Here is our full report:

Anti-Arab Sentiment in Israel

Uri Davis, 2009

It occurred to me that there was a fairly simple way of disproving Dr. Davis's statement. Very shortly after the interview, we started conducting street interviews with Israelis in Jerusalem and Palestinians in Ramallah. The idea was to ask simple questions like "What do you think about Arabs?" or "What do you think about Jews?" to a random selection of people and examine the responses to see whether we could detect any anti-Semitic, or anti-Arab sentiments. To our great surprise, Dr. Davis's statement seemed to be confirmed by our interviews. There was a remarkable amount of anti-Arab sentiment on the streets of Jerusalem, while we only really encountered one anti-Semitic Palestinian of the 30 we spoke to in Ramallah. Although we were intrigued by our initial results, we realized that they weren't conclusive. The sample size was fairly small and the Palestinian interviews were all conducted with the start-stop rhythm of two-way translation. We decided to come back to do a more thorough survey of public opinion. In the new survey, we would ask a host of questions related to the conflict in all of the major Israeli and Palestinian population centers. I would once again conduct the Israeli interviews in Hebrew, but we would work with a Palestinian journalist who instead of translating back and forth, would perform all of the interviews in Arabic. The subjects wouldn't have any indication that I was anything more than a cameraman, or that Pennie was anything more than a soundwoman. The idea here was to minimize the effect of our foreign presence on the answers as much as possible.

We began our new survey in February 2011 and completed it in early March 2011. We interviewed 250 Jewish Israelis in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Jerusalem, and Be'er Sheva and we interviewed 250 Palestinians in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Hebron. In the not-too-distant future, we will release the results of our survey, but for now, we want to discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of conducting a survey in this manner.

The first and most glaring problem was the simple fact that we were not able to conduct interviews in Gaza. Despite multiple attempts to procure permission, we were prevented by the Israeli government from entering the Gaza Strip. Beyond our inability to speak to Palestinians in Gaza City (the most populous of all Palestinian cities), the next big issue that we faced was that willingness to speak on camera in-and-of itself constitutes a strong selection bias. For every person who was willing to talk to us, we approached roughly 20 who refused. On the Israeli side, this was further complicated by the fact that people on the right of the political spectrum are extremely suspicious of the media and were less willing to talk to us. Furthermore, with a few exceptions, religious women were unwilling to talk on camera. On the Palestinian side, women in general were much less willing than men to speak and it was also almost impossible to get honest answers about the Palestinian Authority. So it is likely that on the Jewish-Israeli side, religious women and the Right wing are underrepresented in our survey, while on the Palestinian side, women in general are underrepresented and the answers that we got to our question about the Palestinian Authority are mostly unreliable.

On the other hand, We did enjoy some advantages. For example, in contrast to a typical survey, we were able make sure that the person being interviewed fully understood our questions and we would often ask follow-up questions to better understand their point of view.This was extremely important on the Palestinian side, where due to a number of cultural and linguistic factors, it was essential to verify that the person really understood the meaning of the question before we moved on. This flexibility was also helpful on the Israeli side, where it provided people with more space to express their opinions. Finally, due to our time constraints we were forced to work from the early morning until fairly late at night, which means that we got a very good mix of people in all of the cities we visited.

Here are the questions that we asked each side:

Israelis:
1) What do you think about Arabs?
2) What do you think about the Palestinians? Can peace be made with them?
3) Would you live in a building with Arab neighbors?
4) Is it important to you that Jews and Arabs have equal rights in the State of Israel?
5) What's more important, that Israel be a Jewish State, or a Democratic State?
6) What do you think about the settlers? Do they constitute a stumbling block to peace?
7) What do you think about the two-state solution?
8) What do you think about the one-state solution?

Palestinians:
1) What do you think about Jews?
2) What do you think about Israelis? Can peace be made with them?
3) Do you support armed resistance to the occupation? If so, do you distinguish between Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians?
4) What do you think about the Palestinian Authority?
5) What's more important, ending the occupation, or the right of return?
6) Would you prefer to live in an Islamic state, or a Democratic State?
7) What do you think about the two-state solution?
8) What do you think about the one-state solution?

If the Palestinian in question is a refugee add the following three questions:

9) What is justice for the refugees?
10) If you were offered financial compensation in lieu of returning to Israel, would you take it?
11) If you do eventually return and there is an Israeli living in your house, what should happen to that Israeli?

There s a lot of work to be done still, but stay tuned for the results which we will publish in the coming weeks and months.

http://forward.com/articles/133422/

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/

http://www.prospect.org//cs/articles

When Israel talks about a Palestinian State, what they actually mean is pockets of Palestinian autonomy broken up by settlement blocs in the West Bank. This does not include control over natural resources, borders, air space, sea ports, or electromagnetic spectrum. And, of course, Jerusalem is not on the table at all. This is more or less what Ehud Barak offered in the so-called "generous offer" at Camp David and it is simply insufficient for a viable Palestinian State. If these talks ever do progress to the offer stage, Netanyahu will certainly offer less than Barak did in 2000.

4. Barack Obama no longer has the political capital to effectively pressure Israel.

The story of Obama's first two years in office has been one of squandered political capital. But even when he had all the political capital imaginable, the U.S. president seemed incapable of convincing Israel to do anything that Netanyahu deemed contrary to the interests of Israel's governing Right-wing coalition. Add to this the political realities of the Israel Lobby and you'll understand why Obama can't do much more than make speeches at the UN.

5. The settlement freeze will expire.

One of the major downfalls of the Oslo Accords was the fact that while Israel was supposedly negotiating the details of a two-state agreement, they doubled the size of their settlements in the West Bank. Even assuming that the U.S. is able to pull off a coup and get Netanyahu to extend the settlement freeze (a prospect that is looking less and less likely), the freeze will de-facto end at the end of September. This is the only precondition that the Palestinians have for negotiations. If Israel starts building again in the West Bank, whether or not the Palestinians officially stay at the table, these talks will be over.     

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/