Public Preferences for Intergroup Assistance in Conflicts Facing Joint External Threats: Lessons From COVID-19 in Israel

With global changes, large-scale natural hazards are more frequent and intense, posing a particular challenge for groups in conflict. Do these shared external threats influence group willingness to cooperate and assist the adversary, and how? The literature suggests inconsistent expectations, from increased intergroup cooperation, to exacerbated animosity, to no discernable impact. We explore this question in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a joint exogenous threat for both sides. Using multiple surveys and a conjoint experiment, we examine whether and how COVID-19 threat perceptions affected Jewish-Israeli preferences for collaborating with the Palestinians against the pandemic, including a novel exploration of concrete policy priorities. We find that greater COVID-19 threat perceptions have little effect on collaborative policy preferences, corroborating politics-as-usual arguments: support for out-group assistance, cooperation, and cost-sharing is polarized by ideological orientation. Our findings outline both constraints and opportunities for intergroup collaboration policies in conflicts facing joint outside challenges.