the israeli-arab conflict psychological perspective ירון זיו
TRANSCRIPT
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The Israeli-Arab ConflictPsychological Perspective
Dr. Yaron Ziv, MSW, Ph.D Organizational
Consultant, Couple &Family Therapist,
Maof center for Human Development.
www.yaronziv.com
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Background on the present conflict
A conflict that goes over a century
It developed over a territory claimed as ahomeland by two national movements:
Palestinian National Movement and the
Zionism (the Jewish national movement
Both sides clash recurrently over the right to
self-determination, statehood and justice
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Psychological Obstacles
Three major psychological obstacles can be
identified: Fear
Delegitimization
Collective self - perception as victim
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Fear
Fearis a primary aversive emotion arises insituations of threat and danger to the organismand or his/her environment and enables people
to respond to them adaptively:
A) It mobilizes a constant readiness to face
potential danger in an unanticipated threat
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Fear
B) It directs attention and sensitizes to cues
that signal danger and to information that
implies threat
C) It increases affiliation, solidarity andcohesiveness among society members
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Fear
D) It mobilizes society members to act on
behalf of the society, to cope with the threat
and to act against the enemy
(Folkman& Lazaus 1984)
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Fear
The other side of the coin: Fear can lead to a collective freezing of beliefs,adherence to certain beliefs about the causes of
threat, about the conflict and the ways to copewith it.
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Fear
Maslow (1963): All those psychological and
social factors that increase fear cut the impulseto know
The collective fear orientation tends to limit
perspective
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Fear
Fear increases over sensitization and mistrust
Fear causes deligitimization of the adversary
and prevents rational and creative solutions to
the conflict situation
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Fear
Fear leads people to increase ethnocentrismand intolerance towards out-groups
A fearful society tends to choose fighting inresponse to threatening conditions
Fixation on a primal survival mode
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Delegitimization
Delegitimization is defined as thecategorization of a group or groups into
extremely negative social categories that
exclude it or them from the sphere of human
groups that act within the limits of acceptablenorms &values
(Bar-Tal, 1989)
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Delegitimization
The use of labels as terrorists, murderers
colonialists or fascists categorizes the capacityand the intention of the other group to harm
the opponent
The lack of trust is reflected in the following
beliefs: The Palestinian will never honor anyagreement
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Delegitimization
The Palestinian dont really want to recognize
the right of Israel to coexist The real desire of the Arabs is to clean the
middle east from Jews and to leave it as a pure
Islamic region
Therefore peace process could not be achieved
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Collective self-concept as victim
Both sides have strong feelings of victim hood
The other side is responsible for the loss ofinnocent people (women &children)
The self concept as a victim gives rise to
feelings of anger and wishes for vengeance
Being perceived as a victim allows oneself to be
right .
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Psychological Diagnosis
Both sides are still fixated in the infantile
Phase which is led by impulses and emotionsrather than rational thinking.
Both sides act out of a PTSD syndrome.
The Israelis have the Post Holocaust Syndrome
The Palestinians have The Post Fantasy
Syndrome
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Psychological Diagnosis
Both sides have inside deep lack of trust
Both sides continue to live with a great
dissonance between understanding and feeling
Both sides are immature emotionally
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Psychological Diagnosis
Both sides are afraid to take risks and to let go
of the survival mode
Both sides are driven from religious forces
which do enhance the emotional factor. (the
Jerusalem Question)
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Psychological Diagnosis
Both sides have a dramatic componentembedded in their culture that does enhance
crisis and prevents from a rational logical way
of dealing with conflict
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Psychological factors for de-escalation
Legitimization
Equalization
Differentiation
Personalization
Reduction of negative effect Induction of hope and acceptance
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Psychological factors for de- escalation
Legitimization
allows viewing the opponent as belonging toan acceptable category of group behaving
within the boundaries of international norms.
Recognition of the legitimate existence of the
other group with its differences.
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Psychological factors for de- escalation
Acceptance of the elected leaders of the rivalgroup as legitimate partners in the peace
process, as such it provides the basis of trust
which is an essential condition for conflict
resolution process
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Psychological factors for de-escalation
Equalization
Relate to your rival group as an equal partnerwithout superiority and then treat them
accordingly.
Allows meaningful relations between past
adversaries.
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Psychological Factors of de-escalation
Differentiation
It enables a new perspective of the rival,
previously regarded as a uniformly hostile
entity
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Psychological Factors of de-escalation
The new perception implies that the rival
group includes various sub-groups that differin their views and ideologies
It provides more human view to the opponent
group and does more justice to its complex
structure
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Psychological factors for de-escalation
Personalization
Allows people to view the rival group as madeup of individuals with ordinary human
characteristics , concerns, needs and goals.
It allows seeing members of the rival group as
human beings who are also victims
of the conflict and likewise have just claims
and moral justifications for their demands
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Reduction of negative affect
It includes the cognitive elements of visualizing
and expecting as well as of feeling good aboutexpected events
The development of hope involves higher
mental processes of vision, imagination, goal
setting, planning and considering alternatives
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Reduction of negative affect
Openness
Creativity
Flexibility
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Psychological prognosis
Acknowledging understanding, admitting
and owning that the conflict has two partnerthat are equally involved
Taking Responsibility owning the problem and
have an agreement to turn the frustration into
a solution
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Psychological prognosis
Seeking solutions- executing actions to improve
the situation Maturity - realizing the difference between
reality and fantasy and having the willingness
to act accordingly
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Psychological prognosis
Frustration leads into motivation and
willingness to change The million dollar question: Is the frustration
enough to say and act like enough is enough
Lets hope that we come to the time which is
mature enough to say enough is enough
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Thank You
Thank you very much for attending
Dr Yaron Ziv
www.yaronziv.com