Abstract
The impact of war and violence on health, specifically on mental health, has been highlighted often in the World Health Organization’s annual reports. Yet as the ‘intractable’ Israel-Palestine conflict continues; non-stakeholders may be perplexed at the parties’ persistent refusal to make necessary political and territorial compromises for the physical and mental wellbeing of their populations, particularly as violence ranges across the MENA region. Intermittent official conflict resolution processes, current and past, focus mainly on interstate-style peacemaking, regardless of the ‘state versus occupied entity’ asymmetry.
Meanwhile, the conflict ethos is determined by the parties’ narratives and national discourses, which repeatedly rehearse ‘exceptional’ claims to a history of catastrophic events that has created deep suffering and disruption. Collective trauma may be more diffuse than the presentation of war trauma, but clearly demands exploration as a formidable obstacle to peace, which cannot proceed without addressing this issue.
In this paper, the researcher intends a critical analysis of trauma’s epistemology and the social construction of ‘collective trauma,’ assessing their special connection to the Israel/Palestine conflict. The researcher further argues for the critical need to take into account both pathologies—the individual psychological trauma and the collective trauma—in seeking innovative possibilities hinging on recognition, that may bring a deeper-level resolution to this conflict.
