Conflict perception: a new scale with evidence from Israel and Palestine

. Introduction
Resolving protracted conflicts is a major goal of many societies. Accomplishing this goal requires a deep understanding of the nature of the conflict, its core issues and how the parties involved perceive it. In this study, we contribute to a better understanding of protracted conflict by introducing the term “conflict perception”, providing tools to measure it and using the new measurement in the Israeli–Palestinian context.

Conflicts are struggles between opposing forces often based on incompatibility or rivalry (Thomas, 1992). Conflict is also defined as an activity that occurs between conscious, though not necessarily rational, beings (Nicholson, 1992, p. 11). History suggests that conflict is a natural consequence of interactions between large groups of people such as clans, tribes, nations and other groups divided by geography, culture, resources or religion. Protracted conflicts (sometimes also called intractable, enduring or ongoing conflicts) last more than a decade and are characterized by persistence and imperviousness to resolution (Azar et al., 1978; Colaresi and Thompson, 2002; Gleditsch et al., 2002; Maoz and Mor, 1996; Mitzen, 2006). They encompass different ingredients such as identity, security

determination and involve calculations about gains and losses (Friedman, 2005). The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the most prominent protracted conflicts in the world today, having shaped the lives of Palestinians and Israelis for decades (Brecher, 2017; Harbom and Wallensteen, 2007). A systematic review of the voluminous writing on the subject in both the academic literature and popular press makes clear that different stakeholders in this conflict have deeply held views about it (Caplan, 2009; Dowty, 2007; Morris, 2001; Wasserstein, 2003). Nevertheless, perhaps strangely, the academic literature has relatively little to say about how the immediate parties to the conflict – Israelis and Palestinians – perceive it with respect to the issues at its core and how to measure this perception. The literature includes a limited number of studies that deal with the cause of the conflict (Corstange and York, 2016; Esteban and Mayoral, 2011; Murer, 2012). These are roughly divided between studies that emphasize the identity aspects of the conflict (Auerbach, 2009) and those that emphasize material aspects as a cause (Dowty, 2007; Nie, 2003; O’Lear, 2005; Selby, 2003). Various definitions have been used to describe conflicts such as that between Israelis and Palestinians, including a border conflict, a colonial conflict, an ethnic conflict and a religious struggle (Azar et al., 1978). At the same time, this conflict, like other protracted conflicts, is replete with psychological and social elements (Bar-Tal, 1998, 2000b, 2007; Colaresi and Thompson, 2002; Maoz and McCauley, 2005; Rouhana and Bar-Tal, 1998), including narratives, symbols and myths (Bar-Tal and Salomon, 2006; BarTal et al., 2012; Friedman, 2005). However, the existing literature lacks a comprehensive concept that attempts to determine the way in which individuals in the conflict view its core issues and causes.

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