Long-term Change in Conflict Attitudes: A Dynamic Perspective

A large literature examines how citizens in violent conflicts react to the conflict’s events, particularly violent escalations. Nevertheless, the temporal nature of these attitudinal changes remains understudied. We suggest that popular reactions to greater violence are typically immediate but brief, indicating short-term emotional responses to physical threats. Over the longer term, however, public opinion is more commonly shaped by non-violent events signaling the adversary’s perceived intentions, reflecting slower but deeper belief-updating processes. We support this argument using dynamic analyses of comprehensive monthly data from Israel spanning two full decades (2001-2020). Rather than violence levels, we find that long-term changes in Jewish attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict follow non-violent events implying Palestinian preferences, particularly failed negotiations and out-group leadership changes. Our findings underscore the importance of public opinion’s temporal dynamics and show that non-violent events, often overlooked in the literature, play a prominent role in shaping long-term attitudes in conflictual contexts.