Shared Society Lexicon - Volume I

A Bilingual book - Hebrew and Arabic

In times of profound rupture and an uncertain political horizon, we offer readers hope. This book represents a preliminary attempt to formulate foundational terms for the conceptual grammar of a shared society for Palestinians and Jews in their homeland. Each term in the lexicon serves as a building block for such a society, an explicated concept oriented toward political hope. With the establishment of a new syntax for these terms, a shared society may take shape as a comprehensive doctrine, with its own language, institutions, narrative, and a justificatory framework.

The lexicon is the product of collaborative work between Palestinians and Jews—leadership and leaders of partnership organizations, together with scholars who came to study and write jointly.

Even in the face of the ongoing war between Palestinians and Jews, tens of thousands of citizens are already sustaining frameworks of partnership – in bilingual education, youth initiatives, municipal institutions, culture and the arts, and even in business.

The Lexicon for a Shared Society offers a conceptual and theoretical foundation for the practice of partnership. It points toward what is possible and seeks to anchor the terms through which it may be formulated and created. Precisely in times marked by destruction, violence, and national closure, there is a need for a language capable of offering a different future. Out of the crisis, we articulate a proposal; from the ruins, we present a text whose purpose is to build a shared future.