Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Poll Shows Most Palestinians Favor Violence Over Talks
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.
The survey also shows unprecedented support for the shooting of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
The pollster, Khalil Shikaki, said he was shocked because the survey, taken last week, showed greater support for violence than any other he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the shooting of rockets at Israel...
...Three months ago, Mr. Abbas was ahead 56 percent to 37 percent. After Hamas forces pushed Fatah forces out of Gaza last summer, Mr. Shikaki's polls showed the Palestinian public to be disillusioned with Hamas, and in the subsequent months many argued that Mr. Abbas, with the support of Washington and Israel, had an opportunity to win public support by easing living conditions and advancing in negotiations. That has not happened.
According to the poll, of 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of Israel's most prominent centers of religious Zionism and ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank. Mr. Shikaki said that result was the single highest support for an act of violence in his 15 years of polling here. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
On negotiations between Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel, and Mr. Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, 75 percent said they were without benefit and should be terminated. Regarding the thousands of rockets that have been launched on Israeli towns like Sderot and Ashkelon, 64 percent support it...
Shikaki was the controversial pollster who was, apparently until lately, at Brandeis. His polls concerning Hamas's electoral chances were notoriously inaccurate, and between he, the New York Times and the general vagaries of interpreting poll results, I wouldn't be surprised if there was more here than meets the eye, including some attempted political manipulation somewhere along the lines above. Note the subtext in the article: The violence is making things worse, it's really the fault of the horrible settlers like those at the school, so let's just go back to taking hits unanswered.
This ignores the sequence of violence that says that the only reason there are people dead in Gaza is because Gazans won't stop launching rockets. And why does the response enrage the Arabs so badly? Because they are masters at self-manipulation. They have a society based on demagoguery and it's aided and abetted by a foreign press and NGO corp that only notices violence when it's Jews defending themselves.
There is no solution. Surrender by sitting back and allowing your cities to depopulate is not an answer. Sometimes I guess you just have to get used to 84% of the people wanting to kill you.
You know the Palestinians look more and more like perpetrators than the innocent victims that they want the world to think of them as. I personally think it is time for the world to leave Israel alone and let it do what it needs to do to protect it's sovereignty. I personally think that means to roll over all of the Palestinian territory and let the civilians pay the price for supporting and voting for terrorism. Let them be refugees in Arab lands and not Israel's. It is time for the west to stand up and stand united against terrorism and stop trying to be PC. You can't treat them like something they are not: reasonable, rational human beings. They really are a lower form of humanity, not based on religion, race or sex, but on foaming hate. It is high time we rid them from our midst and grant them their martyrdom.
that's a dangerous sentiment. It's very easy for any group of relatively uneducated people to be swept along in a destructive ideology. And as history saw with the Nazis, it can happen to educated people too.
I think polling data like this should be seen in perspective. Yes it tells us that peace making is futile for now and perhaps for another generation, and yes it highlights the fact that the attitudes that perpetuate the conflict go deep into Palestinian society and are not confined the so-called extremists.
But to then show a like disregard for human life is not an appropriate response to that information. Obviously, Israel needs to think about what might bring a peaceful resolution 20 years from now instead of 2 years from now, and start implementing appropriate strategies to that end.
I happen to be a booster of the Olmert government, perhaps the only one. I think they've done more to change the long term outlook than any other Israeli government. And it shows, however marginally, in increasing acceptance of Israel's point of view in places were one would not have expected to see it. But absolutely, part of that long term approach is staying away from overheated and reactionary thinking, such as "roll over all of the ...".
"Obviously, Israel needs to think about what might bring a peaceful resolution 20 years from now instead of 2 years from now, and start implementing appropriate strategies to that end."
Ah, yes! Of course! It's so obvious now that you point it out. Why didn't we think of that before? We could have solved this problem years ago if only Israel had been more forward-looking.
Oh, just one more thing. Is there anything the Arabs should be doing differently?
The Arabs will continue doing what they're doing. You can choose to whine about it or think about how to make progress in spite of it.