National ethos and its role in preserving trauma communities: Observations from the Palestinian uprising 2000 to 2005

This paper sticks to the assumption that conflicts become intractable when contradicting sets of national ethos exist. Therefore, it is essential to comprehend the traits of national ethos. We contend that national ethos comprises three basic themes: a sense of collective victimhood, a feeling of victory, and a sense of universal justice. Based on this theoretical foundation, we took the Israeli and Palestinian mutually negating sets of ethos during the 2000 to 2005 Second Intifada as a case study. We analyzed the public speeches of Ariel Sharon as well as those of Yasser Arafat and searched for matches to the three components of national ethos in their addresses. Consequently, the empirical observations confirmed that national ethos is often based on the three distinct themes. Additionally, the data from the case study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suggest that the three components of national ethos form fundamental barriers to reconciliation.