Many Israelis and Palestinians harbor aspirations to take all the land and wish the other side away. Polls reveal that a significant portion of both groups do not support a two-state solution. The conflict persists because of conflicting national movements and historical claims to the same territory. A practical restraint on violence exists, as neither side can completely defeat the other without severe consequences. The failure of negotiation efforts has paradoxically limited more extreme aspirations, preventing further escalation of tensions in the region.
A 2011 poll found that two-thirds of Palestinians believed that their real goal should not be a two-state solution, but rather using that arrangement as a prelude to establishing 'one Palestinian state.'
A 2016 survey found that nearly half of Israeli Jews agreed that 'Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.'
These stark statistics illustrate why the conflict has proved so intractable: Palestinians and Israelis subscribe to dueling national movements with deeply held and mutually exclusive historical and religious claims to the same land.
Efforts to broker territorial compromise have repeatedly failed, but they had the effect of constraining maximalist aspirations on the ground.
#israeli-palestinian-conflict #surveys-and-polls #national-movements #territorial-compromise #conflict-resolution
Collection
[
|
...
]