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Conflict will Harden your Heart: Exposure to Violence, Psychological Distress, and Peace Barriers in Israel and Palestine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2014

Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler ,
Daphna Canetti ,
Carmit Rapaport  and
Stevan E. Hobfoll
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Abstract

Does exposure to political violence prompt civilians to support peace? We investigate the determinants of civilian attitudes toward peace during ongoing conflict using two original panel datasets representing Israelis (n=996) and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (n=631) (149 communities in total). A multi-group estimation analysis shows that individual-level exposure to terrorism and political violence makes the subject populations less likely to support peace efforts. The findings also confirm psychological distress and threat perceptions as the mechanism that bridges exposure to violence and greater militancy over time. The study breaks ground in showing that individual-level exposure – necessarily accompanied by psychological distress and threat perceptions – is key to understanding civilians’ refusal to compromise in prolonged conflict.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , October 2016 , pp. 845 - 859
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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Footnotes

*

Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel (email: [email protected]); School of Political Science, University of Haifa, Israel (email: [email protected], corresponding author); School of Political Science, University of Haifa, Israel (email: [email protected]); Department of Behavioral Sciences, Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL, USA (email: [email protected]). This research was made possible, in part, by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01 MH073687), the Israel Science Foundation (487/08) and the US–Israel Binational Science Foundation (2009460). We also thank JMCC in Ramallah and Mahshov in Israel for enabling our data collection, and the numerous friends and colleagues who have helped along the way, including Amnon Cavari and Carly Wayne, and participants in the annual conference of the International Society of Political Psychology (Israel, July 2013). Of course, all errors are our own. Data replication sets are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007123414000374.

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