Conflicting groups can define their own identities negatively through the other’s failure

Evidence

Kelman (1999) argued that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been characterized by negative interdependence between the two national identities. According to this account, the two sides have not only defined access to territory as a zero-sum conflict, but also their national identities. That is, “each group’s success in identity building depends on the other’s failure in that task” (p. 589), and thus each side has denied the legitimacy of the other’s national identity. For example, Palestinians have argued that Judaism is a religion and is therefore not a true basis for a nation state, while Israelis have contended that Palestinian nationalism is an artificial creation without historical foundations. … Kelman’s analysis suggests that the in-group positivity and out-group hostility evident in Israeli–Palestinian relations may have arisen from negative interdependence in relation to scarce resources and group identities. Future research could examine the possibility that intergroup conflict leads in-groups to define themselves as a function of the out-group or increases the likelihood that people will engage in negational identification. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1123

Categorization

• XREF: Complicates the reader’s prior claims about Islamophobia/antisemitism as ingroup-outgroup cognition — here identity itself (not just resources) becomes zero-sum, echoing how nationalist movements delegitimize religious vs. national identity bases. — connects to: Identity is constructed through boundary-making against the groups most similar to one’s own. — Donatella della Porta et al., Mobilizing Against the Odds: Solidarity…, 34; The same identity need can drive either reconciliation or conflict depending on expression. — Nurit Shnabel and Johannes Ullrich, Identity Needs in Intergroup Relations:…, 127
• QUESTION: The negational-identification mechanism — self defined as other’s negation — deserves a closer look; how does it map onto anti-Muslim or anti-Jewish identity construction where the outgroup defines what the ingroup must not be?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1123