Date Published:

Abstract:

What is the impact of uncommon but notable violent acts on conflict dynamics? We analyze the impact of the murder of a Palestinian child on the broader dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian violence in Jerusalem. By using novel micro-level event data and utilizing Discrete Furrier Transform and Bayesian Poisson Change Point Analysis, we compare the impact of the murder to that of two other lethal but more typical Israeli-Palestinian events. We demonstrate that the murder had a large and durable effect that altered the broader conflict dynamics, whereas the other events caused smaller, short-term effects. We demonstrate that scholars should devote more attention to the analysis of atypical violent acts and present a set of tools for conducting such analysis.

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