Peace Accord Delays Cost Rabin, Arafat Support

Delayed implementation of the peace accords signed last Sept. 13 lost public support among both Palestinians and Israelis for the accords, for Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's government, and for PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

A poll released by the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University showed that Israeli public support for the Labor party had dropped precipitately from the 34.6 percent of the vote it won in the June 1992 elections to 25.9 percent by the end of 1993. However, Likud, bitterly divided over the leadership of Benyamin Netanyahu, had not picked up all of the difference. Likud got 24.9 percent of the vote in June 1992, but had increased its support to only 29.8 percent by December 1993, according to the Bar Ilan survey.

By April 1994, however, Israeli public opinion support for Likud leader Netanyahu clearly exceeded support for Rabin. The approval rating for the Rabin coalition government also was sinking. In one poll released in April the Rabin government's approval rating sank to 41 percent, an all-time low.

Among 1,978 Palestinians surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza, 86.1 percent said they had reservations about how the PLO was handling the talks after the Feb. 25 massacre of at least 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron's Ibrahimi mosque by Israeli settler Dr. Baruch Goldstein. The Nablus based Center for Palestinian Research Studies said on March 27 that most Palestinians reported they were flatly opposed to the PLO's decision to continue negotiating before resolving the issue of Jewish settlements in Hebron and throughout the occupied territories.

The Greatest Threat to Peace

Respondents to similarly-worded poll questions in the United States, Japan, Germany and Britain showed widely different perceptions about current threats to world peace. In the U.S. and Britain, respondents said the Middle East poses the greatest threat. In Germany, respondents said the former Soviet bloc nations were the greatest threat. But in Japan, 21 percent of respondents said Russia "poses the greatest threat to world peace," and 22 percent said the United States was the greatest threat.

More than 1,000 people were surveyed in each of the four countries by The New York Times, Asahi Shimbun, Der Spiegel, and the Guardian. In assessing Russia, Germans and Japanese were more distrustful than were Americans. While 64 percent of Americans said they felt "not much" trust of Russia, or did not trust it "at all," 77 percent of Germans and 80 percent of Japanese expressed the same suspicions of Russia.

Israel High on U.S. Jewish Agenda

A confidential survey mailed to the households of 3,900 members of the National Jewish Democratic Committee showed Israel/Middle East still very high on the list of respondent concerns. Eighty-one percent said "Israel/Middle East" was -very important," 63 percent listed "foreign policy" as very important, only 26 percent considered freeing convicted spy Jonathan Pollard very important, and a "vast majority" supported the Israeli/PLO peace accord signed last Sept. 13, according to the Washington Jewish Week of March 17.

The survey, which elicited responses from 23 percent of those contacted, indicated a general endorsement of the current Democratic administration, according to NJDC chairman Monte Friedkin. He noted that "75 percent of the respondents said they believe the country is heading in the right direction."

The top 10 issues ranked as "very important" by respondents were: education, 86 percent; Israel/Middle East, 81 percent; health, 81 percent; crime, 78 percent; anti-Semitism, 78 percent; economic policies, 69 percent; human rights, 67 percent; opposing the religious right, 67 percent; civil rights, 65 percent; foreign policy 63 percent.