OPINION POLLS SUGGEST SUPPORT FOR HAMAS IS WEAKENING AMONG PALARABS..NOTE
SORRY FOLKS…BUT FATAH IS NO MORE MODERATE THAN HAMAS….THEY JUST WANT A QUICKER AND NEATER END TO ISRAEL….RSK
http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/opinion-polls-suggest-israeli-policies-against-gaza-and-hamas-have-sharply-reduced-palestinian-support-for-extremists/#more-2954
Opinion polls suggest Israeli policies against Gaza and Hamas have sharply reduced Palestinian support for extremists
If I had a penny for every time some know-nothing European bureaucrat or some shifty UN official has lambasted Israel for fomenting extremism among the Palestinians due to the blockade of Gaza, military interventions, targeted assassinations and the like I’d be a very rich man. Problem is, all the available evidence shows that Israel’s tough stance has worked wonders in making the Palestinians realise that there is nothing to be gained and much to lose by supporting extremists.
A poll out today in the Jerusalem Post shows not only that two-thirds of Palestinians oppose rocket attacks — they want the Hamas ceasefire with Israel renewed when it expires in September — but also that Hamas would get an absolute pasting if elections were held tomorrow. This is all terribly embarrassing to the bien pensants whose line of argument would mean that Hamas should now be registering polling figures somewhere up in the stratosphere and support for rocket attacks should be surging. Not a bit of it. The poll of 1,200 Palestinians, by Arab World for Research and Development, put support for the more moderate Fatah at 56 percent compared to 33.5 percent for Hamas.
This is by no means the first opinion poll to show such a decline in Hamas support since the Islamist terror group won the Palestinian elections in 2006 with 44 percent to Fatah’s 41 percent.
A poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research in June put Fatah support at 45 percent with just 26 percent opting for Hamas. That poll was conducted just after the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident and was identical in its results to a poll by the same group conducted in March. Again, therefore, we have evidence that “excessive†or “disproportionate†(as the EU would put it) Israeli policies have absolutely no effect in terms of “radicalising†Palestinians.
Indeed, restrictive Israeli policies against Gaza in recent years have coincided with a sharp decline in support for the radicals. Now, to coincide with something is not the same as to cause something. But what the opinion poll evidence does allow us to conclude is the following:
First, the core prevailing assumption that radicalism is a form of blow-back caused by Israeli policies is simply counter-factual: the available evidence refutes it, and does so conclusively.
Second, although there are too many factors going on at once to state the point as logically infallible, on the balance of probabilities the best available evidence suggests that Israeli policies in Gaza have been immensely successful in making support for extremism unattractive. The blockade, Cast Lead, targeted assassinations and so on have been a disaster for Hamas and a boon for their more moderate counterparts in Fatah.
What an appalling indictment of Western policy, therefore, that Barack Obama, the EU, Britain and company have now forced Israel to abandon the blockade and thus offer Hamas a public relations bonanza just at the time its fortunes were dwindling.
Appeasement is bad enough, but when the leaders of the Western world are actually colluding in the promotion of terrorism it can only be a matter of time before something goes badly wrong.
Comments are closed.
