War and Peace Index - September 2009

Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann

The international and regional debate on the report of the Goldstone
Commission has
apparently drawn the attention of the Israeli Jewish public while attracting
that of the
Israeli Arab public much less. Sixty-one percent of the Jewish interviewees-
compared to only 22% of the Arabs-answered that they know what the report's
main
conclusion is. Among the Jewish interviewees who responded that they are
aware of
the report's main conclusion, there is almost total unanimity (93.5%), that
the report
was biased against the IDF. Along with this is widespread opposition of 79%,
cutting
across the political parties, to the Goldstone Report's claim that during
Operation Cast
Lead the IDF committed war crimes. Not surprisingly, in the Arab public only
5%
opposed this claim of the commission.

Unlike the consensus about the content of the report, the Jewish public is
divided on
whether the Israeli government's decision not to cooperate with the
Goldstone
Commission was justified or unjustified: 46% think the decision was
justified, 20%
that it was unjustified, apparently believing that cooperation with the
commission
could have softened its harsh conclusions against the IDF, and 34% do not
know. An
analysis of the answers to this question by Knesset voting in the last
elections shows
that only Meretz voters are evenly split between those who think the
decision not to
cooperate with the commission was justified and those who think it was
unjustified.
Among the Jewish voters for all the other parties, the majority justifies
the
noncooperation. In the Arab public, which, as noted, shows only scant
interest in the
commission and its findings, only 6% think the decision was justified, 22%
say it was
unjustified, and the overwhelming majority-about 70%-have no opinion on the
matter.

Another issue on the public agenda this month was the videotape of Gilad
Shalit that
Hamas transferred to Israel. We wanted to know how the public views the
significance of this transfer in terms of the chances of advancing the
negotiations for
Shalit's release. The findings reveal that the majority of the Jewish public
(50%)
thinks the transfer neither increases nor decreases the chances of his
release, though
37% think it increases them and 4% that it decreases them. In the Arab
public the
prevailing opinion, 49%, is more optimistic-that the transfer of the video
raises the
chances of his release. Twelve percent of the Arab interviewees think it
decreases
them, and about one-fourth do not think the transfer affects the chances of
a release
one way or the other.

As to the question of whether Hamas can or cannot be a side to negotiations
on a
peace agreement with the Palestinians, a clear majority of the Jewish public
(71%)
says no, while a 53% majority of the Arab public says yes. Is there a
connection
between overall view of Hamas and positions on the significance of the
transfer of the
Shalit video? It appears that in the Jewish public, among those who would
accept
Hamas participation in the peace negotiations, there is-and not
surprisingly-a
larger degree of optimism about the significance of the video's transfer,
with the
majority (49%) assessing that the chances of Gilad's release have grown and
41%
saying they have not changed, while among those opposing Hamas participation
in
the negotiations, only 32% think the chances for his release have grown
whereas the
majority-55%-do not believe they have changed.

As for the political issue standing at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict,
namely, support or opposition to a peace agreement based on the principle of
"two
states for two peoples," here too it appears that the distribution of views
among the
Jewish public is quite clear : the majority, about two-thirds (64%), favor
the principle
compared to a third who oppose it. At the same time, it appears that a
majority of the
Jewish public (60%), think continued building in the settlements does not
reduce the
chances of reaching the two-state solution and is not concerned that
continued
building will lead in practice to the situation of a binational state, with
only one-third
concerned about such an outcome. A cross-checking of the answers to the two
questions-on agreement with the two-state idea and on continued construction
in the
settlements-shows that among both the supporters and the opponents of the
two?"
state formula, a majority thinks continued construction in the settlements
will not
ultimately detract from the realization of the two-state solution;
nonetheless, the
position on the first question influences the assessment on the second
question. That
is, while among the two-state supporters only 54% are not concerned about
continued
building, among the two-state opponents a large majority of 72% are not
concerned
about the effects of continued building in the settlements.

Negotiation index:
General sample: 51.4; Jewish sample: 47.8

The War and Peace Index is funded by the Evans Program for Conflict
Resolution Research of
Tel Aviv University. The telephone interviews were conducted by the B. I.
Cohen Institute of Tel
Aviv University on 12-13 October 2009, and included 514 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%.