Polls of Israelis and Palestinians can suggest two different realities. Here’s where they agree.
An Israeli tank along the border with Gaza on March 19. Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
By Louis Keene March 20, 2024
Reading separate polls of Israelis and Palestinians in the months since Oct. 7 can feel like looking at a photograph and its negative. Each side believes the other is to blame for the suffering in Gaza. Each side thinks only the other has committed war crimes. And on and on.
But there is at least one matter, five months into the war, where Israeli and Palestinian public opinion seem to align: Both Palestinians and Israelis believe Israel is not going to win the war.
Recent polls from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Israel Democracy Institute — think tanks based respectively in Ramallah and Jerusalem — reveal the common ground.
Asked whether they thought Israel or Hamas would win the war, about 9% of 1,580 Palestinians polled March 5-10 in the West Bank and Gaza — split about evenly between the territories — said they thought Israel would win. 64% said Hamas would win, 18% said neither and 9% said either they didn’t know or declined to respond.
The Israel Democracy Institute’s Feb. 12-15 poll asked a somewhat different question to 612 Israelis — “What is the likelihood of an ‘absolute victory’ for Israel in the war in Gaza? — but produced a similar answer: 55% said it was unlikely, compared to 39% who deemed it likely. (The poll included Israeli Arabs, but even narrowed down to Jewish respondents the majority held: 51% unlikely to 42% likely.)
Only one group, the Israeli political right, tends to believe that the Israeli likelihood of absolute victory is “high,” according to the IDI poll, reflecting a growing disconnect between Israel’s conservative leadership prosecuting the war and the people of Israel and the Palestinian territories, who are living it day by day. The majority of respondents from the Israeli center (54%) and left (74%) support a political end to the war.
The polls echo a growing doubt around the world about Israel’s ability to eradicate Hamas through its war in Gaza. And they prompt questions about Israel’s long term plan for Gaza.
Worlds apart
Still, the polls mainly show stark differences in worldview between Palestinians and Israelis. Take, for example, the Israeli opposition to the delivery of humanitarian aid, which has become a pressing issue in the international discourse on Gaza amid reports of mass starvation. The IDI poll found that two in three Israeli Jews (68%) oppose the transfer of aid through international organizations, even without using UNRWA or Hamas.
Roughly 59% of left-identifying Israeli Jews supported aid, though, reflecting a trend throughout the data of the Israeli Jews who identify on the left holding significantly different opinions from their compatriots on the center and right. They were also the only non-Arab group to support the establishment of an independent and demilitarized Palestinian state.
The polling on aid might appall human rights observers, who have said the lack of aid is putting tens of thousands of innocent lives at risk. But the same people might take issue with the broad Palestinian consensus — 71% — who said that Hamas’ decision to launch the Oct. 7 attacks, which caused the death and abduction of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians, was correct. That 91% of the Palestinians polled said that Hamas committed no war crimes might also beggar belief.
While no survey on Israelis’ perception of possible war crimes exists, the IDI did find in a separate poll that Israeli trust in the military is exceptionally high compared to other national institutions, with 86.5% saying they trusted the IDF. Only 23% of Israelis trust their government.
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