July 20, 2006
Avi Sagi-Schwartz
Children of Chronic War: Vulnerability, Resilience, and Prospects for Peace in the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
Project Report Summary
Introduction
Several factors affect the willingness of individuals who experienced chronic war throughout childhood to empathize and seek peace in adulthood. Avi Sagi-Schwartz elaborated these factors, focusing especially on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Building trustful relationships early is likely to enhance one’s willingness and ability to explore the other side's goals in the conflict, and ultimately to consider reconciliation. The absence of such trustful relationships is likely to induce more rigid and one-sided approaches in adulthood.
Readiness to Manage Conflicts and to Reconcile: A Developmental-Ecological Model
Geopolitical considerations affect the willingness – of both individuals and societies – to consider the perspective of the other side and possibly enter a conflict management paradigm. The field of human development tells us that several additional frameworks – the intra-individual, microsystem, exosystem and the societal macrosystem – also interact to create different approaches to conflict and its prospective management.
The intra-individual system encompasses basic biological and psychological characteristics. War may result in the environment’s failure to provide these basic needs, thereby adversely affecting intra-individual development. The microsystem is the second layer, and it consists of interactions with parents and others who are in a person’s immediate proximity. It is within this system that trustful relationships first develop. Under conditions of protracted violent conflict, this environment may become stressful, chaotic and toxic, but there is evidence that many families in conflict zones manage to maintain secure relationships – thereby creating a buffer against the risk factors induced by the conflict.
Third, according to Sagi-Schwartz, the exosystem encompasses settings such as neighborhoods, schools, and social networks. These settings are vulnerable during protracted conflicts and their devastation may contribute to the creation of a toxic environment that will adversely affect the individual. Fourth, there exists the macrosystem, which alludes to a society’s values, norms, and beliefs. These are transmitted to individuals through interactions with friends, parents, teachers, and the media. In the context of a protracted conflict, negative perceptions of the other are an impeding factor. Significantly, even under various impeding factors in this level, there exist examples of individuals who acquired developmentally flexible capacities enabling them to avoid the stereotyping and prejudices that often characterize this level. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, their impact is evident in the work of some non-governmental organizations dedicated to enhancing mutual understanding and reconciliation.
An individual orientation towards the conflict will largely result from the interactions and relationships among all facilitative and impeding factors through all of the above mentioned systems. These factors work in tandem with geopolitical-geostrategic factors such as historical rights and security. For most people, the way leaders convey developments and changes in this realm will be highly consequential. Sagi-Schwartz noted that people often change over time and may come to appraise the conflict differently. In both the Israeli and Palestinian cases, this is evident in the trajectories of former military/violent leaders who have ultimately adopted a peacemaking orientation.
Recommended Actions
Based on his research and analysis, Sagi-Schwartz offered a number of recommended actions meant to enhance facilitative dynamics and alleviate impeding factors – all of which are of relevance to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. First, there is a need to maintain strong mental health services and community support systems, both at the levels of prevention and intervention. Second, expanding people-to-people interactions, particularly those involving children and youth, may have an important formative function that will contribute to building capacity for reconciliation in the future. On a related note, it is important to enhance infrastructures in order to improve perceived well-being at the various micro levels and limit negative macro/geopolitical influences. Sagi-Schwartz also addressed issues pertaining to the deeper roots of violence and on the need to focus on constructive preventive actions rather than on destructive interventions. A final recommendation is to utilize the experience of militant/violent leaders who became peacemakers, as understanding their evolution may shed light on a prospective transformation of both sides’ perception of reconciliation.
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