XXXII Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 26–28 апреля 2023 г.

Россия и Восток. К 300-летию СПбГУ. Материалы конгресса 75 Источниковедение и историография арабских стран. Чтения памяти академика и. Ю. Крачковского... of 1987 and 2001, and ongoing clashes, along with initiatives for a peaceful settlement (e.g. the Oslo Agreements of 1993–1995). Lately, while there is a clear de-escalation tendency within the global Arab-Israeli conflict, resulting from a number of geopolitical transformations and the emergence of new axes of confrontation in the regional arena, the Israeli — Palestinian conflict shows no sign of settlement prospects. In our opinion, this is due to the fact that the Israeli — Palestinian dispute is a conflict of identity before anything else. In such conflicts, the threat to the collective identity, which in its turn unites a system of values, traditions, institutions, and the status of the conflicting parties, is its main component, inextricably linked with the struggle for territory and resources. Both peoples are competing for the same territory, claiming ownership and use of resources as the basis of an independent state that provides a political expression of their national identity. The integrity of national identity simultaneously serves as the ultimate goal, being a source of ‘distinctiveness’, unity, and sense of group belonging, and the key to its survival and development. Additionally, this is what leads the groups to secure the territory, allowing them to maintain social, cultural and religious differences. On top of that, not only the actions of the opposite side, but also its very existence and identity appear to be a threat to other group’s identity. The ‘other’ identity and the narrative associated with it destroy their claim to the land and resources (at least the exclusivity of that claim). ‘Alien’ presence in the same space, especially accompanied by the demands for power division and the recognition of another language, culture and religion, is perceived as a threat to the integrity and cohesion of the group and its way of life. Therefore, recognizing someone else’s identity inevitably undermines the foundations of one’s own, turning conflict into a «zero-sum game,» thereby depriving conflicting parties of the possibility of compromise. It is this during the development of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict that determines the parties’consistent denial of each other’s collective identity as nations, historical ties with the land of Palestine, and national rights. This denial was fully revealed in themutually exclusive narratives of Israel and Palestine on the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. For the Israelis, the creation of their state was the execution of the legitimate rights of the Jewish people to return to the land of their ancestors and was not considered as an injustice towards theArab population of Palestine, since were not a single nation at the time and never had any sovereignty in this territory. For the Palestinians, who perceived the Jews as a religious group rather than a nation in need of their own state, and Zionism as a form of colonialism, this signified the usurpation of the territory by European settlers who forcibly displaced the indigenous population, destroyed their society, property and way of life. This paradigm of mutual rejection dominated the next stages of the confrontation as well, especiallymanifesting itself in the Jerusalem status dispute, which is an integral element of the identity of both peoples. The struggle for «exclusive» identity, starting in the mid-20th century, continued to determine the nature of the relationship between the two peoples, on the one hand, forming the main priorities of Israel’s domestic national policy, and on the other, acting as an invariable incentive to continue the Israeli — Palestinian confrontation.