Peace Moves Help Israeli and Palestinian, But Not U.S., Leaders

By Nathan Jones

Moves toward peace in the Middle East seem to be helping the Israeli and Palestinian leaders involved, but not President Bill Clinton or the U.S. Congress, according to public opinion polls.

Instead of promising King Hussein of Jordan a billion dollars in debt forgiveness and military aid and promising Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin that Israel's 1994 level of $4.3 billion in grants and $2 billion in loan guarantees would be maintained in 1995, as will Egypt's annual $2.1 billion in U.S. aid for keeping the peace with Israel, and as will Palestine's new $78 million annual stipend for making peace with Israel, the Democratic administration and incumbent members of Congress might better just have mailed every American a tax refund.

The $9.5 billion grant and loan total for Israel and its neighbors in 1995, if divided among 260 million Americans, would come to $37 a person, or $185 for a family of five. This brings the annual cost to U.S. taxpayers of security for Israel's five million citizens to $1,900 for each Israeli citizen, or $9,500 for each Israeli family of five.

All this may help explain why the U.S.-funded peace process is increasingly popular with the Middle Eastern leaders directly affected, but so far leaves the taxpaying American public relatively indifferent. President Bill Clinton's approval rating is stuck in the 42 to 43 percent range, with respondents giving him the lowest ratings on foreign policy. Nor were the emotional scenes televised from the joint appearance of King Hussein and Prime Minister Rabin before a joint session of the U.S. Congress likely to change the negatives consistently recorded in polls of the American public's evaluation of that institution and its members.

A Washington Post-ABC news poll announced July 3 indicated that 6 of 10 respondents disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job. Only 35 percent are inclined to re-elect their incumbent representative, while 54 want to look for someone else. These low figures for Congress, however, are not unusual. In 19 surveys over the previous five years, the Washington Post reports, the average score for Congress has been 33 percent approval and 62 percent disapproval, making the current figures slightly more positive than normal.

Moderation in Israel

Meanwhile, in Israel, members of the Labor-dominated government coalition, formed with a razor-thin majority after the June 1992 election, are improving their popular standings by taking U.S.-funded "risks for peace." A Haifa University opinion poll published June 25 in Israel indicated 29 percent of respondents support Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 14 percent support Likud Party leader Benyamin Netanyahu, 8 percent support Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and 4 percent support former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. That's 37 percent combined support for the two Labor party officials most closely identified with the peace moves, and only 18 percent combined support for the two Likud party leaders most critical of the peace agreements.

Other Israeli polls showed mixed feelings among the Israeli public. A poll published July 15 showed 63 percent of Israelis in favor of soldiers halting violence against Palestinians by Jewish West Bank settlers, with 35 percent opposed to soldiers halting the violence. Some 58 percent of Israeli respondents also said soldiers should stop Jewish settlers from illegally occupying empty houses in the West Bank, while 40 percent were against such military intervention.

Militancy in Israel

A Gallup poll of 605 Hebrew-speaking adults carried out on May 31 indicates, however, that Israeli Labor party leaders cannot become complacent about Israeli public support for peace moves, since widespread contrary public attitudes persist. The poll was commissioned by Tzedek-Tzedek, the Jewish Civil Liberties Center, to support its petition to the High Court of Jerusalem demanding that police begin a criminal investigation of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The poll, announced July 2, found that 65.8 percent of Israeli voters believe senior PLO officials should be put on trial, even though it might harm the peace process. Only 21.3 percent responded that PLO officials should not be put on trial, 8.8 percent said they didn't know, and 4.1 percent declined to answer.

Broken down by party, 82 percent of Likud voters favored trying PLO officials, as did 76.7 percent of Tsomet voters, 66.7 percent of Shas voters, and almost 60 percent of Labor voters. Only voters from Meretz, the peace party represented in the current Israeli cabinet, produced a majority against trials of Israel's wartime Palestinian opponents, with 53.7 percent of Meretz voters responding that they did not favor trying PLO officials.

The hawkish results may have been influenced by this wording of the three-sentence question: "There are those who claim that senior PLO officials, such as Arafat and others who are suspected of murdering Israelis, should not be put on trial because such an action would probably damage the peace process. There are others who claim that everyone is equal before the law and therefore suspected PLO officials should be investigated and put on trial. Which claim do you support?"

An unrelated poll conducted in early June found that among Israelis, 52 percent of adults and 46 percent of Jewish youths knew that Druze serve in the Israeli army. The Druze, Arab adherents of a sect that split from mainstream Islam centuries ago, are not subject to the draft, but are accepted as volunteers in the Israeli army. With the exception of some Bedouin, Muslim and Christian Palestinians living within Israel's "Green Line" (pre-1967) borders receive Israeli citizenship but do not serve in the Israeli army. Muslim and Christian Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza (meaning occupied areas outside Israel's pre-1967 borders) do not have Israeli citizenship and do not serve in Israeli military forces.

Palestinian Support for Accords Rising

The Cairo accord that made possible the arrival of Palestinian police and Yasser Arafat in Gaza and Jericho this summer produced a rapid reversal among Palestinians throughout Israeli-occupied territories of the steadily waning support that had replaced initial euphoria at signing of the PLO-Israeli agreement in September 1993. The new upsurge in support was announced in late June bythe Center for Palestine Research and Studies (CPRS) in the West Bank town of Nablus, based upon May 31 face-to-face interviews of 1,974 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Cairo accords, implementing the Oslo agreement, were supported by 69 percent of Palestinians in Gaza and 51 percent of Palestinians outside Gaza, for an overall average of 57 percent. Surveys had indicated less than 50 percent support for the accords in the immediately preceding months.

The demand for political elections to choose Palestinian national leaders had climbed to 80 percent in the same survey. Further, responses indicated that Arafat's mainstream Fatah would reap 52 percent of the vote in such political elections in Gaza, the first time Fatah had the support of an outright majority since the polls began in September 1993. Support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Islamic independents in political, as opposed to municipal, elections totaled only 19 percent in Gaza.

However, fewer than 37 percent of respondents to the poll indicated they supported all or most of the appointments to the interim Palestinian National Authority. More than 66 percent of respondents nevertheless indicated that they were optimistic, or somewhat optimistic, about the future.

Asked to list their concerns, 86 percent of the Palestinian respondents listed employment and their standard of living as being very important, 66 listed worry about political chaos, 55 percent were very concerned about police repression, 45 percent were worried about competition from returning Palestinians, and 41 percent were worried about reduced women's rights.

Serbians Defiant Over Bosnia

A U.S. government survey of public opinion taken in Serbia before announcement of the international "take it or leave it" peace plan for Bosnia revealed considerable support for the defiant stand of the Serbs of Bosnia. Based on interviews with 1,600 people in late May and early June, 8 of 10 Serbians said their government should support the Bosnian Serbs "at all costs," including the use of military force to help the Bosnian Serbs seize the three Muslim enclaves in eastern Bosnia.

Ninety percent of the respondents said a lasting peace is impossible so long as the Muslim-led government continues to hold those enclaves. Two-thirds of respondents said Bosnian Serbs either should hold on to the 70 percent of Bosnia they already control, or try to seize even more Bosnian territory. Only 32 percent of the Serbian respondents favored giving up some territory for peace.

The same survey showed that 84 percent of Serbians said they could withstand United Nations sanctions at least through the end of 1994, and almost as many claimed that Serbia's economic situation had improved during the past year.

A different survey conducted by the Belgrade weekly Telegraf showed 45 percent of Serbians confident that Bosnian Serbs can beat the combined forces of NATO and the Muslim and Croat forces of the Bosnian government. Only 27 percent doubted the Serbs would win. The same survey, anounced at the end of July, showed Serbians divided almost equally over the five- power peace plan, with 40.8 percent saying Bosnian Serbs should reject it, and 39.2 percent saying they should accept it.

Redoing a Holocaust Poll in the U.S.

A 1992 poll conducted for the American Jewish Committee seemed to indicate that one in five Americans doubted that the Jewish Holocaust in Europe had actually occurred. This year the American Jewish Committee reworded the question on the same subject. When asked of Americans in March by Roper Starch Worldwide Inc., the new wording produced a very different result.

The question asked in 1994 was: "Does it seem possible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened, or do you feel certain that it happened?" With that wording, 91 percent of respondents said they were certain it had happened, 1 percent said it was possible it never happened, and 8 percent were not sure.

The difference resulted from the construction of the 1992 question, which apparently confused respondents. They were asked: "Does it seem possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?" Answers in 1992 to that question indicated that 65 percent believed it impossible that the Holocaust never happened, 22 percent believed it possibly never happened, and 12 percent were not sure. What a difference a word makes.

Confusion Is Universal

A July Gallup poll in the United States serves to remind readers that no one anywhere has a monopoly on ignorance or confusion. Eight of 10 American respondents told poll takers that they were Christian. However, only 4 of 10 respondents to the same poll knew who gave the Sermon on the Mount.

Nathan Jones is a free-lance political writer based in Washington DC.