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The purpose of this study was to examine a new concept-sense of national coherence (SONC) and its role as a mediator between levels of conservativeness (as measured by voting behavior and religious grouping) and the tendency to delegitimize the "other's" collective narratives. Based on Antonovsky's (1987) concept of sense of coherence, SONC is defined as an enduring tendency to perceive one's national group as comprehensible, manageable, and meaningful. The research questions were examined among Israeli Jews in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Questionnaires adapted for the research population were delivered to a sample of 505 adults, aged 18 and above, by electronic platform. The results support the research hypotheses regarding the mediating role of SONC. The discussion focuses on the dual role of SONC as a resilience concept and as a potential obstacle for a peace process in conflict areas. Public Significance StatementThe present study suggests a new concept, sense of national coherence, and describes its role as a mediator between levels of conservativeness and the tendency to delegitimize the "other's" collective narratives, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The current article attempts to broaden the individual-based concept of sense of coherence to the community level. We examine sense of community coherence and its connection with perceptions of collective narratives and acculturation tendencies in the social context of Palestinian Muslims and Christians living in Israel. Questionnaires that were developed and adapted for the unique population in this study were distributed to a representative sample of 1034 Muslims (455 males) and 720 Christians (354 males), all Israeli citizens aged 18 and up. As expected, sense of community coherence was negatively related to the level of acceptance of the out-group collective narratives and positively related to the level of acceptance of the in-group collective narratives. In the same vein, it was also positively related to the tendency for separation and negatively related to the tendency for integration and assimilation. The discussion focuses on the contribution of the research findings to the deepening of our understanding of the concepts of sense of coherence and sense of community coherence.

Purpose -This study aims to examine inter-group relations between two religious minorities, Palestinian Christians and Muslim citizens of Israel, by measuring perceptions of in-group and "other" group collective narratives. Design/methodology/approach -Data were collected from a representative sample of 1,121 Muslims and 756 Christians in Israel. The questionnaire presents narratives that are common among Muslim and Christian populations in Israel, relating to eight different historical, social, or political events. Subjects were asked to rate levels of legitimacy, feeling of empathy, and anger towards each one of the presented narratives. Findings -In comparison to Muslims, Christians reported a lower tendency to give legitimacy to the narrative of the other, showed more emotions of anger, and lower feeling of empathy towards the Muslim narrative. In addition, a content analysis of the narratives that were used in the questionnaire revealed two different patterns of response to narratives. One related to narratives with national issues, where Christians seemed to be excluded from the Palestinian nation, and the other related to narratives with religious issues, where Muslims reported more anger, less empathy and less legitimacy towards the Christian narratives. Originality/value -The paper presents a new tool based on Sagy, Adwan and Kaplan, developed to examine perceptions of in-group and "other" group collective narratives. This study examined the tool in a different context of conflict. In addition to the quantitative measures of the perceptions of the collective narratives, the paper describes a new method for analyzing the data collected by this tool.Ethnic or religious groups and the relations shaped between them become of special interest when these groups sharing a long history, going through both assimilation and differentiation processes (Brewer, 2007) due to different sociopolitical conditions. Thus, examination of collective narratives seems to be a meaningful way to understand intergroup relations Solomon, 2004). This research attempts to find out the role of the collective narratives in formulating the inter-group relations between two religious minorities, Muslims and Christians citizens of Israel, and toThe current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at