, April 12 –
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Joukowsky Forum, Watson Institute, 111 Thayer Street
Registration is required. Please register here.
This is the sixth event of the multi-year project on "Israel-Palestine: Lands and Peoples," directed by Omer Bartov at the Watson Institute. Unlike the preceding five workshops, which were closed events, this will be an open conference in which papers will be presented to a larger audience.
The main goal of this conference is to explore the manner in which several generations of Jews and Palestinians have imagined the future since the beginning of Zionist settlement in the land in 1882. Speakers will consider three types of future scenarios:
I. The future of the past: Pre-state Zionist visions of a future Jewish community in Palestine; Arab-Jewish interactions in the late Ottoman period as a model for a multiethnic and multi-religious society; the transformation of Jewish-Palestinian coexistence during the British Mandate into ethnic conflict alongside ongoing efforts to envision a common future.
II. Ideal Futures: The radically different ideal futures sketched and in part implemented by ideologues, decision makers, politicians and the military, ranging from attempts to create a bi-national state to partition, from violent fraternal conflict to ethnic cleansing, and from the creation of a Jewish nation-state to the emergence of a seemingly intractable struggle over the same land perceived by both Jews and Palestinians as their homeland.
III. Feasible Futures: The multiple ways in which activists on the ground and other observers are imagining or forging alternative futures, through reinterpretations of national and political goals, creative ways of overcoming challenges on the ground, and mutual encounters despite the constraints of separation, fear and suspicion. Several speakers will present specific proposals to put an end to the conflict and to share a common homeland.
This conference is co-sponsored by the Dean of the Faculty, The President's Office and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs