How are political meanings created? How are they maintained and changed? How do they shape political realities? This book addresses these important yet often neglected questions through the themes of continuity and change in conflict and peace, challenges to democracy, and national memory. As a tribute to the scholarship of Myron J. Aronoff, the contributors of the 10 chapters that make up the book offer nuanced analyses of the political culture in Israel, Palestine, the United States, the Basque Autonomous Region of Spain, and Poland. The topics of the chapters range from political science to literature and visual arts.

As its title suggests, Continuity and Change weaves the various topics, case studies, and perspectives together through an underlying temporal motif. Interestingly, the book starts with the future horizon, as Yael S. Aronoff discusses possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The second chapter, by Saliba Sarsar, adds the past horizon, analyzing the political implications of the historical memories of the Holocaust and Al-Nakba. It invites readers to engage with the past in order to rethink a collective identity that does not exclude the Other. The next two chapters, by Nadav G. Shelef and Yossi Beilin, discuss two pathways (and their limitations) to bridge the past and the present horizons: denationalization and trust bu