Reconciliation in the Making: Overcoming Competitive Victimhood through Intergroup Dialogue in Israel/Palestine

This chapter explores the phenomenon of competitive victimhood (CV), which refers to the dynamic in intractable conflicts when groups seek to establish that they have suffered more than their adversary. Significantly, CV has been found to severely impede conflict resolution and reconciliation. In order to overcome CV, the creation of a superordinate shared identity has been proposed. However, whilst previous studies have emphasised the need for an inclusive victim identity, this small-sample case study, drawing on interviews with members of a reconciliation-oriented group of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians, suggests that the key may lie in an identity construct that emphasises the shared humanity instead. Mutual humanisation and acknowledgement, facilitated through sustained inter-group dialogue, was not only found to reduce CV, facilitate reconciliation and foster a piercing vision of peace: Significantly, respondents explicitly expressed the desire to reject victimhood altogether as a defining part of their sense of self.