Stint in Israeli jail inspires Palestinian educator to change history lessons

Sami Adwan is the very model of a soft-spoken professor. He measures his words, and listens carefully to what others have to say. Yet while pursuing an education Ph.D. at the University of San Francisco in the 1980s, Adwan not only refused to listen to Jewish students, he says he dropped out of classes if he knew they included Jews. A Palestinian born in the village of Surif, near Hebron, Adwan had grown up under the shadow of the Israeli occupation, hearing tales from his father and grandfather of how Jews had seized the family's orange groves and wheat fields in 1948. Returning to his homeland with his degree, Adwan joined the then outlawed Fatah Party and was thrown into an Israeli jail in 1993.

That was his real education. While awaiting charges, Adwan overheard two Israeli soldiers arguing over whether he should be made to sign a document in Hebrew that he couldn't read. Shocked to hear one of his enemies defending his rights, Adwan decided that he had some things to learn about the Jewish nation....

Together with Dan Bar-On, a social psychologist at Ben Gurion University in southern Israel, he now codirects the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME). Since 2002 the group has produced three booklets for use in Palestinian and Israeli high schools that force each side to confront a contradictory vision of history.