Conflicting Identities? Self-identification in Conflict Settings: Evidence from Israel and Arab States

Abstract

How does self-identification impact warring individuals’ attitudes towards political compromise? How individuals from different parties to a protracted conflict self-identify is more often than not assumed rather than tested. This work remedies this deficiency by measuring how individuals living within protracted conflict self-identify and the implications for willingness to compromise. Based on two surveys (411 and 2171 participants) conducted in two different periods, we test the impact of self-identification on attitudes towards compromise. The results problematize scholars’ tendency to label dominant identities in a conflict in monolithic terms which may be a crucial impasse to conflict resolution. The results show a difference in the main self-identification that Palestinians, Jordanians, Tunisians and Israelis hold; Palestinians, Jordanians, and Tunisians adopt religious identification in the context of the conflict and Israeli Jews adopt civic-national identification. Religious identification in the different groups leads to decreased willingness to compromise, and civic identification in a conflict context increases it.