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New Poll Shows Why Palestinians Have No Interest in Peace

(Commentary) Evelyn Gordon - A poll published last week by David Pollock of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that 81% of West Bankers and 88% of Gazans asserted that all the territory of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza "is Palestinian land and Jews have no rights to the land." This has serious implications for how Israel should be handling the Palestinian issue. The fact that most Palestinians still aspire to Israel's ultimate eradication makes the widely accepted principle of "land for peace" completely inapplicable. The same poll found that in 30 to 40 years, only a quarter of the Palestinian respondents expected Israel to "continue to exist as a Jewish state." The poll shows an overwhelming majority of Palestinians think they're on track to achieve their goal of eradicating Israel within a few decades. In other words, they think their current strategy of refusing to sign a permanent peace deal is working, so why would they want to change it? As the poll shows, the crux of the conflict is the Palestinian belief that "Jews have no rights to the land." Palestinians also believe they are succeeding in converting the rest of the world to this view, which merely fuels their conviction that they will ultimately succeed in destroying Israel.
2015-09-09 00:00:00
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