Personal Resources and Political Uprooting: The Israeli Experience

The authors assessed distress in Israeli society before and after Israel's disengagement from Gaza and the northern West Bank during the summer of 2005. Random samples of 701 Israelis residing in various parts of Israel (Study 1) and 246 Israelis residing in Gaza and the northern West Bank who were to be uprooted (Study 2) were interviewed by telephone several weeks before the disengagement (T1), with 462 and 124 of these respondents, respectively, reinterviewed several weeks after the disengagement (T2). Anxiety related to the national and security situation was lower at T2 than at T1 in both studies. A personal resource, namely mastery-optimism, contributed negatively to both anxiety and hostility before the disengagement in both studies. In Study 1, it also predicted lower postdisengagement anxiety. The findings underscore the importance of mastery-optimism in the adjustment to threatening political events such as forced uprooting.