POLL: Peace Index: April 2003
Large majority of Israeli Jews supports the road map

These are the main findings of the Peace Index for April 2003, which was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 29-30.

To the question "From a general standpoint, when you examine the situation in the region on the background of the American victory in Iraq and the leadership changes in the Palestinian Authority, do you believe the chances of an end to the historical Israeli-Palestinian conflict have increased or decreased?," about 48 percent of the Jewish interviewees said the chances had increased, 39 percent said they had neither increased nor decreased, and 8 percent said they had decreased. The rest (5 percent) did not know.

Clear support for road map

A clearer division emerged regarding the Jewish public's attitudes toward the plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace known as the road map. After the main points of the plan, with its different stages and stipulations, were presented to the interviewees, they were asked to what extent they support or oppose it. The findings show that 65 percent support the plan (20 percent support it very much and 45 percent considerably support it), while only 31 percent oppose it (18 percent oppose it very much and 13 percent considerably oppose it). The rest did not answer.

An analysis of attitudes toward the road map according to voting for the five large parties in the recent elections shows that the highest rates of support are among the voters for the two left-wing parties - Meretz (100 percent) and Labor (92 percent), with Shinui voters lagging only slightly behind them at 83 percent support.

Yet even among the Likud voters, a clear majority of 58 percent supports the plan compared to 37 percent who oppose it. Indeed, the Shas voters are the only ones among the five large parties for whom the proportion of opponents - 61 percent - is substantially higher than the proportion of supporters - 30 percent.

As noted, support for the road map is higher than the belief in the chances for an end to the historical Israel-Palestinian conflict. How can this disparity be explained? At least a partial explanation is found in the interviewees' responses to the question on the chances that the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority will adopt the road map and genuinely act to implement it.

In regard to Israel, only 40 percent believe the chances that the Sharon government will act in accordance with the plan are high, whereas 54 percent think these chances are low. A segmentation of the responses by party voting shows that with the exception of the Likud voters, a majority of the voters for all the large parties assesses the chances as low. The Likud voters are equally divided between those who see these chances as low (47 percent) and those who regard them as high (47 percent).

Split over U.S. pressure

In view of the prevailing skepticism about the readiness of the Sharon government and the Palestinian Authority to implement the road map, the interviewees were asked the following question: "The campaign against Iraq shows that the Bush administration acts resolutely to bring about the changes it wants in the international arena. What are the chances, in your opinion, that if the Palestinian Authority and/or the Israeli government do not accept the road map, the U.S. administration will exert heavy pressure on the two sides to force them to accept the plan?"

A breakdown of the answers indicates that U.S. policy in the region has indeed made an impression on the Israeli Jewish public; thus, 72 percent believe the chances of such pressures are very high or quite high compared to only 22 percent who do not think so.

Given the Jewish public's great support for the road map on the one hand, and the skepticism about the two sides' readiness to implement it on the other, the question that arises is whether this public views heavy pressure by the U.S. administration as desirable or undesirable. The answers reveal a division on this question: 50 percent oppose U.S. pressure while 44 percent favor it. Not surprisingly, there is a close link between the responses to this question and the public's perception of the degree of concordance between the Bush administration's and the Israeli government's conceptions of Israel's vital interests. In general, 44 percent believe the conceptions of the two governments are very similar or quite similar, while 48 percent assert that they are very different or quite different.

The Peace Index project is conducted at the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research of Tel Aviv University, headed by Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Dr. Tamar Hermann. The telephone interviews were conducted by the B. I. Cohen Institute of Tel Aviv University on April 29-30, and included 580 interviewees who represent the adult Jewish and Arab population of Israel (including the territories and the kibbutzim). The sampling error for a sample of this size is about 4.5 percent in each direction.