Over the years, numerous arguments have been proposed to explain why it is challenging to resolve intractable conflicts involving occupation. The "living space" approach, embedded within geopolitical and psychological theories, offers a unique perspective on this issue. This article applies the principles of this approach to examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Geopolitical and psychological theories provide a broader, more generalized framework for understanding such conflicts, addressing motivations such as territorial expansion, resource exploitation, economic advantage, and, notably, the restructuring of national identity. Although Israeli leaders have not explicitly advocated for territorial annexation as a means of expansion, this drive remains latent within the Israeli ethos, as reflected in leadership rhetoric.

Collective societal memory refers to the shared understanding and representation of past events within a society - their antecedents, processes, and consequences within a society. In the context of intractable conflict, in addition to the direct violence between opposing parties, there exists another highly contentious and aggressive rivalry: the struggle over competing collective memories. This battle is not only rhetorical but is usually deeply rooted in the narratives each side constructs about its past. Narratives of collective societal memory are inherently unreliable, but they serve psychological and social functions and thus facilitate coping with conflict. The present paper illustrates the use of the formal Israeli collective memory in the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

All violent conflicts and wars involve at least two competing narratives. This is also the case for the conflict commonly referred to as the Gaza War, which began on October 7, 2023, and lasted 471 days until the first phase of the ceasefire was implemented. The war involved, on one side, Israel with substantial support from the United States, and on the other, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, alongside Palestinian actors in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iran. This analysis relies exclusively on verified information; therefore, the title refers to the story of the Gaza war. The paper aims to provide a systematic account of the events of October 7, 2023, followed by an examination of the military operations conducted by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as the broader regional escalation involving Lebanon, the Houthis, and Iran. Additionally, the study contextualizes the Israeli and Palestinian historical backgrounds. The article concludes with a discussion of my key insights drawn from the war.

Social influence processes by which women come to judge a hostile sexist attitude as relatively true and unprejudiced were examined. Based upon status characteristics theory, women's judgments were expected to be more strongly influenced by a man's than a woman's interpretation of the sexist attitude as true or prejudiced. Based upon self-categorization theory, women's judgments were expected to be more strongly influenced by a woman's than a man's interpretation. Support was primarily observed for the self-categorization theory prediction. This effect, however, was initially suppressed by participants' acceptance of the legitimacy of gender status differences. A post-hoc mediational analysis revealed two pathways by which in-group social influence affected women's acceptance the relative veracity of negative claims about their own group: a direct path from shared in-group membership with the influencing agent, and an indirect path through their acceptance of the legitimacy of gender status differences. The research highlights how women's endorsement of sexist views can have the capacity to minimize other women's challenges of these views as prejudice.

This study examined when the realistic threat of COVID-19 leads to prejudicial social distancing. American participants reported social distancing preferences from Chinese or Italian people (out-group target) after viewing increasing or decreasing COVID-19 case numbers (threat level) in China or Italy (threat relevance). On the Bogardus Social Distance Scale, there was support for a disease avoidance hypothesis: greater social distancing preferences were expressed under higher than under lower relevant threats. Responses on a bespoke COVID-19 Social Distance Scale, however, supported an a priori prejudice hypothesis: greater social distancing preferences were expressed toward a Chinese than toward an Italian out-group. Moreover, responses on a separate bespoke Modern Social Distance Scale supported a complex prejudice hypothesis: greater social distancing preferences were expressed toward Chinese than toward Italian out-groups under higher than under lower threat, regardless of threat relevance. These findings suggest that the threat of COVID-19 may enable prejudice expression accompanied by the rationale of disease avoidance.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the most well-known and polarizing issues that has impacts on societies, and institutions beyond Israel, and Palestine. This interview with prominent social scientist Daniel Bar-Tal, Professor Emeritus, School of Education, Tel Aviv University, focused on the situation in Israel and Palestine following the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. Interviews such as this are an academic inquiry drawing on the expert analysis of a scholar-activist, grounded in research and theory. As such an analysis, Bar-Tal explains the causes of this war, its context, its process, the contribution of each side to its escalation, and its effects on the possibilities of peaceful conflict resolution between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. He describes the current situation as governed by considerations of realpolitik, contestations over what defines antisemitism, and whether Israeli conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide or ethnic cleansing. This interview enables the application of Bar-Tal's systematic and holistic Theory of Intractable Conflict to the current crisis to interrogate how ethos of conflict, collective memory, and collective emotional orientation dynamically interconnect to form a culture of conflict. But also, how these elements can also be addressed for solutions to enable peaceful resolutions.

In the present period, we witness the reappearance of tribal narratives both on the political right and the extreme political left, which are catering to the primary human evolutionary needs of belonging, identity, blind patriotism, and loyalty, having a strong leader, resistance to pluralism and anti-democratic structural elements. The parts of societies that support these narratives do not have neither a rational understanding nor attachment to the complex enlightenment ideas and values of democracy, individualism, and humanism. These tribal ideologies reappear as the result of globalization tendencies attempts to unite Europe and major global crises. In addition, they are empowered by the technological revolution of social media that enables the dissemination of messages that can be mistakenly considered reliable by a credulous audience. The chapter elaborates on the nature and attractions of tribal narratives and describes their evolution from a historical perspective. Then it presents examples of tribal narratives. In the next part, the chapter describes empirical studies that validate the presented conceptual framework. Finally, the chapter concludes by considering the likely consequences of this new age of tribalism.

Mental perspectives can sometimes be changed by psychological interventions. For instance, when applied in the context of intergroup conflicts, interventions, such as the paradoxical thinking intervention, may unfreeze ingrained negative outgroup attitudes and thereby promote progress toward peacemaking. Yet, at present, the evaluation of interventions' impact relies almost exclusively on self-reported and behavioral measures that are informative, but are also prone to social desirability and self-presentational biases. In the present study, magnetoencephalography tracked neural alignment, before and after the paradoxical thinking intervention, during the processing of auditory narratives over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and thereby evaluated the intervention's potential to change individuals' (n = 80) mental perspectives over the conflict. Compared to baseline, the conflict-targeted intervention yielded a specific significant increased neural alignment in the posterior superior temporal sulcus while processing incongruent as well as congruent political narratives of the conflict. This may be interpreted as a possible change in perspective over the conflict. The results and their interpretations are discussed in view of the critical added value of neuroimaging when assessing interventions to potentially reveal changes in mental perspectives or the way in which they are processed, even in contexts of entrenched resistance to reconsider one's ideological stance.

The Informative Process Model (IPM) proposes an intervention to facilitate change in conflict-supporting narratives in protracted conflicts. These narratives develop to help societies cope with conflict; but over time, they turn into barriers for its resolution. The IPM suggests raising awareness of the psychological processes responsible for the development of these narratives and their possibility for change, which may unfreeze conflict attitudes. Previous studies in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict found that the IPM (versus control) increased participants' support for negotiations. In three preregistered studies (combined N = 2,509), we illuminate the importance of feeling that one's conflict-related attitudes are accepted-that is, acknowledged without judgement-in explaining the effectiveness of the modeland expand the IPM's validity and generalizability: By showing the effectiveness of the IPM compared to an intervention similarly based on exposure to conflict-related information (Study 1); by showing its effectiveness in unfreezing attitudes when communicating different thematic conflict-supporting narratives-victimhood and security (Study 2); and by showing its effectiveness when using messages referring to ongoing, not only resolved conflicts, and text-based, not only visually stimulating, message styles (Study 3). These results contribute to theory and practice on psychological interventions addressing the barrier of conflict-supporting narratives.

Since its inception as a modern and evolving discipline, psychology has been concerned with issues of human security. This think piece offers an initial conceptualisation of human security as a broad security concept that encompasses a range of interrelated dimensions that have been responded to by different sub-disciplinary domains within psychology. We advance an argument for a human security psychology as a connecting focal point for general psychology that enables us to bring knowledge from across our eclectic discipline into further dialogue. This is a necessary step in understanding better the state of current thinking on the psychology of security and as a basis for informing further theory, research and practice efforts to address issues of human (in)security. This initial effort is informed by Assemblage Theory, which offers a dynamic and contextually rich perspective on people as agentive beings entangled within evolving natural and social formations that can foster or undermine their experiences of [in]security. The article is completed with a brief agenda for advancing human security psychology.

Deep distrust of the rival is widely shared among members of society involved in intractable conflicts, and constitutes a major barrier for peace-building. In the current research we examine an intervention aimed at legitimizing the other side as a partner to peace that can be trusted through providing information about a peaceful change among a member of the rival group. Study 1 (N = 253) revealed that providing Jewish-Israelis with such information about a Palestinian increases unfreezing, trust of the rival group, and support for peace-building compared to the control condition. Moreover, we found that unfreezing followed by trust mediated the effect of the intervention on increased support for peace-building. Comparing the effects of four variations of the change story, we found in Study 2 (N = 801) that the story of a Palestinian who had to deal with adversity within his own group created more trust and hope among rightist participants, while the story of a Palestinian coming from the family that believes in peace created heightened trust and hope for center-left participants. We offer insights into ideological-based differences of persuasive messages relating to peace-building.

The current research examined the proposition that debates over same-sex marriage are characterized, at least in part, by conflicting understandings about what is and is not prejudiced, normative and true. Toward this end, Australians’ (N = 415) prejudice judgements of supportive and oppositional statements toward same-sex marriage were measured and analysed with analyses of variance. Unsurprisingly, same-sex marriage supporters perceived a supportive statement as unprejudiced, tolerant, truthful, in pursuit of individual liberty, and normative; oppositional statements were seen in precisely the opposite manner. Same-sex marriage opponents, however, disagreed, instead judging an oppositional statement as unprejudiced, tolerant, truthful, in pursuit of individual liberty, and normative; it was a supportive statement that was seen as relatively prejudiced. These effects remained even after controlling for independent expressions of in-group favouritism. The current data align with a collective naïve realism perspective, in which group members see their own views as veridical and those of disagreeing others as biased. We argue that prejudice-reduction efforts must be instantiated to facilitate a common in-group identity between supporters and opponents to enable consensus over facts and, ultimately, what is and is not prejudice. Without this consensus, each side of the political debate may simply hurl the pejorative label of “prejudice” against the other, with likely little opportunity for social influence and social change.

We propose that part of the problem in combatting prejudice lies in people's dynamic understandings of what prejudice is. To examine this, we asked participants to rate the degree to which they perceived specific group-relevant attitudes as prejudice. In Study 1, White participants perceived the attitudes as more prejudiced when the attitudes were targeted at Asian people than at White people and when expressed by an Anglo-European speaker than by an Asian speaker. Study 2 was a direct replication but expanded the sample to include Asian participants. The Study 1 results were partially replicated in Study 2, although the target main effect was stronger among White than Asian participants. Together, the data suggest a normative legitimacy process in which injunctive norms dictate appropriate and inappropriate speakers and targets of specific group-relevant attitudes. The data also confirm the original proposition of dynamic understandings of prejudice. Prejudice is understood by people not only by what is said but also by who is saying it and whom it is about. To the degree that these latter two variables are dynamic, then prejudice judgements themselves will remain so. We conclude by considering the implications of our data for both psychological theory and applications in prejudice-reduction efforts.

Peacemaking is especially challenging in situations of intractable conflict. Collective narratives in this context contribute to coping with challenges societies face, but also fuel conflict continuation. We introduce the Informative Process Model (IPM), proposing that informing individuals about the socio-psychological processes through which conflict-supporting narratives develop, and suggesting that they can change via comparison to similar conflicts resolved peacefully, can facilitate unfreezing and change in attitudes. Study 1 established associations between awareness of conflict costs and conflict-supporting narratives, belief in the possibility of resolving the conflict peacefully and support for pursuing peace among Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. Studies 2 and 3 found that exposure to IPM-based original videos (vs. control) led Israeli-Jews to deliberation of the information presented, predicting acceptance of the IPM-based message, which, in turn, predicted support for negotiations. Study 3 also found similar effects across IPM-based messages focusing on different conflict-supporting themes. We discuss the implications to attitude change in intractable conflicts.

The present article considers the viability of a confederation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with Jordan as a realistic solution to the ongoing conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians. It presents the background and the course of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with a description of the present situation in order to understand the possible solutions to the conflict. I also explore several ideas of how to peacefully resolve the conflict that is entertained at present. A special focus is on the proposal of Alon Ben‐Meir (2022) about building a confederation delineated in the Spring issue of this journal. Thus, in the second part, the concept of confederation is described and three barriers to its implementation are elaborated. The first discusses the approach of presenting a rational plan, whereas in reality, participants in conflict develop a sociopsychological repertoire that serves often as a barrier to the solution. The second comment elaborates on the complex nature of reconciliation that cannot be required as a necessary precondition for the solution of the conflict. The third comment pertains to the asymmetry of the parties in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict that is a serious barrier to the implementation of the phases of the proposed confederation. Finally, I describe briefly the different proposals that are on the table at present and evaluate their feasibility.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has deleterious effects on children. Our research observed mothers' conversations with their 5-7-year-old children about the conflict during shared book reading (SBR) of a fiction book, indirectly depicting the conflict. Using a mixed-methods study, we compared the SBR of secular and religious Israeli Jewish mothers. We videotaped the SBR interactions and interviewed the mothers about the nature of their SBR conversations with their child and their perceptions of political socialization of children. The main findings showed that despite their tendency to perceive the conflict differently, secular and religious mothers shared the book similarly. Most of them preferred to talk about the conflict as little as possible with their child but appreciated the opportunity that the book provided them to discuss it in an age appropriate manner. Our discussion focuses on the potential of SBR to assist parents in explaining the conflict to young children.