Details from poll of Palestinian Arabs are not encouraging

The full results from the TIP poll reported on last week have been released. 

For a lot of the questions, Palestinian Arabs show little enthusiasm. For example, while most support a unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN, most only "somewhat" support it.

They generally tend to be against sharia law as the main source for legislation, but feel Turkey is too secular.

They are not thrilled with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Bashar Assad, and Hamas support is tepid at best. But their nostalgia for terrorists of the past is very high, saying they have very warm feelings towards Yasir Arafat, Abu Jihad and Dalal Mughrabi. The lowest marks in that question went to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel, Jews, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and Shimon Peres.

Only19% felt good about a two state solution with a Jewish state and Arab state living side by side, while 59% liked the idea of one Arab state instead.

They support unity between Hamas and Fatah, even with the opinion that it would make peace less likely.

They tend to believe that the "nakba day" incidents in the Golan were not staged by Assad, but legitimately showed Palestinian Arab desire to "return."

While they say that peace with Israel is possible, most do not believe that Israel will exist in 25 years with a Jewish majority.

As previously reported, 67% of those who expressed an opinion stated that "The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state."

Given the choice of these pairs of statements:

Israel has a permanent right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people - 7%
Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state - 84%

I can accept permanently a two-state solution with one a homeland for the Palestinian people living side-by-side with Israel, a homeland for the Jewish people. - 30%
The real goal should to start with a two state solution but then move to it all being one Palestinian state - 66%

Homosexuality should be punished by law - 82%
Homosexuality should not be punished by law - 14%

A plurality, but not a majority, thought the massacre in Itamar was wrong.

A majority agree with naming streets after suicide bombers.

A majority support teaching songs in school about hating the Jews.

79% of those who expressed an opinion say it is right to deny that Jews have a long history in Jerusalem going back thousands of years, while 90% thought it was wrong to deny that "Palestinians" have an equally long history in Jerusalem.

89% oppose a Palestinian Arab state being demilitarized.

A majority oppose releasing Gilad Shalit, and a majority support his kidnapping.

"President Obama said there should be two states: Palestine as the homeland for the
Palestinian people and Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Do you accept or reject
that concept?" 61% rejected it.

92% say Jerusalem should be capital of "Palestine" only;only3% say it should be capital for both states.

A plurality thought that a third intifada (which most oppose) would be violent.

73% believe this statement from the Hamas Covenant:: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."


80% believe this statement from the Hamas Covenant: "For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah's victory prevails. "

62% believe in this Hamas statement as well: "When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad becomes a duty binding on all Muslims. In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad. We must spread the spirit of Jihad among the (Islamic) Umma, clash with the enemies and join the ranks of the Jihad fighters."

Some of their other answers seem to indicate an aversion to armed attacks and a desire for peace, but this desire is only when they think that there is no choice. The answers indicate that in their ideal world, there would never be compromise and Jews should have no political rights in the Middle East.

The corollary is that as long as they believe that Israel is strong, they are more likely to seek peace (or, more accurately, detente); if they believe that Israel will not exist for long, they are more likely to keep waiting for it to weaken rather than make peace now.

While they do not come off as supporting terrorism as much as in other previous polls, they also are shown to have very little desire to accommodate living alongside Israel if they believe that there is any other option.

Which means that the best kind of peace possible is one where Israel is unquestioningly strong and understood that it will not collapse. The belief that terror, or politics, might weaken Israel is the very formula to ensure that peace will never happen. Every Israeli concession that is perceived as a defeat pushes peace that much further away.

This is an extraordinarily important poll, one that goes way beyond others in ferreting out the true feelings that Palestinian Arabs have. It should be required reading by every politician, pundit and journalist who want to know the truth about how Palestinian Arabs think, rather than believing the pre-digested lies that are presented by those with an agenda.