261. Israel facing suicide-attacks: the new ethos of violence
- Author:
- Laetitia Bucaille
- Publication Date:
- 09-2006
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Cultures & Conflits
- Institution:
- Cultures & Conflits
- Abstract:
- This article analyses the impact of suicide attacks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflictual relation. Taking Palestinian violence into account, Israeli narratives reinforce or reinvent self-perceptions and visions of the enemy. Palestinian suicide-attacks give rise to an existential fear among Israelis despite the military and economic superiority of the Jewish State in the region. The deep feeling of insecurity fuels a narrative of victimhood and strengthens the security prism. Promoted by political and military decisions-makers and imposing itself in the Israeli society, it supplants a political approach based on the will to find a compromise with the adversary. Anxiety contributes to demonize Palestinians and to diffuse a Manichaean vision in which the Israelis embody the Good and the Just. On this basis, divergent voices are excluded, sometimes at the price of a renunciation to some moral values.
- Political Geography:
- Israel, France, and Palestine