Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the most intractable and multifaceted protracted conflicts in modern times with flare-ups of violence between its various actors continuing to claim lives and to threaten wider war. This course will survey the main political junctions in the conflict and will connect them to their reincarnations in contemporary times. We will study all of this, exploring the conflict’s many layers and relating it to broader International Relations and sociological concepts from the emergence of the conflict’s political fault lines during Ottoman times through the establishment of a Jewish state and its continued modern-day development. The course will include cultural products relating to both societies, including movies, clips, songs and forms of art and cultural representations. Now in its fifth year, this course provides students with the tools and space to engage with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a mature, nuanced, and informed way. It emphasizes critical thinking over slogans, encouraging thoughtful dialogue grounded in history, lived experiences, and ethical complexity.