Posted by
Cary Wesberry on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 6:57:09 PM
A clear majority - 71 percent - said Israel should not accept Hamas's offer to stop the fire in return for Israel ceasing its attacks in Gaza and its pursuit of Hamas leaders.
Although the public did not overwhelmingly favor any one approach, the clear winner was a military operation. Whereas only 4% supported the ongoing policy of restraint and 17% favored negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas, about one-quarter (26%) called for reoccupying Gaza and staying there for an unlimited time, while one-third wanted a limited military operation in Gaza after which the IDF would depart.
Asked whether they favored establishing a national unity government or relying on the current government, a majority of 51% responded that a national unity government was preferable while 30% were prepared to rely on the current one. Compared to previous occasions when this question was posed over the years, the present rate of supporters of a national unity government is among the lowest.
Recently a persistent question has been whether Israel's response to the ongoing missile attacks is related to the fact that those on the receiving end are peripheral communities of the South.
It turns out that a majority - 56% - indeed thinks the government fails to assign supreme urgency to tending to these communities' security problems because of their remoteness from the central region, and would not practice restraint to the same extent if the center of the country was under attack. Only a minority of 37% disagreed.
However, the public also showed self-criticism on this issue: 51% assented that the citizenry was less interested in the southern residents' security problems because of their remoteness from the center while 42% dissented.
At the same time, only 38% thought that the residents of "the state of Tel Aviv" - a term some in the media use to describe those in the center of the country - do not identify with the southern residents' suffering and 64% rejected the claim that people in central Israel were less patriotic than those in other parts of the country.
A majority of 55% denied that the residents of the Center were not interested in the suffering of the South, while 38% said they were. An even larger majority, of 64% rejected the claim that those in "the state of Tel Aviv" were less patriotic than those in other parts of the country.
Finally, it appears that the ongoing missile fire on Israel has not affected the "national fortitude." A majority of 55% said the rocket attacks had not affected their desire to keep living in Israel, one-quarter said they only strengthened that desire, while for 18% the attacks increased their desire to live elsewhere.
The Peace Index Project was conducted at the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research and the Evens Program in Mediation and Conflict Resolution of Tel Aviv University, headed by Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann.
The telephone interviews were conducted by the B. I. Cohen Institute of Tel Aviv University on 3-4 March 2008 and included 590 interviewees who represent the adult Jewish and Arab population of Israel (including the Jewish population in the West Bank). The sampling error was 4.5%.
Just as anyone with an IQ higher than that of a barstool knew, the Jews of Israel want no part of a cease-fire with terrorists. Palestinians demand concessions before every discussion of peace, they continue to murder Jews regardless of "peace" even when an agreement is reached, and the Islamists immediately throw any other aspects of such an agreement in the garbage as soon as they get a new shipment of weapons from Iran or Condi Rice. There never has been a cease-fire and there never will be as long as Palestinians continue their lust for blood and death. The war continues always, regardless of pieces of paper signed by feckless politicians not because the Jews don't want peace but because the Palestinians are liars.