The Israeli-Palestinian and the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict: Perception and Conflict-Resolution Strategies

Regional conflicts have the potential to become a danger for the world community. Examples are the old Israeli-Palestinian and the new Russian-Ukrainian conflicts. The current study investigated preferences for conflict-resolution strategies in these 2 international conflicts and predictors of these strategy preferences. Past research has focused on cognitive variables as predictors of conflict-resolution strategies. The current study focused on concern about the conflicts, religiosity, gender, and left-right political attitudes as potential predictors and was conducted in the streets of Berlin, Germany, with a heterogeneous sample of 229 participants. Whereas low religiosity, high concern, and right-leaning political attitudes predicted aggressive conflict-resolution strategies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, none of the variables predicted aggressive conflict-resolution strategies in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. It is possible that novelty of the later conflict and geographical proximity to Berlin as well as mistrust toward the United States and Russia lead to no clear-cut opinions regarding the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.