Israel–Palestine interactive cases / Created by Yoav Duman
The Common Fund instructor guide
Use this self-contained institutional simulation with introductory political science students. Success means explaining how a rule changes access, resources, or authority and testing the explanation against evidence. The cooperative, characters, alternatives, costs, and local outcomes are constructed teaching devices.
Learning aims
- Distinguish national belonging, recognized contribution, and individual rights as grounds for claims. Identify how they can combine.
- Separate a boundary excluding outsiders from unequal ranking among members. Trace a rule into a later decision.
- Test resource-scarcity explanations against historical evidence and consider organizational power as an alternative.
- Distinguish inherited institutions from changes in state power, especially Palestinian displacement, access, and claims in 1948.
A short opening briefing
There is no historical victory score. Students should explain the consequences of a choice, not maximize an index. The reserve compresses limited political capital and donor finance into invented 0, 4, 5, and 8 cost choices. An expensive inclusive alternative needs material support and cannot repeal JNF restrictions or reorganize the WZO by declaration. Numerical prices are not reconstructed historical budgets.
Keep historical evidence separate from the cooperative’s counterfactual rules. Identify the scholarly argument and ask what evidence could support or complicate it. A programmed outcome cannot independently verify that argument.
Plan the session
| Route | Work and approximate time |
|---|---|
| Core | 9 decisions; about 60 minutes. Keeps the Market Test and institutional-capacity case. |
| Full | All 11 decisions; about 90 minutes. Adds the 1936 Audit and late-1947 Emergency. |
| Seminar | 11 decisions and an additional colonial-context comparison; about 105 minutes. |
For a 60-minute session, plan about 3 minutes to begin, 43 for decisions and pauses, and 14 for final work and export. Split longer work at a reflection pause. No prior reading is required; optional assigned reading can deepen the discussion.
Decisions and assessment
The Full route below has eleven decisions. Core omits Audit and Emergency; judge by the named case rather than a fixed round number.
| Case | Learning focus |
|---|---|
| 1905 Hiring | Labor rules, donor resources, and exclusion |
| 1911 Land | External land restrictions and local reform |
| 1912 Ranking | Unequal priority within a national boundary |
| 1920 Membership | Representation and an organization’s multiple roles |
| 1923 Welfare | National belonging, contribution, and individual claims |
| 1927 Governance | Who can inspect or challenge allocation |
| 1933 Market Test | Test scarcity against organizational competition |
| 1936 Audit | Revising rules while constraints persist |
| 1939 Capacity | Historically unequal institutional opportunities |
| Late 1947 Emergency | Discretion and its constraints under pressure |
| Late 1948 Inheritance | Continuity alongside displacement and new state power |
Concentrate manual review
The default record puts Market Test and Inheritance first as summative analyses. All other decisions appear as formative checkpoints with a writing-minimum completion table. Final synthesis and the new-case transfer remain in their own section. All responses are retained. Class settings can restore chronological order.
Use word minima to check participation, not analytical quality. A completion label is not a mastery score or verification of authorship. The first check response is retained; evaluate whether the written explanation applies a useful correction or distinction. Optional selection counts record behavior before feedback and cannot establish disengagement on their own.
Suggested criteria for the priority responses
| Criterion | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Rule and people | A specific institutional rule and a person or group whose access changes |
| Mechanism | A causal link through eligibility, finance, recognized work, or authority |
| Evidence | A relevant author or document, source-card reference, and explanation of relevance |
| Limits and reconsideration | Historical versus constructed claims, scale limits, and use of feedback or counterevidence |
Teaching options and follow up
Configure the assignment
Written assignment requires decision writing, evidence selection, checks with feedback review, pauses, follow-ups, final analysis, transfer, and source acknowledgment. Discussion keeps decision explanations required; Exploration makes these activities optional. A name and a policy choice for each decision remain required. Custom settings control each requirement and the writing minima.
The midpoint JSON request is required for new written-assignment attempts and optional in Discussion and Exploration. It can be changed separately. A prior JSON download after five decisions satisfies the checkpoint. The game records a download request; the browser controls file retention. Earlier completed editions remain compatible.
Download a class version to distribute shared settings without student answers or group names. Students can view and change settings; this standalone file has no instructor lock. The readable record includes the configuration used for the attempt.
Collect and preserve work
Ask for the readable PDF, HTML, or text record through your LMS. Browser storage and recovery copies do not transfer devices or addresses. A resumable JSON checkpoint does. The offline HTML includes the activity’s sources and art. Printing a worksheet or instructor guide omits student responses; model feedback is an optional record-export setting.
Support access
The game supports keyboard navigation, visible focus, larger text, high contrast, reduced motion, and browser-supported read aloud. Phone definitions expand in the reading flow; all fictional voices remain visible; the inline reference panel reduces scrolling while writing. Give an appropriate writing accommodation through Class settings rather than removing the conceptual task.
Debrief with evidence
- Which rule created a benefit and a dependence at the same time? Who could contest its administration?
- What historical pattern complicates the idea that exclusion simply follows unemployment or scarcity?
- What continued into 1948, what changed with state power, and which Palestinian claims exceeded the cooperative’s authority?
Sources and scope
Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled, Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (Cambridge University Press, 2002), is the central scholarly reference. Source cards and locators are included in the source companion. The simulation cannot determine sovereignty, cause or prevent the Nakba, authorize refugee return, or implement every property remedy. Preserving a claim differs from enforcing it. All illustrations are contemporary conceptual artwork.
Created by Yoav Duman. Whose Terms? Israel–Palestine interactive cases. https://yoavduman.com/lab/whose-terms/the-common-fund