Two-thirds of Jewish Israelis dont consider West Bank occupied poll

[Mosby]

Nearly two-thirds of Jewish Israelis do not consider holding on to the West Bank a form of occupation, according to a new survey. The poll also found that more than four-fifths of Israelis think US President Donald Trump’s chances of orchestrating a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians within the next two years are low.

The results were published Sunday by the Israel Democracy Institute, as part of its monthly Peace Index. The poll focused on the mood in the country as it marked the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank, along with the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.


According to the poll, 62% of Israeli Jews do not see the West Bank, which Palestinians claim for their future state, as occupied.

Two-thirds of Jewish Israelis (65%) disagree with the statement that immediately after the war Israel should have “should have ceded conquered territories and launched negotiations with the Arab states for a comprehensive peace agreement,” the poll found. Fifty-five percent of respondents affirmed that Israel should have annexed the captured territories at the time, as it later did with East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/two-thirds-of-jewish-israelis-dont-consider-west-bank-occupied-poll/

[Ken Burch]

1. That's a big part of the problem.

Too many stuck on the "Judea and Samaria" delusion, as though 14 centuries of a Palestinian Arab majority are nothing and as though Palestinians have no real right to be there.

After 1967, the Israeli government should have left it at just bringing back the people forced out in 1948. In all likelihood, ordinary Palestinians could have lived with that-it was the Jordanians who expelled the indigenous Jewish community.


The Israel government should never have started the settlement project and forced Palestinians into an intolerable choice of going into exile or being forever powerless on their own lands.

Israel HAS a right to exist...but there is no possible way that asserting the right to live in the West Bank could possibly be more important than working for peace.

And if the Israeli do ultimately annex the West Bank, what possible right will it ever have again to claim to want peace? How can Netanyahu possibly imagine peace could come without the Palestinians having the right to self-determination?

[geek tragedy]

2. And most Trump supporters don't consider him to be a liar

Opinion polls aren't a refutation of objective reality.

[aranthus]

3. Military rule equals Occupied

How hard is that? And if they had annexed the West Bank, or if they do it now, then what of the Palestinians living there? Are they willing to grant those people citizenship? Even if they are willing to do that, is it a denial of Palestinian national aspirations?

[Mosby]

4. It doesn't make sense, and they don't care.

That's my takeaway.

[stephensolomita]

5. Two-thirds of Jewish Israelis don't conisder West Bank occupied

Is there an honest broker in Palestine? In the Middle-East? I've been a supporter of Israel all my life, but the last fifteen years find me standing on the sidelines. One question we might ask: our support of Israel has come with serious costs over the decades. But what exactly are the benefits?

[Mosby]

6. it takes two parties to negotiate

Sending children into Israel to stab and kill Jews isn't how one negotiates.

[stephensolomita]

7. Tit For Tat

True enough, but neither is settling someone else's country. This is what I mean when I say there are no honest brokers in Palestine.