February 1992, Page 26, 84

Public Opinion

US Voters Select Israel as Biggest Peace Obstacle by 41 to 29 Percent

By Kurt Holden

"Israelis are alarmed that their sinking support in the US could hurt their chances of obtaining $10 billion in loan guarantees. . . A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that US voters by 41 percent to 29 percent see Israel rather than the Arabs as the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East." -Reporter Robert S. Greenberger, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 19, 1991

American public opinion has tilted against the Israelis, as recorded above by The Wall Street Journal. It might have tilted even more decisively if Americans had been asked to compare Israelis with "the Palestinians" rather than "the Arabs." In any case, the figures provide the answer to those who wonder what US-sponsored face-to-face Arab-Israeli talks have accomplished.

The arrivals of Palestinian delegates displaying olive sprigs, and of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir displaying a scowl, may have been the most significant events in Madrid. Similarly, two events of the bilateral Washington talks may have left lasting impressions. The first was the week in which Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian and Syrian delegates patiently awaited the arrival of the Israelis. The second was the final, adamant refusal of the Israeli delegates to yield to repeated Palestinian pleas to call in the American and Russian sponsors to break a procedural deadlock so that the talks could move on to substance.

Polls now indicate that Americans are taking another look at the Arab and Israeli protagonists and their positions. The polls leave no doubt that American public opinion will support strongly moves by President George Bush to link aid to Israel to Israeli performance at the peace table and a freeze on Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories.

It may come as a surprise to readers, however, that other polls indicate that a majority of the Israeli public and also of American Jewish leaders also would support such a move.

Israeli Majority Links Settlement Freeze to Peace

Shifts in US public opinion on the Middle East, based as they are upon minimal personal knowledge or involvement, have been glacially slow, but inexorable. By contrast, seemingly mercurial shifts in Israeli public opinion on questions of war or peace with Israel's Arab neighbors are grounded upon deep emotional involvement. Based partly upon stubborn loyalties to parties and personalities whose own positions are anything but fixed, Israeli opinions can be heavily influenced by the wording and timing of the polls, making their political significance difficult for outsiders to fathom. Nevertheless, polls late in 1991 yielded surprising results.

For example, a Gallup Institute telephone poll of 513 Israeli Jewish adults in early December found that 44 percent of respondents favored a Likud government to negotiate peace, with only 11 percent favoring a Labor government and 37 percent favoring other negotiators. An even higher 54 percent believed Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was handling the negotiations well, while only 33 percent disagreed.

Fifty-four percent agreed that there would be no peace without a return of territory.

Astonishingly, however, 54 percent of the respondents to the same poll agreed that there would be no peace without a return of territory, and only 33 percent disagreed.

According to the Israeli daily Hadashot, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 51 percent of the respondents also agreed that with peace negotiations underway, building of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories should be frozen, and only 40 percent disagreed.

Thus, should President George Bush tie further US aid to a freezing of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, he can point out that 51 percent of the Israeli public agrees that his position is reasonable.

American Jewish Leaders More Moderate Than Shamir

A telephone survey of 205 board members of the Council of Jewish Federations and the presidents of local CJF affiliates revealed similar sentiment for linking aid to peace among American Jewish activists. The survey was designed and conducted by Prof. Steven M. Cohen of Queens College and Prof. Seymour Martin Lipset of George Mason University.

The American respondents, two-thirds of whom were male, had a median age of 55 and median household income of more than $200,000. Most contributed $20,000 or more annually to local United Jewish Appeal/Federation campaigns and half had visited Israel seven times or more.

They are described by The Jewish Week of Queens, New York as "major contributors and activists on behalf of Jewish domestic and overseas programs." If the description is apt, the public pronouncements of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who was featured speaker at the CJF general assembly in Baltimore in late November, are far removed from the considerably more conciliatory opinions of his top American supporters.

Results, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.16 percentage points, were announced in late November by David Gordis, who heads the Los Angeles-based University of Judaism's Wilstein Institute, with which Cohen and Lipset are affiliated.

As one might expect from respondents Lipset characterized as "security-oriented doves," they expressed their 99.5 percent agreement with the statement that "Israel's safety will require a very strong military for many years to come." They also recorded 99 percent agreement with the statement that Israel must keep control of Jerusalem as its capital; 97 percent agreement with the statement that "the major obstacle to peace" is Arab refusal to accept the legitimacy of Israel; 84 percent agreement that "Israeli troops must remain stationed as key points in the West Bank to defend Israel against attack by Arab states; 72 percent disagreement with the statement that the US "adequately appreciates Israel's security problems"; and 72 percent agreement that "civilian settlements in the West Bank enhance Israel's security."

Endorsing Land for Peace

The surprises were that 88 percent of these American Jewish leaders endorsed "territorial compromise in the West Bank and Gaza in return for credible guarantees of peace"; 85 percent disagreed with Shamir's insistence that he will return "not one inch" of territory for peace; 79 percent agreed, in the context of a peace agreement, to emergence of a Palestinian state after some years of peaceful self-rule; and 76 percent said continued Israeli rule over 1.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank "threatens to make Israel less democratic, less Jewish, or both."

Other sentiments included 78 percent in favor of freezing West Bank settlements to obtain US loan guarantees and 66 percent in favor of freezing settlements in return for an end to the Arab boycott and the intifada.

Responding to questions on Israeli politics, 74 percent "generally unfavorable" and only 18 percent "generally favorable" to the Gush Emunim Israeli settlers movement, while 54 percent were "generally favorable" and 40 percent "generally unfavorable" to the "Peace Now" movement. If they could vote in Israel, 53 percent would vote for the Labor Party, 22 percent for Likud, and 0.5 percent for religious parties.

Turning to the US role in peace talks, 91 percent agreed that "successful Arab-Israeli peace talks will require continual, active US involvement," and 75 percent agreed that the US should press both sides to show more flexibility. Surprisingly, 53 percent said Bush administration policies were "helpful to Israel," while only 45 percent characterized them as "harmful."

Concerning the Palestine Liberation Organization, 97 percent agreed that "the PLO would destroy Israel if it could." However, 64 percent agreed that the "mainstream PLO leadership realizes that Israel cannot be destroyed." Respondents split on the statement that "American Jews should not publicly criticize the policies of the government of Israel," with 48 percent in agreement and 49 percent in disagreement.

Predictably, the release of the poll on the eve of a visit by Yitzhak Shamir to the US was attacked by his American supporters. Writing in the Washington Jewish Week of Dec. 12, 1991, Nathan Lewin and H. Daniel Roth impugned the objectivity of "Project Nishma," which funded the poll. "Nishma is an organization that supports the surrender of land for peace and a freeze on settlement activity in Israel," they wrote. "Its Israeli members include anti-Likud generals who have publicly stated that Israel's security interests do not require retaining much of the territory it now occupies."

Lewin and Roth maintained that poll questions "were phrased to generate the answers that the sponsors of the poll wanted to hear" and that "respondents were, to a large degree, self-selected."

While the battle continued in the "letters" columns of the Jewish weeklies that reported the poll, the lesson to George Bush and James Baker is obvious. By the end of the Madrid and Washington talks, those who followed them in both the United States and in Israel were ready to concede that, as The New York Times put it in a Dec. 20 editorial criticizing Israeli unwillingness to accept any third party mediation in the peace talks:

"If the impasses continues, it asks too much of President Bush and Secretary Baker merely to wring their hands. . . A well targeted kick would surely be justified to move all parties to the only place where peace can be achieved: the negotiating table."

Kurt Holden is a retired documentary film maker.

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