The majority of Israelis would vote in favor of a peace agreement with the Palestinians, if the government brought a plan that offered security guarantees to a referendum, polls published Sunday by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.
Roughly two-thirds of respondents (67 percent) expressed support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, with land swaps; a demilitarized Palestine; and Jerusalem’s Old City administered jointly by Israelis and Palestinians.
The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, a non-profit advocacy group based in Washington DC, approached two Israeli research companies, the Dahaf Institute and Smith Consulting, requesting that they survey Israeli opinions regarding a future peace agreement with the Palestinians. Each poll was conducted independently.
MK Dov Khenin during a meeting against Israeli occupation policy and for an independent Palestinian state, Tel-Aviv, June 2011 (Photo: Al Ittihad)
The Dahaf poll was conducted via telephone interviews during the first third of December. It is the third in a series of similar polls conducted in January 2010 and 2011. The findings were based on the responses of 500 people, a representative sample of Israel’s adult population.
The Smith Consulting poll was carried out on December 11 and 12 among 600 people, with a 4% margin of error. In both polls, respondents were asked how they would vote if the government brought to a referendum a peace agreement that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
According to the Dahaf poll, 67% of respondents would vote in favor of such an agreement, 21% would oppose it and 12% did not answer. The Smith poll found that 68% would support the agreement (of them 40% would strongly support it), 25% would oppose it (17% strongly oppose it) and 7% had no opinion. The Dahaf poll presented stable support for an agreement over the three years in which its polls were conducted: 67%.
The Smith poll broke the numbers down according to a wide range of variables showing that females were slightly more supportive of an agreement than males (70% compared to 67%) and that support for the proposal increased with age and education levels and dropped in line with increased self-declared religiosity level. Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union were the only demographic where more people opposed the proposed agreement (53%) than supported it (44%).
Even on the right, there appears to be a majority in favor of a peace deal, including 57% among Likud voters, and even 53% among the constituency of Yesh Atid, whose leader, Naftali Bennett, is a champion of the unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank. Both polls indicate that there is stronger support for a peace agreement among the Arab population than among the general population.
