Abstract

AbstractThe most deeply rooted international conflicts are termed intractable conflicts. Intractable conflicts are violent disputes that demand extensive investment from the rival parties and persist for a long time. These conflicts also share a more subjective quality: those embroiled in such severe disputes perceive them as innately irresolvable. Unsurprisingly, after decades of intergroup violence and hostility, citizens’ hope for peace is almost absent. Yet hope is an essential component in the pursuit of any political change, including the pursuit of peace. To promote the resolution of intractable conflicts, it is vital to accurately assess the levels of hope for peace in these severe disputes and explore hope’s origins and broader political consequences. This chapter addresses some of these issues by presenting the findings of a large-scale survey on hope for peace administered in one of the most longstanding intractable disputes today, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The survey is part of a larger global attitudes project that aims to map the hopes for peace of citizens living in conflict zones. Examining hope for peace among Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and Jews from Israel, this chapter reaveals some of the demographic and sociopolitical antecedes of hope for peace and demonstrate hope’s effect on braoder political attitudes. Overall, findings suggest that hope is not only an obvious outcome of a successful peace process; it is also one of its sources.

Highlights

  • The Hope Map Project is a global research project aimed at exploring the hopes for peace of people living in conflict zones

  • Comparing the hope for peace in places such as Cyprus, Colombia, Israel-Palestine, and the Caucasus could teach us about the variations in the hopes for peace in different geopolitical contexts and about the similarities that cut across cultures and political circumstances

  • This chapter contributes to the growing literature on hope by offering insights on some of the antecedences and consequences of hope during conflicts. It appears that the more citizens believe in their capacity to be agents of political change, the more they believe that peace is possible

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Summary

Introduction

The Hope Map Project is a global research project aimed at exploring the hopes for peace of people living in conflict zones. The first is to identify the demographic and socio-political antecedents of hope for peace. Obtaining such insights would greatly contribute to our knowledge on hope and how it forms and proliferates in times of conflict. The second goal is to identify the direct consequences of hope for peace. We can test whether hope for peace predicts citizens’ support for peace building or whether their support or opposition to peacebuilding is better explained by their political ideology or other factors. The third and final goal, which we hope to achieve in the longer run, is to offer a comprehensive comparison of hope for peace across conflict zones. Comparing the hope for peace in places such as Cyprus, Colombia, Israel-Palestine, and the Caucasus could teach us about the variations in the hopes for peace in different geopolitical contexts and about the similarities that cut across cultures and political circumstances

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