Relational Capacity in Protracted Conflict: Women-Led Dialogue and Everyday Peacebuilding in the Western Galilee

This article examines a women-led Jewish–Arab dialogue initiative in the Western Galilee and advances the concept of relational capacity as a mechanism of grassroots peacebuilding in protracted asymmetrical conflict. Drawing on qualitative interviews with twenty-one participants and supplementary descriptive survey data from an additional cohort, the study integrates intergroup contact theory, feminist peace scholarship, and everyday peace frameworks to analyse how sustained dialogue generates relational endurance rather than ideological convergence. The findings suggest that participants develop the capacity to maintain cross-community engagement during periods of political tension, translating interpersonal trust into forms of civic agency. Transnational exposure through a delegation visit further amplifies symbolic legitimacy and internal cohesion. Rather than conceptualising reconciliation as attitudinal harmony, the article proposes that grassroots peacebuilding operates as a layered relational process across micro, meso, and transnational levels. The study contributes a transferable analytical framework for examining women-led dialogue initiatives in other protracted conflicts.