Support for Palestinian state very low among Israeli Jews – survey

More supported sovereignty (36%) over the disputed territory than creating a Palestinian state there (33%).

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A December survey on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict shows that a large majority of Israeli Jews are against creating a Palestinian state and do not believe that a solution is possible in the foreseeable future.

The poll, commissioned by Tel Aviv University’s International Program in Conflict Resolution and Mediation, revealed that more Jewish citizens (36%) supported the idea of declaring Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria with limited rights for Palestinian residents, than backed a Palestinian state there (33%). An overwhelming majority, 78%, oppose a binational state, with over half (54%) saying they are “absolutely against” it.

While a large majority of the Arab Israelis (64%) supported the creation of a Palestinian state, exactly half polled said they would also be in favor of a binational state. Perhaps surprisingly, almost a fifth, 19%, said they would agree to Israeli sovereignty in the region, and the same percentage answered that they did not know.

At the end of the day, these standard solutions to the century-old conflict are all in the realm of theory for both sectors.

Asked if they believe that they are for or against peace negotiations, Israeli Jews said they’re for talks by a 53% – 41% majority. This would accord with their feelings regarding the continuation of the status quo, which only 37% support and 52% oppose. A whopping 73% – 9% of Arabs backed negotiations, with only 19% in favor of continuing the status quo.

But when asked if they thought such talks would lead to peace in the coming years, over three quarters of the Jews (78%) said “no,” while in the Arab sector it was pretty evenly split between those who were optimistic (44%) and pessimistic (41%). A solid majority of Jews (58%) concluded that continuing the status quo was what would happen instead, with 28% of their Arab counterparts agreeing. An optimistic 31% of Arabs said a Palestinian state would be created anyway, but only 13% of the Jews thought so.

There was much more agreement between the sectors when it came to combatting Jew-on-Arab violence in Judea and Samaria, with large majorities saying that intelligence efforts and preventative action should be taken to stop it and that those who commit such crimes should be arrested and tried for their actions.

Protecting Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria did not evoke such consensus, however. While fully three-quarters of the Jewish respondents said that more security should be provided to safeguard them from Palestinian terrorism, only 38% of the Arab Israelis agreed.

On the other hand, there was almost wall-to-wall agreement between the sectors as to the necessity to fight crime in the Arab population, with the only real disparity coming over whether to have the Shabak help the police. Even there, while 92% of Jews agreed to this step, 67% of the Arabs supported it as well, which reflected the grave view the Arab sector has of the current situation in their population centers.

The survey polled 1,113 adult respondents, divided between 511 Jews and 602 Arabs. The maximum sampling error was +/- 4.1%.