This first unit in the “Palestine Ambassador” Diploma represents a general introduction to understanding the Palestinian issue through seven lessons.  They cover the contemporary history of Palestine in a comprehensive manner, starting from the political colonial ideas to the colonialization and displacement of Palestinians, and concluding with to the current reality of refugees.

The first lesson reviews the history of the Belfour Declaration in a short animation video.  The second through fifth lessons examine Palestine’s Nakba (catastrophe) from the year 1799 till the present ongoing situation to understand how the Nakba of 1948 occurred and how what is going on today is a continuation of what happened in the past.  The roots of change lie in a deep understanding of the past.  In the sixth lesson will show the drama film The Decieved, based on the book Men in the Sun by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani to illustrate the situation of refugees in nearby Arab countries.  We will discuss in the discussion forum “why didn’t they knock at the walls of the tank?”  In the seventh and final lesson of this unit, we will go over the condition of Palestinians living in Lebanon by watching the film “Palestinians in Lebanon,” as a case study of the refugee problem.

The first unit should take about eight hours of viewing, and about another four of studying during and after the viewing.  We recommend you break it into three hours every week so that you can take in all the information and analyze it.