The long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the inability to resolve it peacefully, in spite of the numerous bilateral attempts and third-party interventions, imply that this conflict is vicious, stubborn, and resistant to such efforts. The lack of peaceful resolution can be attributed, to a large extent, to the functioning of very powerful socio-psychological barriers that inhibit and impede progress. These barriers are socio-psychological forces that underlie the disagreements and prevent their resolution by posing major obstacles to beginning the negotiations, conducting the negotiations, or achieving an agreement, and later, to engaging in the process of reconciliation (see review by Bar-Tal & Halperin, 2010). The purpose of the present chapter is to elucidate the socio-psychological barriers in Israeli-Jewish society that play a major role in the attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict peacefully. We note that similar detrimental forces are undoubtedly operating on the Palestinian side, but their analysis is beyond the scope of the present contribution.

This conflict has lasted over a hundred years and is still one of the most salient and central conflicts in the world. It has gone through various stages and developments during these hundred years, and still it remains unresolved and resistant to peaceful resolution. Our fundamental premise is that the disagreements in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not easily resolved in part because socio-psychological barriers prevent peaceful resolution of conflicts. These barriers pertain to an integrated operation of cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes, combined with a pre-existing repertoire of rigid supporting beliefs, world views, and emotions, that result in selective, biased, and distorted