Children of War and Peace: A Human Development Perspective

Political conflicts and intractable wars can be conceived as disasters of human activities and they affect the entire life of children and their families. An ecological-transactional perspective of human development is adopted in order to identify multilevel developmental and contextual trajectories that might facilitate or impede the willingness and readiness of people to engage openly and flexibly in conflict-resolution paradigms. It is proposed that building early trustful relationships at the interpersonal level is likely to enhance one's willingness and ability to explore the other side's goals in the conflict, and ultimately to consider reconciliation. At the same time, the absence of such trustful relationships is likely to induce more rigid and one-sided approaches in adulthood. Toward that end, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict serves as the main context of analysis.