Israel Matzav

Most Jews regard Judea and Samaria as liberated - not 'occupied' - and Oslo as a mistake

The Peace Index Project is conducted at the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research and the Evens Program in Mediation and Conflict Resolution of Tel Aviv University, headed by Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Herman. It has been issued monthly since the heyday of Oslo 'peacemaking' efforts. This month, they surveyed Jews separately and those those who run the 'peace index' had a bit of a shock.

While most of the Jews (68%) still support what's called the 'two-state solution,' when you get beyond that basic question, it becomes clear that Israeli Jews have a very different idea than the 'Palestinians' of what a 'two-state solution' means:

About three-quarters do not believe the negotiations will lead to an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and an identical proportion says that even if an agreement is signed it will not, from the Palestinians' standpoint, end the historic conflict with Israel.

This pessimism is apparently what fosters the hard-line positions that most of the Jewish public now takes on central aspects of the conflict and the chances of resolving it. It turns out, for instance, that in retrospect only among Meretz, Labor, and Kadima does a majority say the decision to launch the peace process at the beginning of the 1990s was correct. In the public overall, the number of those who think so (40%) is lower than the percentage of those who believe it was a mistake to enter the peace process that enabled the Oslo accords (47%). We found a similar mindset among those who say that if a peace treaty entails difficult concessions, it's preferable to remain in the existing situation (49%, with 43% preferring an agreement even if its price is difficult concessions).

We were surprised to discover that even though, over the years, the concept of "occupation" has become more common both in the political discourse and the media, [Translation: Even though the leftist media has done its best to brainwash the Israeli public. CiJ] today a majority of the Jewish public defines the West Bank as "liberated territory" (55%) and not as "occupied territory" (32%). This may explain the new popularity of the position (57%) that the Green Line should not be considered the future border between Israel and the Palestinians, and that a new borderline should be established so that most of the settlements will be on the Israeli side and large Israeli Arab communities would move to the Palestinian side (only 23% of the Jewish public currently favors the Green Line as the future border; only among Meretz voters does a majority take the opposite view).

Interestingly, even among those who see the West Bank as "liberated territory" there is a clear majority-albeit small compared to the majority among those who see it as "occupied territory"-of supporters of a two-state solution. Here too the pessimism about the chances of ending the historic conflict with the Palestinians is widespread among both groups, though, as expected, more so among those who view the West Bank as liberated.

Moreover, if a peace agreement is signed on the basis of the two-states-for-two-peoples formula, the majority (65%) would want the border between the two states to be a closed one, without free passage from state to state. [Under current circumstances, that would leave the 'Palestinians' without an economy and - depending on arrangements between Judea and Samaria on the one hand and Gaza on the other - without a port. CiJ] The desire for segregation of the two peoples also emerges in the broad opposition (75.5%) to the idea of a binational state as an alternative solution to the two-state formula.

Finally, a considerable majority (61%) does not believe in Prime Minister Olmert's sincerity when he says he intends to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority by the end of this year. Indeed, only among Labor voters (not even among Kadima voters) does a majority credit the sincerity of his intentions.

...

The telephone interviews were conducted by the B. I. Cohen Institute of Tel Aviv University on March 31 and April 1, 2008, and included 588 interviewees who represent the adult Jewish and Arab population of Israel (including the territories and the kibbutzim). The sampling error for a sample of this size is 4.5%.

You can't fool all of the people all of the time.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:43 PM