January 06, 2015

Israeli and Palestinian thoughts on future options

editor:	Murat Suner

The new year comes with interesting insight into the Israeli and Palestinian publics: While the majority remains "pessimistic about both the potential for successful negotiations or the feasibility of the two-state solution," reports the +972, the publics seem to be more open and optimistic about confederation-style models.

In co-operation with the Israel-Palestine Center for Creative Regional Initiatives (IPCRI), the non-profit magazine +972 initiated a survey on Israeli and Palestinian opinions on options other than a two-state-solution. The approach is based on breaking through some of the "non-negotiable elements of Israeli and Palestinian two-state demands."

According to +972, IPCRI’s “Two States One Space,” is similar to another initiative called “Two States, One Land,” with Israelis and Palestinians who have been working together for about two year:

"Both visions involve two separate entities with distinct national identities, based on rough geographic definitions. There would be open borders, high cooperation, and phased but broad freedom of residence. The idea is to avoid uprooting most Israeli settlers, and accept Palestinian refugee return claims in a way that avoids trampling Jewish identity in Israel. Jerusalem is united but shared."

Here are some of the published results taken from +972's poll:

Two separate states with open borders -

42 percent of Israelis accept this — nearly half. Among Jews, one-third accepted it, and over 80 percent of Arabs.

Jewish Israelis can stay in a Palestinian state as residents there and citizens of Israel, and Palestinians can reside in Israel [and] will have Palestinian citizenship -

This attempt to break through the issue of settlers was acceptable to one-third of Israelis, including nearly 70 percent of Arabs but just one-quarter (27 percent) of Jews support it. Note that we didn’t specifically use the word “settlers” – which may have tilted Jewish results either way

Right of return for Jews and Palestinians to respective states – with residence subject to agreement of both states -

Nearly half of all Israelis – 41 percent of Jews and 80 percent of Arabs – say this is acceptable. This is a striking finding when normally just putting terms “right of return” and “Palestinians” in the same sentence results in roughly 80 percent opposition against Jews.

Jerusalem – unified and undivided capital of both nations -

Nearly half of the Israeli public (45 percent) accepts this and the finding is only slightly lower among Jews (40 percent).

Shared authorities, Israeli security control with Palestinian cooperation like today -

This was the easiest for Israelis support – there are no emotions surrounding shared authorities and Israelis understand that the current security arrangements are great for them. Nearly 60 percent say this is acceptable, with only minor variation between Arabs and Jews.

The full report is displayed on +972 mag.