Palestinians aren’t that crazy
Posted by Richard on January 7, 2008
Reading news stories about Israel and the Palestinians, or looking at clips from Palestinian TV at MEMRI or LGF, it's easy to develop a very pessimistic attitude and to generalize that the people I've called "paleostinians" are almost universally Jew-hating, murderous, barbaric, and completely irrational.
Well, the belief that Jews are subhuman seems to be pretty universal, and there's certainly far too much murderousness and barbarism. But according to Daniel Pipes, most Israeli Arabs aren't all that irrational — they'd rather be governed by the Jewish "dogs and pigs" than by the Palestinian Authority. That's become especially clear since Ehud Olmert suggested in October that maybe parts of East Jerusalem could be transferred to the PA:
Indeed, Olmert's musings prompted some belligerent responses. As the title of a Globe and Mail news item puts it, "Some Palestinians prefer life in Israel: In East Jerusalem, residents say they would fight a handover to Abbas regime." The article offers the example of Nabil Gheit, who, with two stints in Israeli prisons and posters of "the martyr Saddam Hussein" over the cash register in his store, would be expected to cheer the prospect of parts of eastern Jerusalem coming under PA control.
Not so. As mukhtar of Ras Khamis, near Shuafat, Gheit dreads the PA and says he and others would fight a handover. "If there was a referendum here, no one would vote to join the Palestinian Authority. … There would be another intifada to defend ourselves from the PA."
Two polls released last week, from Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications and the Arabic-language newspaper As-Sennara, survey representative samples of adult Israeli Arabs on the issue of joining the PA, and they corroborate what Gheit says. Asked, "Would you prefer to be a citizen of Israel or of a new Palestinian state?" 62 percent want to remain Israeli citizens and 14 percent want to join a future Palestinian state. Asked, "Do you support transferring the Triangle [an Arab-dominated area in northern Israel] to the Palestinian Authority?" 78 percent oppose the idea and 18 percent support it.
Read the whole thing.
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