26 The purpose of this study was to explore the social knowledge of two conflicted national groups as it was expressed by interpretations of the past and expecta- tions for the future of young people. We examined social knowledge through measures of readiness to legitimate the historical narrative of the “other’s” group and their relations with perceptions regarding the collective future, as they were reflected in conflict resolution beliefs. This question was investigated in the context of a severe and continuous national inter- group conflict: the Palestinian–Israeli case. Members of a particular society tend to shape their view of the world on the basis of their society’s cul- ture. The culture of any society, which encompasses the expressive terms of human behaviors, objects, and ideas in a particular society (Griswold, 1994), also includes the particular social knowledge that society members form as a result of their unique history, conditions, and experiences (Dougherty, 1985). The social knowledge of a culture encompasses a wide scope of concepts and beliefs, which pertain also to past events such as war, conflict, and peace. Events such as war and peace have a particularly important role in the formation of the society’s social knowl- edge, as these events are almost always powerful experiences that have a critical effect on the culture. Different cultures, however, have different concepts of the historical events of war, conflict, and peace and form different beliefs about them as a result of their different experiences (Raviv, Bar-Tal, Koren- Silvershatz, & Raviv, 1999). This difference may be- come a dominant factor in the social knowledge of a culture when the society is engaged in an ethno- national conflict. Awareness of the impact of culture is clearly important, because it allows consideration of the manner by which individuals’ approach to con- flict and conflict resolution may be bounded by culture-based beliefs and norms. Indeed, it has been argued that societies may, in fact, establish a “culture of conflict,” consisting of a network of scripts or schemata, which provide models for dealing with conflict situations (Bjorkqvist & Fry, 1997). The purpose of our study was to explore relations between two dimensions of social knowledge: inter- pretations of the past and expectations for the future. Society’s collective history—its common memory of the past—is molded by the incorporate axiology of today. This means that social memory is organized according to sets of values that guide the evaluation American Journal of Orthopsychiatry Copyright 2002 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 2002, Vol. 72, No. 1, 26–38 0002-9432/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0002-9432.72.1.26 Shifra Sagy, PhD, and Avi Kaplan, PhD, Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer- Sheva, Israel; Sami Adwan, PhD, Bethlehem University, Palestinian Authority Territories. Research was supported by a grant from the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israeli Studies, UNESCO (German Branch), and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. For reprints and correspondence: Shifra Sagy, PhD, Ben- Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. E-mail: shifra@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Interpretations of the Past and Expectations for the Future Among Israeli and Palestinian Youth Shifra Sagy, PhD Sami Adwan, PhD Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Bethlehem University Avi Kaplan, PhD Ben-Gurion University of the Negev This study was developed by a group of Israeli and Palestinian researchers for the purpose of examining social knowledge of young people in the conflicted region of the Middle East. The article examines the relations between measures of interpretations of the past (perceptions of legitimacy and emotional reactions toward the historical “narratives” of Israelis and Palestinians) and measures of expectations of the collective future, as reflected in conflict resolution beliefs. Data were collected from December 1999 to February 2000 (before the present crisis [2000–2002] in Jewish–Palestinian relations) among representative samples of high school students (Grades 10 and 12): 1,183 Palestinians in the Palestinian National Territories and 1,188 Israeli Jewish students. The results are discussed from developmental, social, and cultural perspectives.