Israeli-Palestinian Relations Research Articles

How our ideological out-group shapes our emotional response to our shared socio-political reality.

What shapes our emotional responses to socio-political events? Following the social identity approach, we suggest that individuals adjust their emotional responses to socio-political stimuli based on their ideological out-group's responses, in a manner that preserves the comparative and normative fit of ideological in-group-out-group categories. In Study 1 and Study 2 (pre-registered), Jewish-Israeli leftists and rightists were exposed to their ideological out-group's alleged emotional response to a stimulus associated with Israeli-Palestinian relations, which was either stereotypical (leftists expressing low anger and rightists expressing high anger) or non-stereotypical (leftists expressing high anger and rightists expressing low anger). Across studies, participants reported more positive affect towards their ideological out-group when its response to the stimulus was non-stereotypical versus stereotypical, yet their own response to the stimulus became more "extreme" (towards the low end of the anger scale for leftists, and towards the high end of the anger scale for rightists), shifting farther away from their ideological out-group norm. Our findings suggest that in highly polarized contexts, where "leftist" and "rightist" identities are largely defined in comparison to one another, the "positioning" of ideological groups relative to one another plays a role in shaping their responses to their shared socio-political reality.

Embracing Peace: A Path Forward for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Resolution

The recent hostilities between Israel and Hamas, erupting on October 8, 2023, have intensified the spotlight on the enduring Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a complex tapestry of historical, political, and cultural threads. This paper embarks on an analytical journey to deconstruct and propose comprehensive solutions, emphasizing harmonious coexistence. We explore pivotal concepts such as the Two-State Solution and Confederation Model, while underscoring the necessity of confidence-building measures, from halting violence to encouraging transparent dialogues. Economic considerations and human rights emerge as cornerstones, advocating for universal access to essential services and fostering mutual respect. Recognizing the transformative role of technology, we highlight the promise of digital platforms and virtual reality in bridging gaps, especially among younger generations. As we navigate this conflict, the overarching objective remains clear: transcending historical challenges to craft a sustainable peace, an endeavour vital for humanity's trajectory beyond the looming 'Great Filter'. Through this discourse, we don't just envision, but actively advocate for a future where Israeli-Palestinian relations are defined by peace and mutual prosperity

In the name of the national interests: Foreign policy of Saudi Arabia after the Arab Spring

The paper examines the evolution of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy in the context of wider changes in the Middle East and in the Arab world triggered by the Arab Spring. The author argues that during this decade the Kingdom’s foreign policy has witnessed a fundamental transformation: the very essence of the Saudi foreign policy course has changed signifi cantly as the political es-tablishment has substantially revised its approaches to the country’s role in the region and in the world. Before 2011, Saudi Arabia — the land of the ‘Two Holy Mosques’ — positioned itself as a representative of the international Muslim community and in pursuing its foreign policy relied primarily on the religious authority and fi nancial capabilities. However, according to Saudi Arabia’s leaders, the Arab Spring has plunged the region into chaos and has bolstered the infl uence of various extremist groups and movements, which required a signifi cant adjustment of traditional political approaches. Saudi Arabia, more explicit than ever before, has declared itself as a nation state, as a regional leader possessing its own interests beyond the abstract ‘Muslim Ummah’. However, the author stresses that these new political ambitions do not imply a complete break with the previous practice. For example, the containment of Iran not only remains the cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy, but has become even more severe. The paper shows that it is this opposition to Iran, which is now justifi ed on the basis of protecting the national interests, that predetermines the nature and the specifi c content of contemporary Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy including interaction with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), approaches towards the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian confl ict, combating terrorism, and relations with the United States. In that regard, the transformation of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy has, on the one hand, opened up new opportunities for strengthening the Kingdom’s interaction with Israel, but, at the same time, has increased tensions within the framework of strategic partnership with the United States. The author concludes that currently Saudi Arabia is facing a challenge of diversifying its foreign policy in order to increase its international profi le and political subjectivity.

Re-calculating Reconciliation: On the Transformative Power of Resentment in Israel-Palestinian Relations

ABSTRACT The article argues that Palestinian resentment has an overlooked political value in transforming Israeli-Palestinian relations. Drawing on Edward Said’s qualified concept of humanism, which recognises the particularities of oppression and the goal of the universal, it examines the rupture between the conditions that actualised the state of Israel, and the consequences of this political reality for the Palestinian people. While forgiveness has been viewed as key to community healing in divided societies, it is ineffective where the dominant group fails to apprehend and acknowledge wrong done. To the contrary, reconciliation requires recuperation of the experiences of the oppressed. Paradoxically, it is argued that incorporating these resentments into public discourse, in the context of a Derridean reading of forgiveness, may serve to allay Jewish-Israeli anxiety about future cooperation. Following essayist and Holocaust survivor, Jean Améry, I argue that resentment is an essential moral and political response in the case of Israel/Palestine. It is proposed that resentment could address historical injustices obscured by 70 years of reified Israeli national narrative and the resultant disjuncture between Jewish-Israeli understanding of the contemporary conflict and Palestinian emphasis on its origins. If recognition is indispensable to improved relations, then resentment could elucidate Jewish-Israeli guilt, and encourage a transformative shift towards responsibility.

Nacionalismo como lógica de partilha

Com base na análise de obras, entrevistas e posicionamentos políticos de Edward Said sobre as relações Israel-Palestina, o artigo discute como inflexões no ativismo do autor se articulam com a evolução de suas reflexões teóricas. Argumenta-se que mudanças de posição de Said sobre os conflitos da questão palestina refletem movimentos contínuos de sua produção teórica, particularmente o desenvolvimento de teses críticas a formas e práticas de filiação identitária. Conquanto Said mude algumas opiniões ao longo dos anos, sustenta-se que a crítica teórica a lógicas identitárias, em especial o que denomina “modelo de partilha” do nacionalismo, assim como o elogio de uma postura universalista se apresentam desde sempre em sua obra.

Review

Review

Izrael i Jordania – dwadzieścia pięć lat po traktacie pokojowym

Twenty-five years after the conclusion of the peace treaty, Israel and Jordan are bound by security partnership and limited economic cooperation. People-to-people relations remain problematic. State-to-nation imbalance occurring on both sides of the relationship has undermined the achievements of the cooperation so far, and the uncertainty regarding the American politics in the region intensifies tensions which grow due to the deadlock in the Israeli-Palestinian relations. The role of the United States as a hegemon guaranteeing the state of ‘cold’ peace is decreasing and this, in turn, activates the diplomacy of states comprising the region as well as other world powers. Finding a satisfactory solution to the Palestinian question conditions the implementation of regional cooperation projects, which are a necessary answer to the new trans-border challenges, such as those related to climate change, that influence the internal stability of the states and the state of peace in the region.

How do conflict narratives shape conflict- and peace-related outcomes among majority group members? The role of competitive victimhood in intractable conflicts

Previous research in the Turkish–Kurdish conflict context highlighted two opposing conflict narratives: (a) a terrorism narrative and (b) an independence narrative. In this article, we argue that these narratives are relevant to protracted and asymmetrical intergroup conflict (e.g., independence struggles), and therefore have consequences for conflict- and peace-related outcomes regardless of conflict contexts. We tested this generalizability hypothesis in parallel studies in the context of Turkish–Kurdish (Study 1) and Israeli–Palestinian relations (Study 2) among majority group members (Turks and Jewish Israelis, respectively). We also investigated competitive victimhood as a potential mediating variable in the relationship between conflict narratives on the one side and support for non-violent conflict resolution, forgiveness, and support for aggressive policies on the other, in parallel studies with the two aforementioned contexts. We argue that the terrorism narrative is essentially a negation of the narrative of the other group, and the independence narrative is a consideration of that narrative; therefore, competitive victimhood would be lower/higher when the narrative of the other is acknowledged/denied. Results point to the crucial relationship between endorsing conflict narratives and conflict- and peace-related outcomes through competitive victimhood, and to the possibility that these conflict narratives may show some similarities across different conflict contexts.

The liminality of Palestinian refugees: betwixt and between global politics and international law

Numbering over 5 million people, Palestinians comprise one of the longest-standing refugee populations in modern history. This article argues that the ongoing dispossession of Palestinian refugees is the result of the liminality they have been accorded within international law and global politics. This liminality includes Palestinians being the only refugee cohort not explicitly protected by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) mandate; and their right to return to their homeland – one of the most widely recognised basic rights under refugee law – occluded and reframed as a matter for political negotiation with Israel. The liminality of Palestinian refugees, this article demonstrates, results from the dominant narrative concerning the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland in 1947–8; the role this narrative plays in the hegemonic discourse shaping Israeli-Palestinian relations more widely; and how this narrative and wider discourse are mutually reproducing, resulting in significant intergenerational injustice for Palestinian refugees.

Energy as a Rewarding and Punitive Foreign Policy Instrument: The Case of Israeli–Palestinian Relations

This article examines how and when energy is used as a punitive or rewarding measure to advance foreign policy ends under conditions of perpetual conflict. Drawing on hundreds of primary governmental and commercial documents, and extensive elite interviews, we examine Israeli–Palestinian relations over 50 years. We find extensive instrumentalization of energy for foreign policy objectives in the conflict. We highlight electricity, a neglected area in international relations and conflict literatures, as a significant foreign policy tool. Our findings emphasize four major variables that shape the timing and form of energy measures—politics, regime type, dependence level, and energy production chain.

“É um sítio ideal para as crianças!” O colonato de Ma’ale Adumim como espaço suburbano seguro

The status of Jerusalem is almost universally regarded as the single most divisive issue in Israeli-Palestinian relations; and Israel’s settlement policy – and its territorial and demographic implications – is widely considered as the most significant “fact on the ground” established by Israel since 1967. We address these issues by observing how Israel’s settlement policy in the area of metropolitan Jerusalem transformed the material, symbolic and political landscape of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Through the case study of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, this paper focuses on settlers’ place attachment, personal geographies, and the relation between the latter and the production of space. We maintain that the “suburban experience” embodied in the lives of the residents illustrates the action of powerful drivers of the overall process of normalization of Jewish presence in the West Bank; in turn, this rendered the settlement policy relatively uncontroversial for large sectors of Israeli public opinion. Also, we maintain that settlements such as Ma’ale Adumim are also the product of the quest for a suburban “safe space” – i. e. an enclosed space designed to avoid contacts with “unpleasant otherness” that residents of the suburbs all over the world often associate to life in the inner city.

U.S. Policy and Israeli-Palestinian Relations

Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 43, No.1, Fall 2019 U.S. Policy and IsraeliPalestinian Relations Husam Mohamad* Introduction While marginal changes in U.S. policy towards the region may have taken place in recent years, the U.S.’s approach to Israel and the Palestinians has been, and remain, entrenched in the same conventional wisdom and frame of reference that favors Israel against its adversaries.1 Backing Israel at all costs has, at times, created discrepancies and doublestandard policies in U.S. relation with Israel vs. the Palestinians. Also, U.S. policy towards Israel and the Palestinians have often been carried out in conflict with international laws, norms and agreements. Unlike Israel, the Palestinians have been treated by U.S. policymakers with indifference and rejection of their internationally recognized claims.2 This article intends to highlight presidents George W. Bush and Barak Obama’s involvement in Israeli-Palestinian relations, with special attention paid to the peace process. It will also address Donald Trump’s policy towards the region, though the President has not yet been clear on offering plans for advancing the stalled peace process. The conventional wisdom regarding U.S. plans for Israel and the Palestinians is that they are usually revealed during a president’s second term in office, especially when key policy changes are present. Trump has promised that his administration will resolve the Israeli26 *Husam Mohamad is Professor of Political Science at the University of Central Oklahoma. He previously taught at several universities in the U.S., Cyprus, Qatar and the UAE. Husam was the recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Award in 2008, and Brandeis University Fellowship in 2009. He has published several journal articles such as Nationalism & Ethnic Politics, and Third World Quarterly and book chapters, short communications addressing Middle East politics, Israeli-Palestinian relations, U.S. policy toward the Arab and Muslim world, democratization in Arab politics, and Islamist movements across the Arab region. 1 See Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 2 See John Quigley, The Statehood for Palestine: International Law in the Middle East Conflict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 27 Palestinian conflict. He also shifted U.S. policy towards Israel and the Palestinians on Jerusalem issue during the first term of his presidency. President Trump’s Middle East policy has been mainly focused on: (1) the backing of Israel; (2) advancing U.S. military ties with Saudi Arabia; and (3) threating Iran with sanctions and military confrontation. Trump’s first overseas trip was made to Saudi Arabia and Israel in May 2017. The trip raised more uncertainties about his approach to the peace process. His recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem may have ended the peace process as we know it, and erased the two-state formula from future negotiations.3 Trump’s hands-off approach towards Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories, his support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and abandoning of the nuclear deal with Iran unveils some of the hallmarks of his strategy for the region. His administration expressed support for the creation of a Saudi-led military structure that would resemble a NATO like alliance to confront Iran and its allies in the region. Although his relationship with the Saudi regime is solidly strong, Trump’s association with the Palestinians remains absent. Trump has promised to reveal a peace plan that would be likely negotiated with Israel and the Saudis. The plan is referred to as “the deal of the century.” Given the Palestinians’ opposition to Trump’s “deal of the century,” the PA leadership and Hamas, have been absent from the process. Trump’s son-in-law, David Kushner, who has strong ties with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamad Bin Salman, (MBS) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is in charge of the peace efforts.4 Meanwhile, the President, Congress, and U.S. public regardless of partisan politics continue to support Israel. At the end, Palestinians are likely to reject the plan given that it will be one-sided, and most Israeli politicians are also not too interested in...

Affective Borderlands: Experiences in Practice of the Neo-Zionist Settling Enterprise in the Israeli Periphery

In writing on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the image of neo-Zionist settlers is taken often uncritically as an immediate expression of power, in representations by both settler movements and their opponents. Based on an ethnographic perspective that combines Herzfeld’s attention to the “intimacies” with critical writing on the symbolization of reality, I shift attention to an intricate representation of “affective borderlands” to illuminate situated experiences of settler–native relations in practice. Focusing on specific fragile and contradictory relations of single settlers and natives unfolding around a newly established village in Israel’s southern Negev desert, this ethnographic lens contributes to a deeper understanding of Israeli–Palestinian relations as entangled and entwined rather than separate. Beyond a dichotomist conception of native–settler relations and beyond the palpable dynamics of power, this examination of affective borderlands demonstrates that the more opponents invest in distinguishing themselves from the settler endeavor, the more its power over them grows.

Empathy as Political Action Can Empathic Engagement Disrupt Narratives of Conflict in Israeli-Palestinian Relations

Democracy and peace rest on the ability of political institutions to channel conflict nonviolently. Most of the nearly two hundred states in the world today, however are not the product of negotiated social contracts. Rather, they came into existence as a result of political violence – imperialism, conquest, border wars, revolution, civil wars, anti-colonial independence movements, and the disintegration of empires. State formation thus often leaves a legacy of grievances and identities shaped in part by narratives and experiences of historical injury and victimization. Identity narratives are implicated not only in interstate conflict, but also in “ethnic” or “communal” conflicts within states. Can collective political action aimed at evoking empathy across the divide of identity-based enmity counter, challenge, or even disrupt these narratives of victimization and open spaces for the development or strengthening of identities committed to “what we have in common” as well as “how we are different,” and thus contribute to de-escalating, mitigating, resolving, or avoiding violent conflict altogether?

Simulating Negotiation in Protracted Conflicts

Protracted conflict presents students with an unfamiliar and often puzzling context. Why do negotiations sometimes succeed, while at other points, actors are unable to reach agreement on key issues, even in the face of deadly costs? In this article, I introduce an extended role-playing simulation designed to enhance student understanding of protracted conflict through the lens of Israeli-Palestinian relations. After describing the goals and mechanics of the simulation, I present evidence that the simulation improves students’ insight into how individuals and parties’ preferences, international mediation, violence, identity, and commitment problems interact to shape negotiations.

Using Op-ed Writing to Teach Israeli-Palestinian Relations

Drawing from the authors’ experience teaching op-ed writing across a variety of subjects as well as teaching Israeli-Palestinian relations using a range of methods, this article describes the benefits of using op-ed writing assignments in an Israel-Palestine course. The authors demonstrate the value of showing students how to develop concise, research-based prescriptive arguments that can complement what is often an explanatory-only approach to understanding Israeli-Palestinian relations. The article lays out the challenges and opportunities of helping students master a public commentary form that is becoming increasingly central in the digital age.

The mirage of ‘Arabrew’: Ideologies for understanding Arabic-Hebrew contact

Abstract‘Arabrew’ denotes a mixture of the languages that index two nations known for their seemingly intractable conflict. It is supposedly spoken by Palestinians and other Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Evidence from the field gathered in 2015 shows some codeswitching, especially inter-sentential, and borrowing, mostly of nouns for specialist terminology, and of a few discourse markers. This does not support the claim that a new variety has emerged, yet the debate around it channels concerns about nonlinguistic issues relating to the political economy of Israel and to anxieties about Israeli-Palestinian relations. This debate invokes ideologies, including language ideologies, of nationalism, colonialism, liberalism, and more, that are identifiably linked to the historical and material contexts. The study uses critical discourse analysis and contact linguistics to outline the articulation between distinctions of national identity, socioeconomic class, the way people speak, and the way this speech is ideologically received. (Arabic, Hebrew, codeswitching, ideology)*

The role of historical representations in Israeli-Palestinian relations: Narratives from abroad.

This study focuses on narratives of historical events that were discussed during open ended interviews about conflict and coexistence within Israeli-Palestinian relations. Jewish Israelis and Palestinians living in London often used historical events as a way of justifying a positioning of a perspective that was felt to be central to the conflict and its possible resolution. These historical themes included the Holocaust, Biblical interpretations, and the effects of Israel gaining statehood in 1948. Narrative research is useful to portray stories that reflect a description of a perceived social reality in order to gain understanding of the meanings people give to their lived experiences. The theory of social representations provides an opportunity to explore further a narrative approach that includes the significance of intersubjectvity across group boundaries. It was found that each group defined themselves through the perspectives of 'the other,' demonstrating how studying both groups together can highlight an understanding of the contextual processes that might lie between them. By exploring how these particular narratives have been anchored and objectified, we can plot how representations of past events are continually developing to reflect present day positioning and ideas for future action. Although representations of intractability between the 2 groups were present, the results did not suggest that this was the only perspective taken, as other futures were imagined where conflict plays a lesser role.

Integrated or Segregated? Israeli-Palestinian Employment Relations in the Settlements

An important political and economic reality of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is the employment of Palestinians by Israelis (individually or through Israeli-owned corporations), within the Israeli settlements and outside them. Despite their legal status as foreign territory, the settlements and their adjacent industrial areas are socially and politically perceived by many Israelis as incorporated within Israel. Consequently, employment relations maintained in the settlements are regarded largely as an intra-Israeli matter insofar as concerns Israelis, with the presence of Palestinian parties constituting a foreign element, even though legally, the situation is the exact converse. This chapter explores the juxtaposition of different areas of law which regulate this reality, namely labor law, international law and conflict of laws. We demonstrate how it gradually emerging erects a jurisprudential Wall between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. The chapter traces the evolution of Israeli jurisprudence on the terms of employment of Palestinians working in Israeli settlements and their adjacent industrial zones, focusing on the Israeli High Court of Justice’s Workers’ Hotline ruling of 2007 and its aftermath. In Workers’ Hotline, the Court attempted to give legal expression to the social reality according to which the settlements are part of Israel, by refusing to attach weight to the difference in nationality between employees, and applying to all of them the same legal order, the Israeli one. However, in doing so it disregarded the economic incentives which underlie the employment of Palestinians by Israelis. The sustainability of the Court’s ruling was therefore subsequently challenged through diverse legal constructs. This chapter traces the evolution of the 2007 ruling in the practice of employers and other economic actors and in related jurisprudence, and examines its ramifications. We suggest that the interpretation and application of the 2007 ruling by relevant actors, as it has been confirmed in subsequent decisions of the lower labor tribunals, has followed the letter of Workers’ Hotline but at times diverged so greatly from the latter’s spirit, that it may pave the way to results that are the opposite of the approach which the HCJ was advocating.

Reinterpreting the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Constructivism Theory of Understanding a Cross-Ethnic Phenomena

This study proposes the use of constructivist analysis approaches to analyze Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. Constructivism theory is important for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The building of a social-political reality can determine the trajectory of protests and violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the past 60 years in direct association with the crystallization of nationalism and national identity. This paper analyses and explains the Israeli-Palestinian relations through the international relations theory in constructivism and elucidates in depth the reasons for the current struggle in the historical context and the concept of identity.