In the last round of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks at the Taba
Conference (January 2001), Israeli negotiators went where no Israeli
officials went before: they considered the right of return of
Palestinian refugees, and a quasi-statement that acknowledges the
Palestinian tragedy and Israel's share of historical responsibility.
This paper argues that at least in part this shift in the
negotiations' framework can be traced back to the public debate
instigated by the work of Israeli New Historians.Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch is a Ph.D. candidate in
the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (michal@mit.edu). She thanks Boaz
Atzili, Naomi Chazan, Orit Gal, Eran Kaplan, Daniel Levy, Ran
Levy, Gil Merom, Clair Moon, Melissa Nobles, Jeremy Pressman,
Stephen Van Evera, Amos Zehavi, and two anonymous reviewers for
their insightful and helpful comments and suggestions. She also
thanks Kezia Avieli-Tabibyan from the Center of Educational
Technology (MATAH, Israel) for her valuable assistance with
Israeli history textbooks.