Survey: Israeli Public Opposed Further Disengagement Even Before the War with Hizballah.
Posted by Aryeh ben Avraham | Labels: Arab Palestinian, Eretz Yisrael, Israel, Israelites, Palestinian Affair, Palestinians | Posted On Tuesday 18 March 2008 at 19:39
By Yechiel Leiter
For the past fifteen years, Middle East peace-making has been dominated by two consecutive, illusory, political paradigms. The first paradigm, encapsulated by the Oslo Accords of 1993, belonged to a vision in which it is believed that a solution exists to every problem.
The second paradigm – unilateral withdrawal – proposed that reality could be changed by withdrawing from it, by unilaterally disengaging from it. There was a hope that a fence would define a border and Israel would be left alone. But after the fact, the public no longer sees the Gaza disengagement as having brought Israel greater security.
In a poll conducted for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs on 9-10 July 2006, just prior to the outbreak of the war with Hizballah on July 12, only 19% of respondents said that they felt a greater sense of security since the disengagement from Gaza, while 45% said they felt less secure. Only 33% said Israel was more secure as a result of the disengagement, while 65% felt that the disengagement did not improve Israel's security.
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