Does exposure to political violence prompt civilians to support peace? We investigate the determinants of civilian attitudes toward peace during ongoing conflict using two original panel datasets representing Israelis (n=996) and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (n=631) (149 communities in total). A multi-group estimation analysis shows that individual-level exposure to terrorism and political violence makes the subject populations less likely to support peace efforts. The findings also confirm psychological distress and threat perceptions as the mechanism that bridges exposure to violence and greater militancy over time. The study breaks ground in showing that individual-level exposure – necessarily accompanied by psychological distress and threat perceptions – is key to understanding civilians’ refusal to compromise in prolonged conflict.

Exposure to political violence can lead to various political and psychological outcomes. Using the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a natural laboratory, we explore the way in which exposure to conflict violence leads to changes in citizens’ political attitudes and behavior, offering a model for a stress-based process of political extremism. This model encapsulates three basic components in a causal chain leading to political extremism: exposure to political violence, psychological distress, and enhanced perceptions of threat. We find that prolonged exposure to political violence increases psychological distress, which in turn evokes stronger perceptions of threat that foment political attitudes eschewing compromise and favoring militarism. This causal chain fuels a destructive cycle of violence that is hard to break. Understanding these psychological and political consequences of exposure to political violence can help to shed light on the barriers that too often stymie peacemaking efforts and contribute to the deterioration of intractable conflicts around the globe. Thus, this review offers insights applicable to conflict zones around the world and suggests policy implications for therapeutic intervention and potential pathways to conflict resolution.

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This research tested whether chronic or contextually activated Holocaust exposure is associated with more extreme political attitudes among Israeli Jews. Study 1 (N 5 57), and Study 2 (N 5 61) found that Holocaust primes increased support for aggressive policies against a current adversary and decreased support for political compromise via an amplified sense of identification with Zionist ideology. These effects, however, were obtained only under an exclusive but not an inclusive framing of the Holocaust. Study 3 (N 5 152) replicated these findings in a field study conducted around Holocaust Remembrance Day and showed that the link between Holocaust exposure, ideological identification, and militancy also occurs in real-life settings. Study 4 (N 5 867) demonstrated in a nationally representative survey that Holocaust survivors and their descendants exhibited amplified existential threat responses to contemporary political violence, which were associated with militancy and opposition to peaceful compromises. Together, these studies illustrate the Holocaustization of Israeli political cognitions 70 years later. 3 0162-895X

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