Ben-Gurion University. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A study conducted by researchers at Ben-Gurion University has found that Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians are growing apart socially and have increasingly different interpretations of historical narratives.

According to the Jerusalem Post, researchers found that 60 percent of Israeli Arabs surveyed said they would not want their daughter to marry someone from the West Bank, while 41 percent of West Bankers had the same attitude to their daughter marrying an Israeli Arabs. Meanwhile, 18 percent of Israeli Arabs said they wouldn’t want to live in the same neighborhood as Palestinians.

On the question of loyalty to the land, the researchers “asked [Israeli] Arabs of ’48 about their narrative, which is that they were loyal to their land when they didn’t desert it and stayed,” explained lead researcher Prof. Shifra Sagy.

“The ’67 people [West Bank Palestinians] look at the same issue, and they say the ’48 Arabs stayed on their land because they gave up and succumbed to the occupation without any resistance,” Sagy said.

“Both groups think of themselves as Palestinians, but narratives are different regarding very crucial issues,” she added. “What it reveals here is that over the past 60 years, this has really become two distinctly different groups.”