Palestinian Arabs and Jews at Work: Workplace Encounters in a War-Torn Country and the Grassroots Strategy of ‘Split Ascription’

Abstract

What are the workplace manifestations of ongoing ethno-national conflict? How do co-workers on rival sides in war-torn countries cope with these manifestations? Interviews with nurses, nursing assistants and physicians in a Palestinian-Arab hospital and in a Jewish retirement home reveal how the broader ethno-national conflict in Israel penetrates the workplace. Problems arise for them when violence related to the conflict erupts outside the workplace and when patients express racist views during interactions with medical staff. This study finds that staff members respond with ‘split ascription’, a grassroots coping strategy that differentiates between a cooperative work environment and discriminatory structural elements of the employing organization. Split ascription challenges existing theories of interethnic relations in the workplace, as it combines both interactional and structural elements within a single coping strategy.