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The discourse is changing: How will the agreement with the UAE affect us all?

Even if it does not seem to you, at least according to a study at the University of Cambridge, the agreement with the Emirates will affect you personally. Who knows, maybe the door to a new reality has opened

• United Arab Emirates
• Israel

Dana Pan Luzon

Israel and the United Arab Emirates, mediated by the United States, have reached a normalization relationship. Delegations from the two countries will meet in the coming weeks to sign agreements, and from here everything should be open: tourism, business, technology, communications, culture and the list goes on. The opportunities from this agreement are many and clear, but there are other directions of influence. Have you stopped to think how such a peace agreement affects the way you think? Is it a coincidence that other Arab countries are also signaling? What does this mean for the inner relationship and what is the psychological meaning of peace?

The name of the study that deals with the issue already contains the conclusion - Conflict Will Harden Your Heart. This is one of the most interesting studies. He examined the factors that influence citizens' attitudes toward peace, and his goal was to examine what influences the attitudes of citizens living under violent conflict. Research is important and different from other studies because it takes what is known and researched so far one step further.

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The subjects in the study are Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs from East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria. The interviews included questionnaires that examined mental distress, perceptions of threat, attitudes toward peace, and exposure to political violence. The results of the study found that the individual's level of exposure to terrorism and political violence causes a decrease in support for the peace effort in both groups, both among Israelis and among Arabs. Psychological distress and threat perceptions have been found to be mechanisms linking exposure to violence and increasing militancy over time. The findings shed light on the factors that create resistance to compromises among citizens living in ongoing conflict.

If we wanted to understand in depth or get proof why it is so difficult for us here to reach an agreement or compromise, the study gives us an answer. Living in an ongoing conflict has a considerable psychological cost. The name of the article clearly states this - "Conflict hardens the heart". The long-running conflict causes both sides to lose hope of finding a compromise. The reality to which we are exposed daily affects us, oppresses us and them. The news media discourse looks at reality from a political, economic and political point of view and forgets to talk and examine the psychological impact. When one wants to create a different reality within a conflict, the psychological side cannot be ignored. This requires a particularly long treatment.

The peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is for us all a different exposure. It is the opposite of conflict, contains future and hope and is our medicine, after a long period of continual despair and fatigue from the reality of the conflict. There are already voices from other Arab countries that the idea of ​​a peace agreement is their desire. It is requested that when one country takes such a step, it opens the door to its neighbor.

In a lengthy opinion piece published over the weekend, a UAE resident sheds light on his feelings and hopes for peace with Israel, after admitting he grew up in an education of hatred and anti-Semitism towards a country he did not know any of its residents.

Dana Pan Luzon (Photo: Nir Keidar)

Hatred lies in our political history and culture. This is according to a study that examines organized hate groups and their effects. We live in a culture of war that promotes violence, competition is the way of life. We are educated to hate the enemy and it means to hate everyone who is different from us. Our society is more willing to fight than to solve problems. Peace is rarely the option chosen, but here are two countries that manage to win and create a new reality. The couple therapy succeeded for us with another country.

So maybe the world is tired of hatred, as Gandhi said, and indeed a new era is looming. Arab countries seem to be signaling, but unfortunately the Palestinians are not there yet and to the peace agreement they are reacting with great anger. At the moment, they do not share the same feeling, but feel betrayed by those who expected them to stand by their side. They are afraid of the changing reality and are mostly afraid to be left alone in the battle. Making a change of mind is a difficult mental task. The Palestinian Authority has begun turning to Arab states to prevent similar moves, fearing that other states - particularly Bahrain and Oman - will establish relations with Israel. Between us and them there is a psychological price to conflict.

It is enough to Google peace Israel versus Israel war - about 278 million results compared to 720 million, almost 3 times. This is a very clear indication of what kind of reality, content, discourse and language we grow and are exposed to, what form of thought we are accustomed to. The reasons for the importance of the peace agreement are many - political, political, economic, strategic and social, but no less important - the peace agreement is of great importance for the psychological and psychological reason. It exposes us to an emotional reality that distances us from the militant thought that is so ingrained in us. It puts into the system of thinking and feeling a vocabulary that has already raised dust - hope, connection, relationships and the word "peace", which means dozens of times more than the others. A word we have already forgotten how its sound sounds. It remains only to hope that it will also have an impact on our neighbors over time.

The author holds a bachelor's degree in communication, economics and psychology.