For teachers and youth leaders

Using the site in a divided classroom

The site takes a position and says so: two states, Israel’s right to exist in security, the Palestinian people’s right to an independent state, and no violence against civilians, whoever commits it. You and your students do not have to agree. The facts should stand on their sources either way, and where the site gives its own view, it says so.

Tell the class at the start that this is not a majority view. In July 2024 the Knesset voted 68 to 9 for a resolution against a Palestinian state.¹ That month, 21% of Israeli Jews and 40% of Palestinians backed two states as a general idea;² in August 2026, 44% of Palestinians backed it and 50% opposed it.³ In most classrooms, on both sides, the site’s view will be a minority one. A student who rejects it has not failed.

Five ground rules. Evidence first: a claim counts when it has a source the class can open. Describe before you judge. Nobody speaks for a whole people, or for a classmate. Anyone may pass, no reason needed. And before the page on violence, give a content warning: nothing graphic, but it deals with murder, bereavement and events some students have lived through.

Tell the class who wrote it: Israelis, in Israel, including the Palestinian story. All three languages carry the same text, so a mixed class, or two schools, can read the same page and compare. The units for Arab classrooms are in all three languages too.

Six lessons, 45 minutes each

1. Peace treaty, interim deal, normalisation: what is the difference?

Key question: which kinds of agreement move peace forward, and how do they differ? 10 minutes: three groups each read the fact card of one page: the peace with Egypt, Oslo I or the Abraham Accords. 20 minutes: one table on the board: had they fought? Did land change hands? Was a border drawn? What was put off? Check it against Peace with a neighbour, normalization with a distant state. 15 minutes: which kind would an Israeli–Palestinian deal have to be, and why is it the hardest? Closing task: three sentences to a friend on what Oslo achieved and why it was built as an interim step.

2. Camp David 2000: why was there no deal? Five witnesses, one summit

Key question: whom do you believe when the people in the room disagree? 10 minutes: everyone reads the summary of Camp David (2000). 20 minutes: five groups, one per account in its disputes section: Clinton and Dennis Ross; Robert Malley and Hussein Agha; the Palestinian team; Ehud Barak; Yossi Beilin. Each group asks: what does this witness claim, what was his role, and what does this version do for him? 15 minutes: what do all five agree on, and what stays open? Closing task: one paragraph: what I know, what I do not know, what would change my mind.

3. The price of peace: Yamit, Sinai and the Arab boycott of Egypt

Key question: what did each society pay for the first peace treaty, and who paid it? 10 minutes: on Sadat’s visit, find what Sadat risked. 20 minutes: two columns from the treaty page. Israel: all of Sinai, and the forced evacuation of Yamit on 23 April 1982;⁴ 18 Knesset members voted against.⁵ Egypt: suspended from the Arab League from 1979 to 1989, with the League’s headquarters moved out of Cairo;⁶ and Sadat’s assassination in 1981, with the peace one of several documented motives.⁷ 15 minutes: which patterns from It has happened before show up here? Closing task: a short letter dated 1979, from a Yamit resident or a Cairo student, to their own leader.

4. How violence changes minds

Key question: what does an attack do to those who survive it, and to those who only hear of it? Start with the content warning; anyone may pass. 5 minutes: read together the opening of Violence, terror and the damage to peace. 20 minutes: each group explains one mechanism from the page in its own words (fear, trauma, revenge, radicalisation, targeting leaders, broken dialogue, disrupted daily life), with the study the page cites; for example, a study of 996 Israelis and 631 Palestinians found that personal exposure to political violence lowers support for peace efforts.⁸ 20 minutes: each group picks one non-violent way to make a difference from the page and says what it demands. Closing task: one sentence on a mechanism you saw in the news this year. No names, no personal testimony.

5. Two stories, one year: 1947–1948

Key question: how can the same year be independence in one story and catastrophe in another? 15 minutes: half the class reads 1947–1948 in the Israeli story, half reads 1947 and 1948 in the Palestinian story. 20 minutes: mark every sentence in three colours: fact (it has a source), memory (how a community remembers) or interpretation. Swap and compare, using the Nakba section of Facts, perspectives and clear boundaries. 10 minutes: which sentences appear as fact on both pages? Closing task: one sentence from each page that the other must not leave out.

6. Check the site

Key question: how do you know whether a claim is true, here or anywhere? 10 minutes: read the five steps in How to check us. 25 minutes: in pairs, pick one sentence with a source note, open the source and ask: does it say what the site says? Who published it, and when? Is it the document itself, or someone describing it? 10 minutes: report back. Did anyone find a mistake, or a broken link? Closing task: one line: the page, what the site says, what the source says. A class that finds a mistake has done exactly what the site asks.

Units written for Arab classrooms

Two stories

Key question: who is telling my story, and what would I tell differently? Read the Palestinian story, including the note that Israelis wrote it. In groups: what would you add, and what would you cut? Every proposal needs a source you can name (a book, a document, a recorded testimony), not just what “everyone knows”. Then read 1947–1948 in the Israeli story and write down one thing you did not know. Closing task: a paragraph the group would send the site as a correction, with its source.

A cold peace?

Key question: why did Egypt’s and Jordan’s peace with Israel stay between governments? Compare the treaty with Egypt and the treaty with Jordan with the Abraham Accords, using Peace with a neighbour, normalization with a distant state. Then the polls: before October 2023 about 5% in Egypt and 5% in Jordan favoured normalisation, and in Morocco support fell from 31% to 13% between 2021–2022 and 2023–2024.⁹ Discuss: why is “tatbi‘” such a loaded word for many young Arabs, and can states make peace without their peoples? Closing task: what would a deal have to say for your family to call it peace, not normalisation?

It happened elsewhere

Key question: what can South Africa and Northern Ireland teach, and where does the comparison stop? Groups read both cases in It has happened before and note: who talked to whom, who mediated, what each public got, and how long implementation took. Then the section on what is different here, including two states versus a state facing a people without one. Discuss: which difference weighs most, and is one missing? Closing task: add a difference or challenge one, with a source.

A song and a document

Key question: what can a song do that a speech cannot, and the other way round? Listen to one Arabic song from Songs of peace and read what the page says it is and is not. Then open, via Sadat’s visit, the speech Sadat gave in the Knesset on 20 November 1977.¹⁰ Mark one demand, one offer and one sentence aimed at Israelis. Discuss: could an Arab leader say this today? Closing task: one line from the speech and one from the songs page: which would persuade your class more, and why?

Sixteen questions to argue about

What is the difference between a peace treaty, an interim agreement and normalisation, and why does the label matter?

Read: Peace with a neighbour, normalization with a distant state, and the type line at the top of every agreement page.

What did Sadat risk by coming to Jerusalem, and what did Begin risk by receiving him?

To read: Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem.

The peace with Egypt has held since 1979, and it is called a cold peace. Is a cold peace a success?

Read: the Egypt–Israel peace treaty and Why peace?.

Five people who were at Camp David in 2000 give five accounts of why there was no deal. How do you decide whom to believe?

To read: the Camp David summit (2000).

Oslo put off the hardest issues. Was that sensible, or was it the flaw?

To read: Oslo I and Oslo II.

Sadat and Rabin were murdered by their own countrymen. Why does the danger to a peacemaker so often come from his own side?

Read: Violence, terror and the damage to peace.

Can you condemn an act of violence without reservation and still try to understand what led to it?

Read: Violence, terror and the damage to peace and Facts, perspectives and clear boundaries.

1948 is independence on one page and the Nakba on another. Can both be true?

Read: the Israeli story and the Palestinian story.

The page on the Palestinian story was written by Israelis. How does knowing that change the way you read it?

Read: the Palestinian story.

Why does the word normalisation sound good to many Israelis and like an insult to many Arabs?

To read: the Abraham Accords.

The site says that a government is not a people and an organisation is not a public. Where is that distinction hard to hold on to?

Read: Facts, perspectives and clear boundaries.

When you read a death toll: who counted, what does the figure include, and what does it not say? And why does the site not put two tolls side by side?

Read: Violence, terror and the damage to peace.

What would you need to see from the other side before you believed in an agreement? And what do you think they need to see from yours?

Read: Israelis and Palestinians: options for the future and Hard questions, honest answers.

South Africa and Northern Ireland ended long conflicts. What is similar here, and what is different?

Read: It has happened before: conflicts that became peace.

A song can move people more than a treaty. Can it also mislead them?

Read: Songs of peace.

The site is for two states. Did you find a place where that position bent a fact? Show it, with the source.

Read: any page on the site and its sources, and How to check us.

A letter to parents and to the principal

This letter is meant to be copied. Change in it whatever you need.

Dear parents, dear principal,

In the coming weeks our class will use the website Room for Peace, in lessons on the history of the agreements between Israel, its neighbours and the Palestinians. I am writing so that you know what the site is before your children tell you about it.

What it is: a site in Hebrew, Arabic and English about the peace treaties, the interim agreements and the attempts that did not ripen. The site says of itself that it was written in Israel, through Israeli eyes, and that it tries to be fair to all sides. It is not an approved curriculum of any ministry of education.

What the site claims, and what it does not: every substantive claim on it carries a source that can be opened and checked. The site does not claim to be neutral. It supports two states, Israel in security and an independent Palestinian state, and it says that this is its position and not an agreed fact.

What the site condemns: terrorism and attacks on civilians, whoever commits them. It states that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and that on 7 October 2023 Hamas led a terrorist attack in which innocent civilians were murdered and hostages were taken. By the same standard it names attacks on Palestinian civilians for what they are, such as the 1994 massacre in Hebron. It does not blame a whole people for the acts of a government or an organisation.

What the students will be asked to do: to read, to open the sources and check them, and to argue from evidence. They will not be asked to agree with the site or with me, and any student may stay out of a discussion. One page deals with violence; it has no graphic descriptions, and I will warn the class before we read it.

You are welcome to read the pages yourselves, and to write to me if you find a mistake in them. With best wishes, [teacher’s name]