Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. Thank you for choosing to be with us in this one unaired room and that day, this beautiful spring day outside.
Much appreciated. I'm.
It's a special it's a real special delight to present the speaker to you today because, uh, uh, Dr. William Habib is one of our own.
Uh, he's doing his postdoctoral research here with us at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies.
Um, arriving here since last summer. Yeah.
Dr. Latifah's scholarship deals with issues pertaining to identity and politics and conflict.
Conflict resolutions, democratic values, religion and conflict, political Islam, Israeli politics, Middle East politics and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
He has published in in a number of peer reviewed journals, including the most prestigious The Journal of Peace Research,
International Journal of Conflict Management and Citizenship Studies.
Currently is working on the relationship between democratic values, identity, threat, conflict,
perception and willingness to reconcile in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which is also the topic of his talk today.
Ibrahim, thank you for coming. Thank you, Arad Yaakov, thank you for all of us.
So that coming here and this nice weather, really thank you for that.
I appreciate it. So so I'm I'm going to present my research based on my dissertation.
And I also worked on that now, but in different aspects.
So the research tackles the questions of identity, conflict, perception and reconciliation between the Arab and the Israelis after the Arab Spring.
So, uh, and this 30 minutes or 40 minutes and I will talk about several topics about this research.
First, I should begin with the story of this research.
Actually, I, I thought that it's very important to, um, trying to ask the questions about democracy and conflict during the Arab Spring.
Because, as all of us know, um, a lot of, um, issues raised during the Arab Spring about values,
democracy and what's going to be happen in the Middle East following the Arab Spring and the democratic demands among the Arab,
um, population, the Middle East.
Ah, you know, there is a lot of theories, a lot of research done about democracy and reconciliation, democracy and peace.
And then the question is coming. We have our spring, we have democratic demands.
So it is, it walks in the Arab world that, uh, democracy will bring us a peace in the Middle East.
Then I tried to to figure out the question of identity and conflict in this context.
At the same time, during the Arab Spring, uh, the first three or four years of the Arab Spring, a lot of religious groups,
um, talked about the conflict in the Middle East, talk to, about what's happened in the Middle East.
But this was a component with, with a lot of demands, uh, regarding the rule of religion in this context.
And a lot of movements in the Middle East tried to talk about the conflict in the Middle East and the religious aspects.
So I tried to figure out the relation between identity and conflict, perception and democratic values.
And then I came with this kind of question and context of protracted conflict.
Is there a relation between democratic values, identity, perception and reconciliation?
And if, uh, this relation exists, in which way we can, um, let's say,
talk about this kind of relation between this kind of three or more, um, let's say variables in this context.
So I try to. To find out if there is research done about the relation between identity and reconciliation.
And there is. But the relation between identity and and reconciliation and dealing with the social identity theory,
taking into account democracy and identity, conflict, perception, this thing that has been that has been not done before.
And in other research,
although I find something which is very special about the relation between identity and general and attitudes for regarding other groups,
which is based on social identity theory. The second thing that I tried to to ask about.
Okay, so we are talking about identity. We are talking about how people may identify themself, but how it's correlated, related to a conflict.
So and how it's going to conflict perception, how it's related to conflict types.
We talking about different kinds of types in the conflict. We're talking about national conflict, material conflict and religious conflict.
So I find that there is, uh, a little, um, and a few research done about this, this topic also,
um, my research trying to, to, to focus on the perceptions of the conflict, I mean.
Many schools talking talked about conflict in several ways and international relations and comparative politics.
And they try to ask about different kinds of conflicts, trying to classify the conflict in three ways, or even more like,
as I said before, religious and national and perception based on some theoretical, theoretical classification.
But they didn't say about anything about perceptions.
So for example, Jonathan Fox and his research talked a lot about, uh,
religious conflict and then he said we can define a religious conflict based on the
groups in the conflict in order to just the groups that the issues in the conflict,
the topics that they. And that there is the conflict and this kind of things.
But then I said, okay, it's good classification, but it still needs something much more in-depth and it's related to the perceptions of the people.
So, for example, the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to some classification, can be classified as national conflict.
But but people can perceive the conflict as a religious one because they think that it's more religious for them,
even that the theoretical classification said no, it's more fit on the national aspect.
So this research is focusing on perceptions, how people perceive the conflict.
So and there is some embedded empirical, uh,
contribution of this research because I already did some surveys in the Middle East during the last two years about conflict, perception and identity.
So as I said before, and the main argument of this research that there is a relation between identity,
perception and willingness to reconcile, but this relation mediated, we are two mediators in conflict perception and perception.
So the main theory that, uh, let's see,
am cover part of this research is social identity theory which is coming from identity theories and conflict theories.
And the main argument of social identity theory that people, um,
classify themself as part of a group and putting the others and the outgroup and general people, um,
let's say trying to classify themselves as a good group and the others,
the outgroup as the bad one, as the, uh, um, let's say the, the different group in this case.
And as you're here in the slide, it's includes the different kind of emotional and either psychological, um, uh,
let's say classification which affects this kind of classification of classification of in-group and outgroup.
So, uh, social identity theory.
Talks about good behaviour, intergroup relations and individual and social identity and how people can perceive and compare themselves with others.
At the same time since my research and here we can can show the model of here.
So since the research is talking about democratic values and conflict, identity and reconciliation,
I also found that one of the main theories in international relations about peace theory is also can be for this kind of research.
Since this theory say that if we have democratic states, we will have more peaceful attitudes be caught between these states.
So I tried to figure out the relation between this kind of different variables and that there is like different kind of hypothesis in this context.
The first one that the relation between identity, perception and reconciliation is not a direct one.
That is that mediators, which are mainly conflict perception and threat perception.
The second one, that identity perception and conflict perception related to each other.
So if you perceive your identity. As a religious identity, then it would perceive the conflict as a religious one.
The same with national and civic identity.
Thus the third hypothesis is this research that identity perception and threat perception also, um, have positive correlation.
So a few of you perceive your identity as a religious one.
Then you would perceive the second group as a threat, uh, for your group.
While if we're talking about civic identity. Which is it?
More general?
Which is it could be accepted in different kinds of societies and may lead to, uh, maybe to accept the other, the other people, the other community.
The second group in this case, it could be correlated negatively with threat perceptions.
So if you have this civic identity, which is a more general one, which is more,
say, global or international, you will feel less certain from the second group,
uh, the third or the fourth, uh, assumption in this research that conflict perception also related to external insight.
So if you perceive that the conflict as otherwise just one, you will have less feelings to reconcile.
Well, if you perceive the conflict as a material one, which is it over resources.
So we'll have more weeks to reconcile in this case.
Um, and third perception will have a negative relation with meaning circle.
So we can see that. We can say that if you feel threatened from the second, you will have less willing to look inside with him.
I think it's the most important or one of the most important assumptions this this research that democratic
values and the rule of democratic values and regarding the relation between values and reconciliation.
According to the literature, democratic values have a positive relation with we need to reconcile you.
If you adopt more democratic values, you will have more willingness to reconcile.
But it see that the results of then we can see if it's true or not.
Maybe that one more thing that I need to add. If we're talking about democracy and reconciliation, I tried also to, uh, to,
to check how democratic regime and non-democratic regime, authoritarian regimes related to reconciliation.
So that type of regime and reconciliation.
So this is my hypothesis is just try to be sure that I didn't miss anything in this yet slides so you know that the Middle East,
um, and in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinians and the Arabs perceive the conflict in different ways.
While, uh, there is a large group that perceive the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis,
the Zionist movement part of the Arab said the conflict,
no, it's not between the Arab and the Zionist, it's between it's between the all the Muslims around the world and the Jewish in this context.
Well, others, they said, no, it's conflict, like other conflicts over material things of resources over borders,
which, yes, there is some elements related to national or religious.
But the main issue of the conflict right now is the is the resources of the material aspects.
So and this research I did a survey and some interviews and Israel among the Arabs and Israel Palestinians,
citizen Israelis and Israel and among the Jewish community.
Or the Jewish and Israel and Jordan.
And Palestine.
And also in Tunisia, I tried to do something in Egypt, but unfortunately I did get like a very, very small response rate in this case that I, um.
Let's say I just focus on the four cases. I tried also to do the research.
Egypt to go there, but I didn't have the chance to do that because the regime there is very, you know, the situation there.
So when I ask somebody to get the visa to to go to Egypt, he told me, Ibrahim, you have two choices.
If you say that you were trying to ask something about democracy so you would be classified as one of the opposition or Muslim Brotherhood,
so you would be in jail. The second option is to tell them that you're doing something about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
At the same,
either it will be in the jail because you may be classified as somebody who related to Israel and and what's going on between Israel and Egypt.
So I tried to be out and then I decided not to go there.
And so I have around 2002 hundred people and participated in this survey and this countries am part of them participated in online survey others.
I did. Yeah I went to that first is there and I did the survey in these countries.
So to the results. I would try to do it as as simple as possible.
If we compare the Arabs and the Jews in this case, how they perceived their identity,
so we can see that almost more than 50% of the Arabs perceive their mean it is their religious identity.
So from 5 to 10, it's like it was like ten questions about identity and uh,
5 to 10 is like more than 50% of your answers, uh, indicate that you adopt a religious identity.
So more than 50% among the Arab population.
Among the Israeli Jews, we can say that, uh,
mainly they adopt the national and the civic identity more than national one as the main identity that they perceive.
About conflict perception. So the issues which issues are perceived that they are the core of the conflict.
Uh, and we can see also that the more than.
40% of Arabs perceive the conflict as a religious conflict.
While the Jews in this case perceive the conflict either national or a material conflict.
At 76% of the Jews that they didn't think that that conflict had has any aspect of religious conflict.
Um, but the majority of the US, they said the conflict is mainly a religious conflict.
So there is like a different perception, perception regarding the conflict.
So. I'll try to do that.
One goal was simple as possible.
So we can see that in this case, religious identity perception, uh, correlate positively with religious conflict perception among the two groups.
And the green one is for the Jews, the Jewish people.
And the orange one for the Arabs.
So if you perceive your identity as a religious, you perceive the conflict as a religious.
The same amount that two groups of you perceive your identity as a religious identity.
Also, you would feel threatened from the second group in this context in both groups, the Arabs and Israelis.
Regarding perception and reconciliation, it's correlated negatively, which means that if you,
uh, you feel that there is a threat, who will have less willingness to reconcile.
And if you perceive the conflict as a religious conflict, you will have as that, as we said, and the hypothesis that you will perceive.
You will have less willingness to reconcile in this case in both societies.
But the most I mean, one of the most interesting things here is the relation between democratic values and reconciliation.
As the literatures state.
In this context, democratic values correlated positively with reconciliation, but just among the Jewish group, among the Arabs.
If you have a few adopts democratic values, you will have less willingness to reconcile, will not have meaning to reconcile with the second group.
I will talk about that, how we can explain it. So here we can see the result.
There is a full mediation that especially in the Arab samples, that mean we can't see anything about the religion,
the relation between religious identity and reconciliation without the two mediators.
About the national identity and reconciliation.
Here. The relation is not significant.
Because we can see that here about the relation between national identity and threat,
at the same about national conflict, perception and reconciliation.
But. Also, we can say that there is a positive relation between national identity and national conflict perceptions.
So if you perceive your identity as a national one,
you'll perceive the conflict as a national conflict among the Arabs if you perceive and your identity as
a national a also feel that from the second group and national conflict perception and reconciliation,
we can see that there is a significant relation because we can see that, see that among the Arabs there is a positive relation.
But among the Jewish roots, the greenlane, the relation between national conflict, perception and reconciliation is not significant.
So we can't I think about if you perceive the conflict as a national, how it affect your attitudes regarding reconciliation.
But again, democratic values and reconciliation positive.
And that Jewish sample negative among the Arab, uh, Arabs in the Arab world regarding the civic identity.
So. As as the results show.
If you perceive your your identity as civic, so perceive the conflict more as a material.
Uh. If you perceive your identity as civic, you will not perceive the second group as a threat.
So it's correlated negatively and threat perception the same as others, if you will.
Is there a threat existed so perceive you will have less willingness to reconcile.
If you perceive the conflict as a material conflict, you will have more willingness to reconcile.
Well, the same again regarding general democratic values and willing to cancel positive among the Jewish sample and negative among the Arabs.
So, um, as I say, there is a for mediation and we can say that social and in some cases and others there is a but show mediation.
So we can't see that all of us social identity can explain that identity can explain attitudes regarding reconciliation.
And as I also said, identity perception is correlated with conflict perception.
If you perceive the conflict as a religious, you would perceive it.
So if you perceive identity as a religious, you'll perceive the conflict as a religious.
If you perceive your identity as a national, you perceive the conflict as a national.
And if you perceive your identity as civic, one would perceive the conflict as a conflict over material resources.
Okay. So. If I tried to and divide the research or even to talk about each country along
the same regarding the relation between identity and conflict perception,
we can see that Tunisia, Palestine and Jordan, uh, religious identity related positively with conflict.
Religious conflict the same among Israeli Jews and the Arabs and Palestinians inside Israel.
So am. According to the literature.
We can we can we can say that identity perception leads people to perceive the conflict as a conflict between two identity groups.
And and that shows that the centrality of identity and religious identity and protracted conflict and social identities, in this case,
more symbolic identities in this case, like litigious national, may lead to perceive the second group in negative and negative way.
So regarding conflict, perception and reconciliation, the third hypothesis in this case.
So as the results show and all of the countries religious conflict, perception and reconciliation uh,
correlated negatively while national conflict and we need to reconcile,
there is no significant correlation in all the cases regarding material conflict and reconciliation and all the cases in Jordan,
Palestine and Tunisia, Israel among the Arabs and the Israeli Jews, if you perceive the conflict as material, will have more willingness to reconcile.
So, uh, research done by or by research done by others also say that Sam aspects of
conflict may it's like may lead to much harder to resolve this kind of conflicts.
Litigious conflicts is make compromise more difficult to achieve.
Um, so this is for religious justification and there is no, like, there is a samples that people can't compromise in this case because they feel,
they feel that it's part of their belief and they can't compromise.
And this kind of conflicts, material conflict, people tend to compromise regarding the issue in the conflict.
So back to, um, the most, I think the most interesting results here about the relation between democratic values and reconciliation.
So. Religious conflict perception and religious identity perception.
I mean, if we if we try to compare the groups according to their identity,
so then we try to to check the relation between general democratic values and reconciliation.
So people who classify themselves as a religious or perceive their identity as a religious one, they will have at least three things to reconcile.
While people who perceive their identity as, um, as a civic one, they will have more will,
uh, to reconcile among the Israeli Jews, but not among the, uh, the Arabs.
So Arabs tend not to, um, um, tend to cluster to reconcile with the Israelis, even if they adopt, uh, democratic values, uh, in this case.
So I tried to, to check if it's the same case in other conflicts.
So then I tried to look at the conflict between India and Pakistan, about the conflict there, about Kashmir.
And I also found a research done, um, by three researchers there, and they also found that democratic values of strong support,
of democratic values, um, correlated with less or even more militant groups.
So, and let's, we need to reconcile and then the justifications and the explanation that they give to this, uh, results that people,
they say that their rights has been violated and adopting democratic values means that we need to get our rights and reconciliation,
compromise, um, if it's not giving our rights and justice.
So we should, uh, disagree with this kind of reconciliation.
But then I tried to ask. If we ask people about liberal democratic values, which is more in depth, because as I said before,
the PC theory said that people who adopts more liberal values tends to have more willingness to compromise and reconcile.
So nationalism with values, not just the right to vote or the, um,
let's say the speech rights or something like that, more in depth, uh, rights and values.
In this case, we say liberal democratic values. And I also try to add the same model and this context.
Other factors are the same regarding the liberal democratic values and reconciliation and then context of people who adopts their identity as we can.
We can see here still among the Arabs.
If you perceive and if you adopt liberal values, you will have this feeling stuck inside.
But it's much more, uh, um, let's say and not that much.
Cenk It's -0.4. While we can see that before in that first model, it's -0.30 or something of that.
18. So it's weaker.
Then before. But still, we can't say that adopting liberal values will lead to more willingness to reconcile what among Israelis,
in Israel, among the Israeli Jews,
still liberal democratic values leads to more willingness to reconcile regarding the civic identity is the same is still a negative,
but it's weaker than before.
It's -0.05 among the Arabs and Israelis, Jews more if you have more liberal democratic values, will have more willingness to reconcile.
I tried to, uh, to compare, uh, between the original radical values and the liberal democratic values and different countries.
And I think the most interesting results is here in Tunisia, which is it according to,
um, um, a lot of international reports now it's a democratic state.
The results say that in general, democratic values, uh, if,
if people adopt more general democratic values, they will have less willingness to reconcile.
But if they adopt liberal democratic values, they will have more, we see because of.
So but at the same time and it's not the case all the time.
I mean, people who adopt, uh, national identity or even civic identity, they will, they, um, they don't, uh,
they doesn't have a kind of, they don't have the kind of this significant relation between liberal values and reconciliation.
I tried to, to neglect the models of identity and just to focus on the relation between liberal values
and reconciliation without taking into account how people perceive their identity.
And then I found that. As before and the Arab states generally democratic values and reconciliation correlated negatively.
And the Arab and Israel, it's positively.
But again, in Tunisia, if we talk if we looking on the relation between liberal democratic values and reconciliation,
we can find there is a positive relation between the liberal values and reconciliation.
Which is a positive figure, a significant. So back to hypothesis number five about identity perception and threat perception.
And here again, religious identity correlated negatively with the.
Uh. Um. The sort of positivity with that perception and all the cases.
Well, if we're talking about perception and reconciliation, it's correlated negatively in all the cases.
So and and the civic identity and all the cases.
Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia and and Israel.
If you perceive your identity as civic one, you will have less threat perception.
If we move to that. Last one, which is, I think, very important in this case.
Yes. So I tried.
To ask. If we looking in to this research and different,
we would try to classify the countries as regimes democratic and undemocratic and to ask if there is a differences between,
uh, and democratic states and democratic states.
Again, I follow the Freedom House report, which classified Tunisia as a democracy and also Israel,
even though that all of us know that there is like a lot of literature, uh,
talking about how we can classify Israel if it's really democratic, if it was Tunisia or in the case of Israel,
it's a democratic state or a theocratic state or it's a defective democracy.
What others also talked about, Tunisia and Tunisian case.
It's very fresh democracy. So or it's in transition because it's not, uh, just like a few years with transitions towards democracy.
Even though I follow the accepted classification which classify Tunisia is as a democratic states.
If we compare, um, this regime type regarding reconciliation,
we can find that there is no difference regarding reconciliation between reconciliation, attitudes between Tunisia and other Arab states.
Um. So being a Democratic state.
That's not mean. If. Probably will lead to adopt, um, reconciliation in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict then and.
As I said before, comparing to the, uh, identity model, we can also say that there is no difference between Tunisia and the Arab states.
Even though we can see that it's much more accepted.
And the Tunisian case, if you're adopting more liberal values, to have more willingness to reconcile.
So, uh, also I tried to, uh, to ask questions about compromise and militant attitudes to compare this between these countries.
And I can see, I can see that there is, um,
a very few differences between these countries and liberal democratic values in general correlated negatively with militancy.
But it's not as if it is significant in all the cases.
So if you're adopting a more liberal democratic values, you will not have this very high militant attitudes.
Um. Again regarding the compromise people upstate, they didn't support compromise, uh,
based on the solution that proposed in this research, based on the two state solutions and this state.
And then I just tried to do some interviews with some of the Muslim and Arab leaders.
One of them was Rochester, Baluchi.
And I asked him, um, Anousheh, the literature saying that adopting democratic values and democracy leads to reconciliation and compromise.
But what do you think about that? And then he said something which is interesting.
He said, yes, we fully and we really want to have Democratic states and we fully adopt democratic values,
which is a very important for us and for the Arab states and even for the Islamic movements in the Arab world.
But it's internal issue. It's very important for our country.
But at the same time, it's not means that we need to have a compromise with Israel.
And then I said, Why? They say, because.
First of all, we think that the question of justice, uh, is not coming with this kind of reconciliation.
If we're talking about a two state solution, this case and all the compromise and reconciliation, we think that it's not the justice in this context.
Adopting democratic values means adopting other values like justice, freedom.
That's not mean. If you adopt democratic values, will you will.
That will lead to more willingness to reconcile.
And then I asked him, but again, I and he said, we will support the Palestinians and their and their country and the land.
And then I asked him which land? He said, Palestine is Palestine.
And, uh, which meaning?
The context of Palestine is the past, the whole Palestine, including Israel in this case, and according to his perception.
So, um, and the same I asked some leaders in the Israeli Arab leaders about that,
and they said that the democratic values is very important for us and for the will of the Arab states.
But that is protected values.
Which means protected values as the freedom of Palestine is to have a state which we can reconcile.
And this is protected values, this political issue, and not adopting democratic values or not.
So in order to conclude my speech here.
So there is five or six things that are important.
So conflict and threat perception are a mediators between identity and a willingness to reconcile.
This relation can't be existed if we didn't have these two mediators.
So social identity can explain part of the relation between identity and reconciliation.
That is, conflict perception decrease need to reconcile while material one can increase it.
There is a differences between the two people, how they perceive the identity of the perception.
And actually this is affect the attitudes, how we can talk about negotiation.
So if we ask the Palestinians to about diminishes the conflict and they think that that
adjusting is the most important thing is the think that the material or the national one.
Then we should take that into account and in our and let's say, attitudes regarding the compromise and how we can resolve the conflict.
Democratic values play adequate and a good role for reconciliation among the population.
Well, among the Israeli Jews, it's more positive.
Having a democratic regime is not going to to have to achieve reconciliation.
Liberal values and democratic regime together make making may contribute more positively and reconciliation.
But it's not. Also, uh, I guarantee you to achieve reconciliation.
Thank you.