ARABS AND JEWISH STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA: IDENTITY MAPS DRAWINGS WITHIN THE COMPLEX ISRAELI POLITICAL CONTEXT / "צייר את הזהות הממוקפת שלך": ראיונות וציורי מפות של יהודים וערבים באוניברסיטת חיפה

As youth today define themselves using a large repertoire of identities, depending on the social, historical, and political context, understanding such hyphenated identities (HI) is a current challenge. Arab and Jewish students at the university of Haifa experience a diverse context, both politically and nationally. The study used a structured interview and identity drawing map (IDM) to understand hyphenated identities of Arabs and Jewish student in campus (N=93). Results indicated that Arabs from different religion defined their (HI) by using fewer terms and more collective ones than Jews. The symbols presented in the (IDM) were grouped to five categories: affective, national, religious, cultural and secular. For Jews and Arabs the affective symbols were most frequent (58%, 53%), followed by the national and religion symbols, which were higher in frequency for the Jews, and the cultural and the secular which were similar for both groups. This reflects that the structure of the (IDM) is similar, but the content was related to each group socio-politic context. Thus the text in the drawing expressed among the Arab more conflict and separation and more negative emotions. However, some of the Arabs drawings express desire to integrate and to achieve equality within the binational society. The Jewish students expressed, beside pride in Israel, also some feeling of threat and conflict. By using the methodology of drawing and text and by qualitative and quantitative analysis, the study revealed the complexity of hyphenated identity and its underlying structures expressed by the two national groups at the university. The potential of (HI) as a bridge for coexistence is discussed in the article.