The Peace and Reconciliation domain at the aChord Center works to promote support, both at the level of awareness and through concrete action, for peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. This work is grounded in the recognition that social psychology can offer a unique contribution to understanding the psychological infrastructures of societies living under protracted conflict, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In line with aChord’s vision of advancing tolerant, respectful, and equitable relations between groups, our aim is to mobilize knowledge and tools from social psychology that address protracted conflicts, in order to foster public support for ending the violent and bloody conflict.
 

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is deep, prolonged, and exacts a heavy human toll. Numerous factors, geopolitical, economic, regional, and others, hinder the resolution of the conflict and the attainment of the long-sought peace. Social psychology offers an additional perspective, one that centers on systems of beliefs, attitudes, and emotions that directly, though often unconsciously, shape how people interpret the reality of the conflict and how they behave in relation to it. This system of attitudes and emotions shapes the perceptions of individuals living in a protracted conflict, regarding the other side, their own group, conflicts more broadly, and the ways in which change might occur, if at all.