MAJORITY OF ISRAELIS SUPPORT A REGIONAL PEACE AGREEMENT

Tel Aviv, 4 Jumadil Awal 1435/5 March 2014 (MINA) – A new opinion poll commissioned by the Israeli Peace Initiative Group shows that the majority of Hebrew speaking Israelis support a peace agreement with the Palestinians, with 63 per cent likely to support a regional peace agreement in principle.

However, the poll finds that the percentage of those respondents supporting peace rises to 76 per cent when the agreement is loosely based upon the framework agreement being drawn up by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Middle East Monitor (MEMO) quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting, Wednesday.

The majority of respondents reacted favourably to the various components of the proposed framework agreement, including denying the right of return for Palestinian refugees except for a “symbolic number”, for the Palestinian state to be de-militarised and allowing Israel to maintain sovereignty over the settlements “with only minor territorial exchanges”.

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Only two components received the support of around or slightly less than 50 per cent of respondents: for Arab neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem to be the capital of a Palestinian state and for the holy sites, including Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, not to be under any specific sovereignty but managed separately by each religion.

Meanwhile, 77 per cent of the respondents are “convinced that the Palestinians are not interested in reaching an agreement regarding the end of the conflict,” and 55 per cent believe that no agreement will be reached without the intervention of the Arab League.

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Regarding the survey sample, 52 per cent of the Hebrew speaking Israelis polled define themselves as either extreme right wing or soft right wing. (T/E01/IR)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)