| What leads longstanding adversaries to pursue compromise? Examining the case of Israel's decision to seek peace with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leading to the 1993 Oslo agreement, I argue that states, like selves, possess a collective self-image, or role-identity, that is informed in part by historical memory and is nurtured across generations through popular and discursive channels. When a state's foreign policy actions contradict its role-identity, unconscious counter-narratives---embodying what the state most fears in itself---come to the fore, resulting in the state taking radical action in order to reconcile its actions with its self-image. This dissonance is brought about by the holding up of a "mirror" to the face of the state; this mirror can take the form of domestic and international elements. In the case of Israel, two events in the 1980's---the 1982 Israeli-PLO war in Lebanon, and Israel's response to the Intifada, whereby Israel saw itself as aggressive rather than defensive---led Israelis to experience a "cognitive-emotional dissonance" between their country's actions and the "defensive warrior" role-identity that they had, collectively, previously internalized. In response to this dissonance, Israel extended an olive branch to the PLO---culminating in the 1993 Oslo agreement---in order to realign its policy stance with its self-image. |
