ISRAELI OPINION ON PEACE AND WAR

Public opinion in Israel on security questions is malleable, and politicians deemed legitimate can lead opinion precisely because of this fluidity. This proposition explains the support for seemingly surprising developments: the Camp David accords of 1978 between Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat that stipulated Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula and the signing of a peace treaty with Egypt, and the accord of joint recognition signed in 1993 on the White House lawn by Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

These processes were deemed improbable by most observers months before – and even days before – they began. But considered in light of the cumulative record of public opinion survey findings, such developments take on a different complexion. It is not that the breakthroughs on the long path toward peace could have been predicted from the survey data; but a careful reading of the findings indicates that public opinion also presented no obstacle to progress along the tortuous path of negotiation, compromise, and concession. It is not the intention of this volume to “predict the past” once policies change: that is too easy. But it is also too facile to project political paralysis on the basis of a finding that a population is nearly evenly divided on an important matter. Based on the data of Israeli public opinion to be presented here, it has been reasonable to conclude that diplomatic breakthroughs would be accepted if pursued by a legitimate leadership, and/or that a toughening of security policy would be supported, if that case were convincingly made.