War and Peace Index - July 2009

Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann

The position of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on the question of the
construction in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, amid the recent tensions with
U.S. governments and Western Europe over their demand to stop the
construction in the neighborhood, as part of the overall demand on Israel to
freeze construction in the territories, wins the support of a clear majority
of the Jewish public. Sixty-six percent endorse Netanyahu’s view that Israel
should continue the construction given that Jerusalem as a whole is Israel’s
capital and there is no controversy over Israel’s right to build anywhere in
the city. Only 27%, the overwhelming majority of them Meretz and Labor
voters, oppose Netanyahu’s position while the rest do not know. The
positions on this question accord with the distribution of the public’s
views on the Netanyahu government’s handling of Israel’s foreign policy in
general: 53% assess it positively while only 33% judge it negatively. A
clear majority of voters for all the parties, with the exceptions of Labor
and Meretz, currently view the government’s foreign policy positively.

The Jewish public’s general and specific support for the government’s policy
on these issues is apparently reinforced, at least in part, by the
continuing tendency to view U.S. president Barack Obama’s policy as more
sympathetic to the Palestinian side. The rate of those holding this opinion
is in fact somewhat lower today than two months ago, when Obama gave his
famous speech to the Arab world at Cairo University. But, still, the rate of
those seeing Obama as leaning more toward the Palestinians remains decidedly
higher than the rate of those who think the opposite, with 46% taking the
former position (compared to 55% in March this year), 31% viewing his stance
as neutral (34% in March), and 7% (in both measurements) assessing it as
more pro-Israeli. Note that the view of Obama as more pro-Palestinian is
prevalent among voters for most of the parties, with only Labor and Meretz
voters tending to characterize him as neutral (though not pro-Israeli).

A similar trend of improvement in Obama’s standing among the Israeli Jewish
public emerges in the answers to the question of whether he can be trusted
to safeguard Israel’s interests in the context of the political moves that
he makes. Two months ago, only 26% responded that they trusted him compared
to 68% who did not trust him to look out for Israel’s interests; today the
rate of those who trust him has risen to 38% while the rate of those who do
not has declined to 60%. Note that on this question no differences were
found in the distribution of the positions of Meretz and Labor voters and of
voters for the rest of the parties; in other words, even among the left-wing
parties the rate of those who do not trust him is higher.

On another issue, in recent months the media has presented testimonies of
soldiers for the Breaking the Silence organization claiming that in
Operation Cast Lead, Palestinian civilians were harmed beyond what was
necessary from an operational standpoint. We again asked in this survey
whether or not these testimonies should be believed. The findings show that
the testimonies have made their mark on a considerable part of the Jewish
public: whereas in March this year only about 20% believed the soldiers’
testimonies while 60% responded that they did not believe them, today we
found an almost even split with 43% believing them and 47% discounting them.
Moreover, in a cross-section of political parties the gaps were not large;
only among Meretz voters was there a certain majority of believers in the
Breaking the Silence testimonies. An analysis by sociodemographic variables
shows a higher rate of believers in the soldiers’ testimonies in the younger
age cohorts, among those with higher education and income, and among
third-generation Israelis and Ashkenazim. Religiosity and gender did not
emerge as influential variables on this question.

At the same time, on the question of whether, in light of these testimonies,
the course of events in Operation Cast Lead should be reinvestigated or,
instead, the investigations already conducted should suffice, an
overwhelming majority (76%) sees no need to resume the investigations (only
17% favor reinvestigating and the rest have no position). Here too, Meretz
voters are the only exceptions with most of them supporting a
reinvestigation in light of the soldiers’ testimonies. But for the rest of
the sociodemographic variables that turned out to have influence on the
question of belief in the soldiers’ testimonies, there was no significant
influence on the question of the need to reinvestigate.

The prevailing inclination to avoid dealing further with ethical issues in
Operation Cast Lead can be explained, at least in part, in terms of the
Jewish public’s positive assessment of the campaign’s results. Seventy-one
percent think the quiet currently prevailing in the south stems mainly from
Cast Lead, and an even higher rate (79%) assess the operation overall as
moderately successful or very successful. It appears, then, that because of
this view that the operation succeeded, the Israeli Jewish public is
reluctant to deal with the question of its moral and human cost.

Negotiations index:
General sample: 52.3
Jewish sample: 48.9

The War and Peace Index is funded by the Evens Program in Mediation and
Conflict Resolution of Tel Aviv University. The telephone interviews were
conducted by the B. I. Cohen Institute of Tel Aviv University on July 27-
28, 2009 and included 512 interviewees who represent the adult population of
Israel (including the territories and the kibbutzim). The sampling error for
a sample of this size is 4.5%.