Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Earlier I reported on Khalil Shikaki’s most recent Palestinian public opinion survey, noting the increased support for Hamas and the decline in support for Fatah that it quantified. But I neglected to notice another important finding which one of my vociferous opponents has proffered as supposed proof of the undying perfidy of the Palestinians. The International Herald Tribune notes that for the first time ever in his polling, Shikaki finds tremendous support both for the most recent Palestinian terror attack against Merkaz HaRav and for Qassam rocket attacks against Israel.

…An overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men…an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.

The survey also shows unprecedented support for the firing of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

The pollster who conducted the survey, Khalil Shikaki, said he was shocked because it showed greater support for violence than any of the surveys he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the firing of rockets at Israel.

…According to the poll, conducted last week with 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of the most prominent centers of religious Zionism in Israel and an ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank. Shikaki said that this was the single highest support for an act of violence in his 15 years of polling.

On negotiations between Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel, and Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, 75 percent said they were without benefit and should be terminated. Regarding the thousands of rockets that have been launched at Israeli towns like Sderot and Ashkelon, 64 percent support the attacks.

I agree with Shikaki that these findings are deeply disturbing. But are they surprising considering the context in which events have unfolded? I’m sorry to say, not really. Or as Shikaki notes:

His explanation for the shift, one widely reflected in the Palestinian media, is that recent actions by Israel, especially a series of attacks on Gaza that killed nearly 130 people, an undercover operation in Bethlehem that killed four militants, and the announced expansion of several West Bank settlements, has led to despair and rage among average Palestinians who want revenge.

“The anger that this poll is registering is about equal to that at the very height of the second intifada,” Shikaki said, referring to the years just after 2000 when suicide attacks on Israel and Israeli strikes on Palestinian forces reached new heights. “I am very worried about what is coming.”

In other words, mounting Israeli attacks against Palestinians, civilians as well as militants, have driven them to desperation. And when an entire people is driven to desperation that is when aberrant behavior rears its ugly head and becomes acceptable.

In commenting on the Merkaz HaRav attack and the anti-Arab pogrom in its aftermath, Gershom Gorenberg spoke most sagely:

The terrorist and the would-be lynch mob exist in a strange symbiosis. Hate feeds on hate and conjures up more hate.

In its own desperation to strangle Hamas and stifle the Qassam attacks, the IDF mounted a devastating series of attacks catalogued by Shikaki above. And in response to them, Palestinians have thrown up their hands and said: “what other choice do we have but to support the feeble means of resistance at our disposal?”

Those who oppose my views will point to the above as justification of Arab terror. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I do not support terror on either side of this conflict. But we must remember that hate doesn’t live in a vacuum and it doesn’t spring from nothing. As Gorenberg wrote, “hate feeds hate.” Those who point to these polling results as evidence that Palestinians are hateful and violent and not partners for peace should remember that Palestinian hate derives from Israeli hate. The solution isn’t to point fingers and claim that one side hates while the other is an innocent victim. Rather, it’s to break out of the blame game and get to “Yes.” That is, negotiations among all parties to the conflict including Hamas.

On a final and more hopeful note:

The poll did show support for a two-state solution over the long term, with 66 percent favoring normalized relations with Israel if it returned all land won in 1967 and a Palestinian state was established.

Either we get to “Yes” or we will reap the whirlwind and witness an even greater expansion of violence and terror.

How do you make a hero of someone you hate? Well, if you’re Israel you do pretty much all the things they’ve been doing unsuccessfully to extirpate Hamas and the terrorist threat from Gaza. Haaretz reports a Palestinian poll of West Bank and Gaza residents that finds that the popularity of Ismail Haniya and Hamas has risen dramatically since Israel attacked Gaza several weeks ago and killed 130 Palestinians:

Israel Defense Forces attacks in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip have boosted the popularity of the Islamist group’s leader Ismail Haniyeh among Palestinians in that territory and in the West Bank, according to a poll released Monday.

The survey by the West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed that if new presidential elections were held, Haniyeh would receive 47 percent of the vote compared with 46 percent for President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah faction. The figures represented a sharp strengthening of Haniyeh’s popularity. He served as prime minister in the Hamas-led government Abbas dismissed after Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah in June.

But the survey also found that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, imprisoned in Israel and seen as a possible Abbas successor, would defeat Haniyeh by a clear margin. The poll gave him 57 percent of the vote, compared to Haniyeh’s 38 percent.

The center’s previous poll, in December, gave Gaza-based Haniyeh just 37 percent of a potential presidential vote compared with 56 percent for Abbas, whose peace efforts with Israel are opposed by Hamas.

The survey also noted that overall support for Fatah had declined and support for Hamas had risen slightly during this period:

The survey found that if new parliamentary elections were to take place, Hamas would receive 35 percent of the vote and Fatah 42 percent, compared to 46 percent for Fatah and 34 percent for Hamas in an opinion poll in January.

So there you have it. Instead of pre-empting Hamas or persuading Palestinians that Hamas has nothing to offer it, Israeli policy has done just the opposite. And it has done this not just in Gaza, which one might expect as it is a Hamas stronghold, but in the West Bank as well. If Israel keeps it up and continues to radicalize the population, Hamas will not only control the West Bank along with Gaza, we might eventually have Hezbollah or even Al Qaeda ruling the roost there. Then Israel will look back nostalgically on the days when they actually might have had an opportunity to negotiate with a responsible party (at least compared with Al Qaeda or Hezbollah) like Hamas. Do I hear “Iraq” anyone and the failed U.S. policy against insurgents there?