Interreligious Dialogue and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An Empirical View · 291services of both religions were conducted, and the religious dietary re-
quirements of the Jewish guests were respected. Israelis and Palestinians
were asked to fill out questionnaires reflecting their mutual perceptions,
both before and after the encounter.
According to research compiled, there is a potential for the interreli-
gious encounter to change mutual perceptions in a more positive direc-
tion. Based on sample control data collected among both Israeli Jewish
students at Bar-Ilan University and Palestinian Arab students at several
Palestinian universities, it was found that religious students on both
sides held the most negative preconceptions of each other. However, data
collected from the participants at the Gaza encounter (admittedly a small
sample based on a single encounter) indicated that perceptions among
Palestinian Muslim participants shifted to a more favorable position than
any other subgroup among the Palestinian participants.^11
These quantitative findings added further credence to the anecdotal
evidence offered by Mollov and Musa Barhoum,^12 in regard to the dia-
logue initiated by them, which involved students from Bar-Ilan Univer-
sity and Palestinian students from the Hebron area. Dialogue, religion,
and similarities in structure and practices between Islam and Judaism
became a constructive basis for interactions and relationships as students
began to perceive something important and familiar in the other side.
The Bar-Ilan–Hebron dialogue underwent a number of phases. Face-
to-face dialogues continued regularly from January 1995 until mid-1997
and involved approximately ninety students on each side. Important
spin-offs also laid the groundwork for a computer mediated dialogue
(CMC) to take place.
A First CMC Dialogue
Facilitated by the application, admission, and participation of a Pales-
tinian student from the village of Beit Ommar (from the northern He-
bron area) to the International MBA Program at Bar-Ilan University as a
spin-off from the earlier dialogue phase, sixteen participants (paired into
eight groups) from Bar-Ilan University and the Beit Ommar village par-
ticipated in an experimental e-mail dialogue for two months during the
late spring of 1998. Their dialogue focused on Muslim and Jewish holi-
days and was conducted in English (as were the face-to-face dialogues).