Multiple conflicts and competing agendas: A framework for conceptualizing structured encounters between groups in conflict—the case of a coexistence project of Jews and Palestinians in Israel.

This study presents a framework for conceptualizing processes of interaction and communication within structured encounters between groups in conflict. It is based on the assumption that such encounters essentially reflect or are influenced by the external reality of conflict. As such, they are likely to be characterized by multiple interacting conflicts (Bar-On, 1997); by disputes over goals, agendas, and the expression of group identities; and by patterns of influence and control. This paradigm was used to analyze a case of structured coexistence encounters between Jews and Palestinians in Israel. The analysis of the processes and the dynamics of these encounters reveals a configuration of groups, subgroups, and coalitions that evolved around the central dispute over the encounters' agenda. This dispute reflected and interacted with the ethnonational conflict between Jews and Palestinians. It appears that the notion of cooperation so successfully employed in Sherif's (1966) study acquired a different me...