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The current conflict between Israel and Gaza is preceded by a period of more than 100 years of unrest and confrontation. According to the creators of a new online course, many discussions and debates suffer from a lack of information on Palestinian history. With the MOOC ‘Contemporary Palestinian History’, they aim to fill this gap with evidence-based knowledge about Palestinian history. Join in on Coursera and increase your knowledge of how this conflict has developed historically.

Online course also covers Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Over the course of five weeks, you will engage with lecture videos, readings, assignments, and short quizzes to deepen your understanding of the topic. Throughout the MOOC, you will be encouraged to actively participate and reflect on the material presented. You will gain insights into contemporary Palestinian history and explore their perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

How and why did the conflict start and what did this mean for the Arab population of Palestine? What were the consequences of the establishment of the State of Israel for the Palestinian Arabs? And how did they react to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank in 1967? Learn to understand why peace talks, such as the Oslo negotiations in the 1990s, failed time and time again. Investigate how mutually exclusive traumas and narratives on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides play an important role in this. And then determine why the international community is also failing to help end the longest conflict in modern history.

Experts on the history of Palestine

From Utrecht University, Dr Peter Malcontent is involved, assistant professor and expert in the field of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of human rights. Dr Malcontent is project leader of the MOOC. He collaborated with co-lecturer Dr : senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) where he is also director of the North Africa and Middle East Programme. He is also a lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland. He is an expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The two lecturers were assisted for didactic advice by Dr , assistant professor and head of studies of the PhD programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam and director of the Leonard Woltjer Foundation (LWS).

Can't wait to get started? Explore the timeline of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict published by the Faculty of Humanities.

This MOOC is part of the university's theme Institutions for Open Societies, Contesting Governance. MOOCs are supported financially, educationally and practically within Utrecht University by the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning (CAT). In addition, Dr. Tartir has received a grant from the Leonhard-Woltjer Foundation for his travel and accommodation costs for the recordings of the MOOC.