| This study considers the potential role of symbolic strategies for confidence-building in longstanding ethnic conflicts, using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case study. Because of the identity-based nature of ethnic conflicts, the cultural symbols that make up and communicate ethnic identity shape the conflict in important ways. Specifically, cultural symbols can be put to powerful use, for good or ill, to influence ethnic communities' perceptions of their security and of the threat that emanates from their adversaries. This study outlines how certain issues, people, places, myths, and other emblems take on high symbolic salience over the course of a long conflict. It hypothesizes that confidence-building measures (CBMs) infused with reassuring symbolic content will be more effective at promoting conflict resolution than CBMs that lack such symbolic content. It analyzes twenty-three CBMs employed by Israel and the PLO during the Oslo peace process for their symbolic content, strategic content, and effectiveness.; Each CBM is assessed in detail using data drawn from interviews with principal negotiators and decision makers from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the United States. Contemporaneous Hebrew, Arabic, and English news sources and published memoirs of the peace process are also used. Statistical measures of association and process-tracing techniques demonstrate that the degree of symbolic content strongly impacts a CBM's effectiveness, whereas strategic content has no significant relationship to effectiveness. The analysis reveals how symbolic actions influence the perceptions and calculations of political leaders and their publics. The findings strongly suggest that the perceptions and decisions of ethnic groups in conflict are significantly influenced by their cultural identity. The study uses these insights into the symbolic politics of ethnic conflict to generate some propositions regarding the pitfalls and possibilities of using symbolic confidence-building measures to alter communal threat perceptions, and suggests some necessary components for the success of such symbolic strategies. |
