(Washington Post) Jackson Diehl - A new poll conducted in November shows that the 270,000 Arabs who live in east Jerusalem may not be very enthusiastic about joining Palestine. The awkward fact is that more would prefer to be citizens of Israel than of a Palestinian state. The survey, designed and supervised by former State Department Middle East researcher David Pollock, found that only 30% said they would prefer to be citizens of Palestine in a two-state solution, while 35% said they would choose Israeli citizenship. (The rest said they didn't know or refused to answer.) 40% said they would consider moving to another neighborhood in order to become a citizen of Israel rather than Palestine, and 54% said that if their neighborhood were assigned to Israel, they would not move to Palestine. "Quite clearly there is a discrepancy between people's attitudes and the assumption that Palestinian neighborhoods should be part of Palestine," said Pollock. "That's not actually what the people want."
2011-01-12 09:33:28Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive