ABSTRACT
Until recently, most attention by students of the Arab-Israeli conflict was given to its international dimension. Yet its protracted nature also focused attention on the ethno-cultural characteristics of this conflict.1 Indeed, the Arab-Israeli conflict also has an intercommunal dimension that gives it a compound quality – that is, a structure composed of two bordering domains of violence, interstate and communal.2 The communal strife, dominant before 1948, acquired more prominence after 1967 when the Palestinian inhabitants of the territories on the West Bank and in Gaza came under Israeli rule. A conflict of this nature usually generates subconventional violence at the lower end of the spectrum of force.3
