Hearts of Flesh - Not Stone: Does Encountering the Suffering of the Other (ESO) Influence Reconciliation in the Middle of Conflict?

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Hearts of Flesh Not Stone is a reference to an image in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel: I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh (36:26). Significant for Jewish, Christian and Muslim cultures, the title gives insight into the projects central questions seeking to understand the movement of individuals and groups from lesser to greater reconciliation willingness. The second central question impacts society; we want to deepen the understanding on how course studies and encounter groups can lead to greater willingness to reconcile. The project analyses individuals and groups experiencing the suffering of the other as a means for understanding how and why groups may become more or less open to reconciliation. Three theoretical/methodological approaches are used: A. Encountering the suffering of the other (ESO) experientially B. Analyzing the ESO through social psychological experimentation C. Conceptual analysis of the ESO through theological/sociological/political disciplines The first approach (A) explores the ESO before, during and immediately after the experience as well as one year later, during which the participants will live in their own home community. The study will carefully examine the possible changes among the Palestinian and the Jewish Israeli participants, especially regarding two central indicators reflecting willingness to reconcile: 1. acceptance of the other identity needs 2. perceptions of collective narratives of the ingroup and other group. In addition to assisting in the ESO itself, the second approach (B) addresses the question with the models and experiments of social psychology which analyses impact of recognition, respect, acceptance and empowerment on reconciliation willingness. The final approach (C) addresses reconciliation on a more theoretical level. It examines the groups beliefs, attitudes, goals, narratives and their relative power positions. Two principles characterize our work. First, transdisciplinarity (Mittelstraß, 2007) whereby different disciplines work closely in the development and testing of goals, concepts, experiments (including common discussion of measurement), as well as the evaluation and publication of the results. Secondly, the project benefits from an insight of the theologian and philosopher Hölderlin (1797) that elements of peace and reconciliation are already found in the middle of conflicts (Leiner, 2012) and not only after violent actions have stopped (Kelman, 2008). In intractable conflicts such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this seems to be a promising route to reconciliation because attempts of reconciliation may be a precondition for violence to cease.