Bedouin Adolescents during the Iron Swords War: What Strategies Help Them to Cope Successfully with the Stressful Situation?

This study examined the emotional reactions and coping resources of Bedouin teenagers (ages 12-18) following the events of 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Iron Swords War between Israel and Hamas forces in Gaza. This study focused on the relationships between subjective exposure, personal sense of coherence, community resilience, and the use of different coping strategies, on the one hand, and anxiety, anger, and psychological distress, on the other. During 2024, 762 participants completed the study questionnaire, which addressed the different study variables.

Sense of coherence, hope, and home demolition are differentially associated with anger and anxiety among Bedouin Arab adolescents in recognized and unrecognized villages.

Background And Objectives: This research investigated how coping resources explain emotional reactions of anger and anxiety, in the context of threat of house demolition, among adolescents in three groups: Adolescents living in a recognized village with no demolition, adolescents living in an unrecognized village (by the Israeli government as legal) with no demolition, and adolescents living in an unrecognized village with demolition. The framework of this research is based on Antonovsky's salutogenic theory, which suggests examining ability to cope with stressful situations.

Design: Multi-group cross-sectional study.

Stress reactions and coping strategies among Bedouin Arab adolescents exposed to demolition of houses.

The aim of this study was to examine emotional reactions and coping strategies of Bedouin adolescents against the backdrop of house demolitions in the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev, Israel. We compared two groups of adolescents living in unrecognized Bedouin villages, teenagers whose houses had been destroyed (acute + chronic group) and their counterparts whose houses had not been destroyed (chronic group). Data were gathered during October to December 2010 from 465 Bedouin adolescents aged 13-18 years.