At the Washington Institute, David Pollock writes about two new polls taken among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza that seem to show some good news about the prospects for peace.
According to the polling by Arab World for Research and Development and the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, for example, a majority of Palestinians view a two-state solution as ‘tolerable’. “More dramatically, AWRAD reported that an overwhelming majority (95%) of Palestinians would agree to ‘consider a comprehensive peace agreement, if implemented, as the end of the conflict.'”
So the good news is that more Palestinians than ever agree that a negotiated peace with Israel might be OK. Not exactly what one might’ve hoped for after nearly 20 years of talks between the the two sides, but some progressi s better than nothing.
Unfortunately, in looking for the silver lining, Pollock characterizes some poll results as positive when they are anything but. Take the responses on Jerusalem, for example. “Nearly half (46%) of the AWRAD respondents were willing to tolerate the option of ‘dividing the city according to Palestinian and Israeli neighborhoods’ — implicitly conceding that Israel would retain the large post-1967 areas it annexed to the Jerusalem municipality, currently populated by nearly a quarter million Jewish residents. Moreover, exactly half of the Palestinian public would acquiesce to a compromise in which ‘the Western Wall will be under Israeli sovereignty,’ as long as ‘Christian and Muslim holy sites, including the Temple Mount, will be under Palestinian sovereignty.'”
How is the redivision of Jerusalem good news? The parts of Jerusalem that were under Jordanian control before the Six Day War were annexed by the Israelis after their victory. The whole city is the sovreign capital of the Jewish State. Good news would be Palestinian acceptance of that fact and a recognition that the Palestinian capital will be declared somewhere else, say in neighboring Ramallah for example.
Also, why should Christian holy sites be under Palestinian Muslim control?
It’s most certainly true that the Palestinian people have come a ways in their acceptance of the legitimacy of Israel but that does not mean that all of their demands are reasonable or that every one of their positions should be viewed as acceptable.