Polling for peace

A few weeks ago, Glenn Greenwald argued that

Underscoring that point rather vividly is the issue of negotiations with Hamas. Needless to say, isolating the democratically elected Hamas government and childishly pretending that they don’t exist is a central prong of the Bush administration’s policy, and few American politicians could ever get away with advocating that Israel attempt diplomatically to negotiate its conflicts with Hamas. Cascades of “anti-Israel,” “soft-on-Terrorists” and other related accusations would pour down on any person suggesting such a thing.But a new poll of actual Israelis — the people who have to live with the consequences of their choices as opposed to those who can beat their neoconservative, protected chests from a safe distance — reveals:

Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit. Less than one-third (28 percent) still opposes such talks.

Leaving aside the hyperbole, which, in Greenwald’s case, is most of what he’s written, he’s arguing that since a majority of Israelis support negotiations with Hamas, the United States ought to consider the same thing. I had thought that the polling was specific to the issue of freeing Gilad Shalit, but apparently it may have been more general.

Still, Fugitive Peace points out in Hands up if you want to talk to Hamas that results of a poll are often dependent on what choices are presented to the interviewee.

In the poll cited by Greenwald no alternatives were presented by the pollster.

Three weeks ago Ha’aretz’s pollster, Camil Fuchs, published a poll showing that 64% of Israelis favour holding talks with Hamas in order to get a ceasefire and release Gilad Shalit, the captured soldier. Today the Tami Steinmetz Centre has issued the latest monthly Peace Index. It says that only 25% of Israelis and just 17% of Israeli Jews favour negotiating with Hamas.Puzzled? So was I. I reported on the Ha’aretz poll a couple of weeks ago as evidence that Israeli opinion is shifting towards talks with Hamas. So I called Ephraim Yaar of the Steinmetz Centre for an explanation, and it turns out to be simple.

The Ha’aretz poll asked people if they supported talks with Hamas: yes or no. The Steinmetz poll asked them the best way for Israel to deal with the Qassam rockets from Gaza: (1) talks with Hamas; (2) a relatively restrained military response (though Israel’s idea of “restrained”, I should point out, still means several Palestinians killed every week); (3) a bigger but still limited response (ie, like the ground incursion that killed 110 people or so earlier this month); (4) a massive ground operation to reoccupy Gaza; (5) another option of your choice; (6) don’t know.

Leaving aside the snark, it’s pretty clear that when Israelis are presented with the choice of actually fighting their enemies instead of talking with them, most Israelis would prefer to fight back.

Israeli, Israel Matzav find the polls results heartening..

A new poll of Palestinians finds that most of them support Hamas and terror.

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.

And what might the reasons for these results be?

“There is real reason to be concerned,” Mr. Shikaki said in an interview at his West Bank office. His Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which conducts a survey every three months, is widely viewed as among the few independent and reliable gauges of Palestinian public opinion.His explanation for the shift, one widely reflected in the Palestinian media, is that recent actions by Israel, especially attacks on Gaza that killed nearly 130 people, an undercover operation in Bethlehem that killed four militants and the announced expansion of several West Bank settlements, have led to despair and rage among average Palestinians who thirst for revenge.

Except as Mere Rhetoric points out, the poll results were already showing this before Israel started to defend itself.

Unlike the Israeli poll showing that Israel wants it government to fight back, this is a poll that supports blatant terror attacks, like the one at Merkaz Harav.

Elder of Ziyon adds:

The PCPSR is somewhat disingenuous as well. The last time that they even asked in a poll if the respondents supported attacks against Israeli civilians inside the Green Line was September, 2006, when 57% supported and 40% opposed. So while the number that supported this specific attack is higher, that could just as easily mean that while the people polled are against terror in the abstract but support it in reality. Either way, a convincing majority of Palestinian Arabs have consistently supported terror against civilians, over decades. For the pollster to say that he hasn’t seen such support for a specific terror attack before indicates more that he hasn’t asked.In 2001 and 2002, between 52% and 58% supported terror attacks against civilians inside the Green Line and over 90% supported terror attacks against civilians in the territories. Even before the intifada, 52% supported terror attacks versus 43% opposed.

These are the real facts, that the NYT is downplaying and the PCPRS is willingly ignoring: the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs want to see Jews killed, on both sides of the Green Line, and they have always felt that way.

What motivates the Palestinians is not a failure of the peace process to accomplish anything, but rather a hatred of Jews. The Palestinian leadership – even “moderate” Fatah reliably reflects this reality. Talking won’t work.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.