Analyst: Palestinians know Israelis don't want to kill them

Sunday, December 30, 2012 |  Israel Today Staff  

For all the talk of an alleged Israeli-perpetrated "holocaust" against the Arabs of the region, a recent survey demonstrated that the vast majority of Palestinians know full well that Israelis don't want to kill them.

The survey was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research among a sampling of Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews.

Israeli respondents were asked what they believed the long-term goals of the Palestinians to be. Forty-two percent said they believe the Palestinians, or at least those groups which hold power, want to ultimately conquer all of the Land of Israel and destroy the Jewish population.

Conversely, Palestinian respondents were not given an option that included Israel killing all local Arabs. Instead, the worst option Palestinian respondents could choose was that Israel wants to annex the so-called West Bank and either expel or deny or deny political rights to its Arab population.

That discrepancy was curious to Israeli media analyst Dr. Aaron Lerner, who wrote to the PCPSR for an explanation.

Waleed Ladadweh, a researcher at the PCPSR, responded that after years of asking both sides about "their perceptions of the other party's ambitions," the survey group had been able to more tightly focus the questions and ignore irrelevant options.

In other words, according to the PCPSR, there simply aren't enough Palestinian Arabs who truly believe Israel wants to annihilate them to bother including such an option in its surveys.

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