Israeli Polls Indicate Why Netanyahu Moving Toward Center

By Ella Bancroft

In case you were wondering why Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu suddenly seems to be moving slowly but inexorably away from the hard-line Likudist platform on which he was elected last May, the answers may be in the polls. A poll of 504 Israelis by the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot on Jan. 16, one day after Netanyahu reached agreement with Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on the withdrawal of Israeli forces from four-fifths of Hebron, showed 67 percent of respondents were “satisfied” with the signing of the Hebron accord, already being called “Oslo III,” and only 25 percent were not. A slightly less overwhelming majority of 56 percent said Israel needs to continue withdrawing from the West Bank.

The poll was very good news for Netanyahu. Less than a month earlier, on Dec. 20, a poll by the same newspaper showed 68 percent of Israelis were unhappy with the Netanyahu’s government’s decision-making progress. At that time 58 percent of the 504 Israelis polled said Netanyahu was doing a poor job, and 23 percent said they regretted voting for Netanyahu in Israeli elections last May 31.

The figures were consistent with a poll taken after the violence that followed the opening of a tunnel from the Western Wall into the Muslim and Christian quarters of Jerusalem last September. In that poll 79.8 percent of the Israeli public favored the implementation of the Oslo accords.

Palestinians Still Support Peace Process

After the tunnel violence, polls between Sept. 26 and Oct. 17 among 1,233 Palestinians 18 years or older in the West Bank and Gaza showed similar strong support (70 percent) for the peace process. However, opposition to the peace process had risen from 12 percent in June 1996 to 25 percent in the September-October poll.

Despite the very high approval rating of the process, however, only 51 percent of the Palestinians surveyed expected it to lead to establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza in coming years, and only 11 percent think that the peace process has had positive effects on Palestinian economic performance.

The poll of Palestinians was conducted by the Center for Palestine Research and Studies (CPRS) in Nablus. CPRS receives U.S. government support through the International Republican Institute, which also releases the findings of its monthly polls in the United States.

Two-Thirds of Israeli Students Oppose Equal Rights for Israeli Arabs

In a much earlier poll of 3,700 Jewish and Arab high school students conducted in 1994 by the Carmel Center for Social Research for the Israeli Education Ministry and reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in late 1996, there was shocking news for Israeli human rights activists, but good news for Israel’s extreme nationalists.

Two-thirds of the young Israelis surveyed said they do not believe Arabs should be given equal rights in the Jewish state. Since about one-fifth of the respondents presumably were Arabs, this indicates an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jewish secondary school students actively support discrimination in the Jewish state.

In the same survey, about 50 percent of the Jewish respondents said they were willing to serve in combat units in the army, compared with 63 percent in 1988. Willingness to serve was markedly higher among religiously oriented Israeli youths than among secular youths. Almost 90 percent from religious kibbutzim were willing to serve in combat units, followed by 85 percent from Jewish settlements and 68 percent from religious seminaries.

Forty-three percent of the Jewish youths polled said Israeli Arabs should be allowed to serve in the Israeli army. (The only Israeli Arabs allowed to serve in the Israel Defense Forces at present are Druze volunteers, many of whom are border guards, and bedouin, some of whom are used as trackers by the Israeli army.) Surprisingly, some 75 percent of Israeli Arabs polled said they were ready to participate in some kind of national service.