Palestinian and Israeli Attitudes Toward Time

Abstract

The formal model introduced in Chapter 3 offers empirical predictions pertaining to territorial control and resorting to violence. While these predictions are amenable to quantitative assessment, the crux of the model concerns the somewhat nebulous concept of ‘patience’ and the manner in which it is thought to evolve within populations engaged in territorial conflict.

In the Middle East as elsewhere in the world, it was the universal custom of human groups to draw a sharp line between themselves and others —4 to define the group and reject the outsider. This basic primal need goes back to the beginnings of humanity and beyond them to most forms of animal life. Invariably, the distinction between insiders and outsiders was determined by blood; that is, by kinship or by what we would nowadays call ethnicity.

(Lewis, 1996: 32)