Analysis of violence in Palestine as an example of bullying behaviour

Abstract

The contextual model to understand " school bullying " is used to explain the relations between Israel and Palestine. A presentation of the model helps to understand the role of all the actors involved: aggressors, victims, observers and defenders, and the strategies used by each one to play these roles (Salmivalli, Huttunen, & Lagerpetz, 1997). School bullying provides us with a contextual model that includes the victim, the aggressor (as a group), the observers and defenders, as all the roles including in this phenomenon. The application of this conceptual model to the relations between Israel and Palestine helps to understand the strategies and the effectiveness of the actions taken by all the parts (Lera, 2007). From this point of view, the first issue to clarify is the definition of the roles. When the violence is committed intentionally against the victims, in a repetitive way, and under the basis of a relevant different of power between both sides, then the relation is a violent relation (not a conflict) (Smith & Sharp, 1994).