The Nuanced Relationship Between Conflict Intensity, Threat Perceptions, and Hope for Peace: Evidence from Cyprus and Israel-Palestine

Citizens’ political behaviors, from their engagement in collective resistance to their support for war and peace, are based, to some extent, on how much they wish to attain a certain political goal and how much they expect to attain it. It has been shown, for example, that during protracted ethnonational conflict, citizens’ willingness to support peace-promoting policies depends on how much they wish for peace and how much they expect peace to materialize. In this paper, we argue that citizens’ wishes and expectations for peace depend on the intensity of the conflict they live in. Those living under intense conflict conditions are likely to have higher desires for peace but lower expectations for its materialization compared to those living under milder conditions of conflict. We test this argument using two large scale surveys administered in two protracted ethnonational conflicts that differ in conflict intensity: Cyprus (low intensity) and Israel-Palestine (high intensity). Results confirm that Greek and Turkish Cypriots have lower wishes for peace compared to Israelis and Palestinians but greater expectations that peace will actually materialize. We also demonstrate that citizens’ threat perceptions drive these results. Across conflicts, the more one feels threatened by the continuation of the conflict, the more one wishes for peace and the less one expects it to materialize. Importantly, we reveal that both wishes and expectations are needed to elicit support for pro-peace policies and that in each conflict, one component is tragically lacking. In Israel-Palestine, citizens’ little expectation for peace nullifies the positive influence of their strong wish for peace on their support for pro-peace policies. In Cyprus, citizens’ relatively low wish for peace negates the positive influence of their high expectation for peace on support for equivalent policies. The overall relationship between conflict intensity, threat, hope, and conflict resolution are discussed, as well as possible ways of intervention.