Barriers to agreement in the asymmetric Israeli–Palestinian conflict¹

Abstract

Intractable conflicts, including that between Israel and West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, are perpetuated by a number of psychological and relational barriers that prevent the parties from reaching agreements that would serve the parties mutual self-interests. This article reviews the nature of and empirical evidence for the operation of several such barriers, including enmity and distrust, false polarization, dissonance reduction and collective rationalization, insistence on justice rather than mere advance on the status quo, reactive devaluation of proposals from the other side, and naïve realism, with special attention to the role they play in asymmetric conflicts such as that in the Middle East. Some research evidence suggesting strategies for overcoming these barriers and unfreezing deadlocks is also discussed, along with some lessons that the author and his Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation have gleaned from their real-world experiences in second-track diplomacy and their efforts to promote constructive dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, and between the rival political factions in Northern Ireland.

Keywords::

• asymmetric conflict
• psychological barriers
• negotiation
• dispute resolution

Notes

^1. This article draws heavily on earlier discussions of psychological barriers and strategies for overcoming them, including Ross & Stillinger, 1991; Mnookin & Ross, 1995; Ross & Ward, 1995; Pronin, Puccio, & Ross, 2002; Ross, 2012; and Bland, Powell, & Ross, 2012.

^2. Biased assimilation of evidence and experience (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979) which has been called “the mother of cognitive biases” (Lilienfeld, 2007) can be regarded as an additional barrier to agreement insofar as makes it more difficult to arrive at agreements that satisfy both parties. As we shall note a bit later, it is the combination of this bias with naïve realism that is not only an impediment to agreement, but a source of enmity and mistrust and a barrier to the creation of more positive intergroup relationships.

^3. The congressman was Republican Floyd Spence of Florida.