Between victory and peace: Unravelling the paradox of hope in intractable conflicts

The paper, in plain language

Splitting a virtue in two

Peace research has long treated hope as a resource. With Maor Shani, Eran Halperin and colleagues, we split it: hope directed at peace, and hope directed at victory — defeating the enemy. Among Israeli Jews in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, hope for victory was uniquely associated with support for extreme war policies, and it — not hope for peace — predicted personal violent extremist intentions. The pattern replicated among Muslim Pakistanis in the Pakistan–India dispute.

Three kinds of hopers, and a war

In a representative Israeli sample, people sorted into three profiles: peace hopers, victory hopers, and a majority holding both hopes at once. The fourth study is the hardest evidence: a preregistered longitudinal study following Israeli Jews from a relatively calm 2021 into the war that began in 2023. Increases in hope for victory across that window explained the wartime increase in support for violence.

Why it matters

Interventions that simply 'instil hope' in conflict zones may be feeding either wolf. The distinction is uncomfortable precisely because victory-hope feels, from inside, like optimism and love of one's group — while functioning as fuel for escalation. For peace-building, the target has to be the content of hope, not its quantity; and the large dual-hoper group suggests that the same people can, in principle, be reached both ways.