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| 20 Years After Oslo Paperback. Analysis of Israeli and
Palestinian public opinion polls since the Oslo Peace Accords 20 years ago... Arab American Institute |
[AS
ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO
READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP
SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and
conversations) THAT EMPOWER
DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE &
PEACE... and hopefully
Palestine]
http://www.aaiusa.org/dr-zogby/entry/this-time-must-be-different/
Dr. Zogby
This Time Must Be Different
Monday February 03, 2014
Two decades after Israeli and Palestinian leaders
signed an interim peace agreement in Washington, DC, the task of
achieving a final resolution to the conflict has become significantly
more difficult. Not only have the physical impediments to peace grown--
for example, the number of Israeli settlers living on occupied
Palestinian lands has increased three-fold to more than a half-million--
but the political ground today is less fertile than it was back then.
In 1993, surprised by their leaders' bold initiative,
Israelis and Palestinians were quite hopeful. Twenty years later, the
environment has become toxic, polluted by the ill-will generated by the
negative behaviors of both parties.
This reality must be factored into the calculus of
peace-making. What will be important to consider is not just the terms
of the "deal" reached by the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, but
their ability to "sell it" to their wary publics-- many of whom are
distrustful of the "other side," no longer believing that peace is even
possible.
In my recently published book,
20 Years After Oslo,
I review Israeli and Palestinian attitudes in the two decades that have
elapsed since their leaders signed the Oslo Accords. The book lays out a
twenty-year timeline and then traces how events that occurred during
this period and the actions of both sides contributed to the erosion of
both publics' support for peace.
Following up on that study, this week, I released the results of the latest Zogby Research Services (ZRS) polling of
Israeli and Palestinian attitudes.
What this newest poll demonstrates is the degree to which negative
attitudes now prevail in both communities-- establishing how significant
the loss of hope and trust has become.
Commissioned by the Sir Bani Yas Forum in the UAE, ZRS
polled 1,000 Israelis and 1,000 Palestinians in late 2013. While we
found areas where the sides disagreed, we also observed substantial
areas of agreement-- almost always in their shared negative assessment
of the prospects for peace.
For example, while majorities on both sides say they had
been hopeful when the Accords were signed, today less than one in five
Israelis and Palestinians say they view Oslo as a "positive
development". Similarly, while a majority of Israelis and a plurality of
Palestinians agree that a two-state solution is a desirable outcome,
only one-third on each side believes that such an outcome is still
feasible.
When asked what has accounted for this loss of hope,
both Israelis and Palestinians demonstrated a remarkable shared
understanding of the negative role played by their own and the "other
side's" violence and the use of force in poisoning the environment. This
may be one of the most positive signs emerging from the results of this
poll. Both parties, for example, agreed that the following events or
behaviors contributed to eroding their confidence in the prospects for
peace: suicide bombings, rocket fire from Gaza, the second Intifada, the
election of Hamas, continued settlement construction, Israel’s
re-occupation of the West Bank, the assassination of Prime Minister
Rabin, and Baruch Goldstein’s massacre of Palestinians in Hebron.
Israelis and Palestinians also agreed that Israel and the United States
did not do enough and should have done more to make the Oslo process
work.
From the results of this poll, it is clear that the past
20 years have taken a toll on both Palestinians and Israelis. The
leaders engaged in the current round of peace talks, therefore, must not
only wrestle with the issues of maps, rights, and each other's security
concerns, they also face an additional challenge. They must produce an
agreement that will be accepted by their publics, and they must be able
to convince their constituents that this effort will be different than
what both sides now view as the failed Oslo process.
What is clear from both this
ZRS poll and the review of the
last 20 years
of Israeli and Palestinian opinion is that neither side can do this
alone. If peace is to have a chance, external players (involving more
than the United States) have a critical role to play - as guarantors, as
“incentivisors”, and as arbiters. The time to begin that intervention
is now-- to help prepare the ground. Waiting until the negotiations run
their course or a US framework agreement is announced will be too late.
