I regularly watch the very good work the Steve Kull and his team do at the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland — and just a few moments ago I got an attention-getting email from his team on Israeli political attitudes.
Kull has done some excellent work lately presented at the New America Foundation both on attitudes inside Iran and also among Americans about Israel/Palestine issues.
Others will have to deal with the research, but the headline is that despite what seems to me to be right-tilting, anti-peace deal trends in Israel, PIPA argues that 3 in 5 Israelis support settlement dismantlement in exchange for a Palestine peace deal.
Here is the intro to the piece:
Israeli Public’s Support for Dismantling Most Settlements Has Risen to a Five-Year High
By Alvin Richman
A survey of the Israeli general public and Israeli settlers taken in early March shows three-fifths of the Israeli public (60%) support “dismantling most of the settlements in the territories as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.” This is eleven points higher than the previous reading (49%) taken in December, 2009, and is the highest level recorded since 2005, during the debate over evacuating the Gaza Strip. Just one-third of the Israeli public (33%) opposes dismantling most settlements, including 13 percent very strongly opposed. This is the lowest level of strong opposition to dismantling settlements recorded by the Truman Institute for the 26 surveys in which this question has been asked since 2001. The survey was conducted by the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In contrast to the views of the Israeli public, among Israeli settlers a large majority (69%) oppose dismantling most West Bank settlements. Moreover, a majority of settlers believe most of the Israeli general public shares its opposition to dismantling settlements. This is but one of several major misperceptions regarding the settlements issue revealed by the latest Truman Institute survey.
I tend to be skeptical of surveys and polling — but it probably is a mistake to write off the large number of Israel citizens who do not subscribe to the rejectionist policies of their leaders at the moment.
— Steve Clemons
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