Peace Index: September 2004 Survey shows Israeli pessimism regarding effect
of Gaza plan

By Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann 11 October 2004
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/486970.html

The intensifying protest of the settlers and their supporters against the
unilateral disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip has not eroded the broad
and stable support for this move among the Jewish public. The majority
indeed believe that Ariel Sharon will succeed in carrying out the plan,
despite the strong opposition it arouses within his party and among the
settlers and those who identify with them. At the same time, given the
opposition of the radical Right and the harsh statements of their leaders,
many in the public agree that there exists today a danger of civil war in
Israel, and also of the assassination of the prime minister, Ariel Sharon. A
small, but not negligible, minority in fact favor taking measures of civil
rebellion, including the use of weapons, so as to prevent the government
from carrying out its policy.

On the political front, the broad support for holding negotiations with the
Palestinians continues, but at the same time the public is divided between
those who believe there are good chances that such negotiations would lead
to an end of Palestinian-sponsored terror and those who say negotiations
should not be conducted so long as the terror continues, with the latter
opinion slightly in the lead. As for the possibility of stopping the
violence through international intervention, there is - as we have found in
earlier Indexes over the past two years - an erosion in the traditional
opposition to external intervention, with the rate of supporters of
third-party intervention almost identical to the rate of opponents.
Nevertheless, it emerges that the concept of "international intervention"
has a very limited connotation among the Jewish public in terms of the
actors that could serve as a third party. Thus, out of a quite long list of
states and other entities that was presented to the interviewees, only the
intervention of the United States would be welcome, while there is sweeping
rejection of all the other bodies and especially the European countries.

To the question, "Today, do you support or oppose Prime Minister Sharon's
unilateral plan for disengagement from Gaza?," 60.7 percent of the Jewish
interviewees said that they strongly or moderately support the plan, while
30 percent responded that they strongly or moderately oppose it (9.3 percent
did not know). A similar division of responses was found in the previous
months, indicating great stability in positions toward the plan even in the
face of such grave events as the intensified firing of Qassam rockets from
the Gaza Strip (there being some who connect this with the disengagement),
and notwithstanding the intense struggles of the plan's opponents to
delegitimize it. In a party segmentation, this time as well we found that
the plan wins a majority among Likud voters (51.3 percent supporting it
compared to 34.3 percent who oppose it and 12.6 percent who do not know).
Support for the plan is higher among voters for the parties of the Left and
Center (Meretz, 100 percent; Labor, 81.7 percent; Shinui, 79.2 percent),
while in the parties to the right of Likud, the figures are lower: the
National Union, 12.5 percent; Mafdal (the National Religious Party), 13.3
percent; Shas, 35.7 percent. Yet when the interviewees were asked to assess
whether Sharon will succeed in carrying out the plan, it turned out that a
majority of voters for all the large parties believe that he will, including
the National Union (52.5 percent), Mafdal (50.0 percent), and Shas (57.1
percent). In the Jewish public as a whole, the rate of those who believe the
plan will be implemented despite the opposition to it came to 63.4 percent
(29.0 percent think it will not be implemented and 7.65 percent do not
know).

We checked via a series of questions which forms of protest the public
considers acceptable for citizens who believe the government's policy on the
peace issues is harming Israel's national interest. Distinctions were made
between kinds of protest: in the framework of the law (e.g.,organizing mass
petitions or demonstrating with a license), taking measures of nonviolent
civil rebellion (e.g., demonstrating without a license, refusing army
service, not paying taxes), and taking measures of violent civil rebellion
(e.g., forcefully resisting the evacuation of settlements).

A segmentation of the responses shows that, as in the past, there is full
agreement in the Jewish public about the right to protest, so long as it is
legal: 86.3 percent support this right whereas 11.4 percent oppose it and
2.3 percent do not know. It is important to note here that from the
standpoint of democratic theory, broad civil legitimacy for the right of
legal protest is an important indication of the strength of the democratic
regime. As for the illegal methods, only a small minority of 13.5 percent
support protest of this kind on condition that it is nonviolent, and an even
smaller minority of 6.5 percent also support violent forms of protest.

Because the example we used to illustrate the concept of "violent civil
rebellion" (forceful resistance to evacuation of settlements) can be
interpreted in different ways, we added a blunter question, the answer to
which is clear-cut: "Do you agree or disagree with the following sentence:
`There are situations in which there is no choice and one must use even
weapons to prevent the government from carrying out its policy.'" The
responses show that 89.8% of the Jewish public as a whole oppose or
moderately oppose the statement while 7.2% agree with it - a similar
percentage to the rate of support for forceful resistance to evacuating
settlements.

Ostensibly, the findings that were obtained via the set of questions on this
issue are reassuring since they show that the overwhelming majority of the
Jewish public support legal protest only, while opposing illegal forms of
protest especially if they involve violence. There is room, however, for
reservations about this optimistic conclusion in two respects. First, when
the low percentages of support for legal and illegal civil rebellion are
translated into absolute numbers, it becomes clear that a higher potential
exists in terms of the magnitudes of passive or active supporters of such
methods: based on the size of the Jewish population aged 15 and over in
2003, these percentages represent over half a million men and women in
regard to a nonviolent civil rebellion, and close to 300,000 in the case of
a violent civil rebellion. Second, these percentages are slightly higher
than those obtained when the same set of questions was presented in Peace
Index surveys during the past few years, and similar to the rates of support
for illegal forms of protest, including violent forms, in the period that
preceded the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

As expected, the rates of support for civil rebellion are very low among
voters for both the left-wing and right-wing parties, especially in regard
to violent rebellion and the use of weapons. However, in contrast to
expectations, there was no clear pattern of disparities here according to a
Left-Right segmentation. For example, 14.3 percent of the Mafdal voters
support violent protest but not one of them supports the use of weapons.
Only 2.8 percent of Labor voters support violent protest, but 8.5 percent of
those support the use of weapons.

Based on the data on the protest issue, it is no wonder that many among the
Jewish public - 40.0 percent - think there is a very high or moderately high
danger of a civil war in Israel, while a small majority (54.6 percent)
believe this danger is very low or moderately low (5.3 percent do not know).
Also interesting is that the gaps in this regard are not a function of
distinctions between right-wing and left-wing or secular and religious
parties. Thus, among Shas and Labor voters the percentages of those who fear
a civil war are 39.4 percent and 35.7 percent, respectively, with the lowest
rates being found for Mafdal (20.0 percent) and Meretz (33.3 percent) voters
and the highest for Shinui (46.9 percent), Likud (49.9 percent), and
National Union (50.0 percent) voters.

Further pessimism about the effects of the disengagement on the stability of
Israeli democracy is found in the responses to the question: "In your
opinion, does there exist or not exist a danger that in an attempt to
prevent implementation of the disengagement plan, someone will try to
assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?" Similarly to the question about
the possibility of a civil war, here too about 40 percent say there is a
very high or moderately high danger of the prime minister's assassination.
Only about 49 percent believe the danger of this is low or very low, with
the rest (10.4 percent) unable or refusing to say.

Although these findings do not seem very encouraging, there is room for
cautious optimism based on the large gap between the rate of supporters of
the use of weapons and the rate of those fearing a civil war and the
assassination of the prime minister. The anthropological and sociological
literature points to the phenomenon of "pluralistic ignorance," in which
members of a community sometimes tend to ascribe to other members positions
that they themselves reject, while in actuality those members have positions
that are not different from theirs. Hence it is possible - without
minimizing the dangers we are discussing - that in the Israeli public as
well there is a tendency to ascribe to others intentions that many of those
others actually do not hold.

And from domestic matters to the political issue: for a long period, the
Peace Index surveys have consistently shown that even during the Al-Aqsa
Intifada a large majority of the Jewish public have favored negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. That trend continued this
month as well, with 68.6 percent of the Jewish interviewees supporting such
negotiations and 27.1 percent opposing them (3.9 percent had no opinion).
However, it is not at all clear from the responses if the support for
negotiations is conditional or unconditional. To clarify this matter, this
time we presented the following question: "The Israeli government's position
is that negotiations should not be renewed so long as the Palestinian terror
continues. However, some claim there are better chances of stopping the
terror if negotiations with the Palestinian Authority are held. Which of
these views do you agree with more?" It turns out that 50.3 percent agree
that negotiations should not be renewed so long as the terror continues,
compared to 43.1 percent who take the second view (the rest do not have a
position). Thus, the large majority of supporters of negotiations shrank to
a minority, in regard to unconditional negotiations. Given that a renewal of
the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is not on the horizon, we asked whether
the Jewish public is prepared to support a possible international
intervention in an attempt to find a formula for resolving the conflict, as
a number of Israeli politicians and others have proposed. A complementary
question concerns who among the various international actors is acceptable
or unacceptable to the Israeli public. On the basic question of the extent
of support or opposition to international intervention in resolving the
conflict, we found that, as in other Indexes in 2003 and 2004, the Jewish
public is divided here into two camps of almost equal size, with 46.2
percent favoring such a possibility and 49.4 percent opposing it. At the
same time, when we move from the basic question to specific examples of
actors relevant to the issue of international intervention, we find that
from a long list of such actors and bodies only the United States wins the
confidence of most of the public, being acceptable to 73.1 percent and
unacceptable to 24.2 percent, while the majority of the public reject all
the others in the following declining order of rejection: France, 79.3
percent; Saudi Arabia, 72.9 percent; Germany, 71.4 percent; the Scandinavian
countries such as Sweden and Norway, 65.2 percent; Russia, 64.7 percent; the
European Union, 61.7 percent; Egypt, 61.3 percent; the United Nations, 53.1
percent; Britain, 49.8 percent.

These findings point, as in the past, to France's very low status in the
eyes of the Israeli Jewish public, with even Saudi Arabia not being
unacceptable to the same extent. Of course, the public also does not
perceive the other European countries as fair mediators, rejecting them by
higher percentages than Egypt. These are particularly relevant findings in
light of the efforts that these countries, and the European Union as a body,
are making to be more involved in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

The Oslo Index for September was 36.9 (33.4 for the Jewish sample) and the
negotiation Index was 51.6 (49.7 for the Jewish sample).

The Peace Index project is conducted at the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace
Research of Tel Aviv University, headed by Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof.
Tamar Hermann. The telephone interviews were conducted by the B. I. Cohen
Institute of Tel Aviv University from September 26-28 2004, and included 599
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 about 4.5 percent in each direction.