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What Do Palestinians Want?

(Mosaic) Daniel Polisar - To better understand the perspective of everyday Palestinians, I embarked on a comprehensive analysis of all reliable and publicly available surveys in the West Bank and Gaza over the past two decades. In matters that involved both Israel and the Palestinians, massive majorities blamed Israel and denied any responsibility on their side. As anyone observing Israeli politics over the last decade is aware, the most widely held position within Israel favors the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Yet three of every five Palestinians believe Israel aspires to reconquer Gaza and the West Bank, annex them, and expel the Arab residents plus the Arab citizens of Israel. And this, despite the fact that in the past quarter-century, not a single Israeli Knesset member, respected public figure, or major media personality has advocated such a view in public or is reliably claimed to have expressed it in private. A majority of Palestinians, 51%, assert that Israel will "destroy the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques and build a synagogue in their place." In 2011, American political consultant Stanley Greenberg commissioned a survey of Palestinians on behalf of The Israel Project in which 72% declared it morally right to deny that "Jews have a long history in Jerusalem going back thousands of years." In a 2015 poll commissioned for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy by David Pollock, only 12% agreed that "Both Jews and Palestinians have rights to the land," while more than 80% asserted that "This is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to it." The writer is provost and executive vice-president of Shalem College in Jerusalem.
2015-11-05 00:00:00
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