Understanding Territorial Ownership Perceptions in the Israeli -Palestinian Conflict: A Person - Centred Approach

Abstract

We investigate land ownership claims in the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Using a person-centred approach and drawing on survey-data of Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, we 1) identify profiles with differing ingroup and outgroup ownership perceptions, 2) examine how profile membership depends on group identifications and the endorsement of ownership principles, and 3) how reconciliation intentions and support for concrete territorial conflict solutions differ across the profiles. The majority of the Jews (87%) perceived exclusive ingroup ownership of the contested land, whereas 13% perceived shared Jewish and Palestinian ownership. In contrast, most of the Palestinians perceived moderate levels of shared ownership (43%) followed by ingroup ownership (36%), but we also identified profiles with high levels of shared ownership (11%) and exclusive outgroup ownership (10%). We conclude that Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel have different understandings of land ownership. Complex patterns of endorsing various ownership principles and levels of group identifications explained profile membership, mostly in line with our expectations. Furthermore, the profiles differed in attitudes towards concrete territorial solutions and intergroup reconciliation, attesting to the importance of examining ownership perceptions in conflict regions from a person-centred approach.