Borrowed from Foreign Affairs thread...
Poll finds 70% of Americans think Arafat is an obstacle to peace. I find this cheering and remarkable considering the lousy "cycle of violence", "tit-for-tat" coverage that the Mideast violence gets:
Palestinian Blames Rises in US Poll
By The Associated Press
March 23, 2002, 2:20 PM EST
Americans increasingly blame the Palestinians for violence in the Middle East, a Newsweek poll released Saturday finds. The telephone poll of 1,001 adults was taken Thursday and Friday, and has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The poll found that:
* Nearly half of the respondents blame the Palestinians for the violence, while 12 percent blame the Israelis -- compared with 42 percent and 11 percent, respectively, in a December poll.
* Seventy percent said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was an obstacle to peace, while 63 percent thought that in December. By comparison, 40 percent said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was hurting peace prospects; the figure was 35 percent in December.
* Nearly two-thirds said they think that Arafat cannot control extremist Palestinian groups responsible for the violence while 44 percent think that Sharon cannot control extremists on his side.
* More than three-fourths said it was very or somewhat likely that violence in the region might lead to a wider war involving other Middle East countries.
* People were nearly split on whether the United States should favor creating a Palestinian state -- 44 percent said no and 39 percent said yes.
Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
newsday.com.
Fred |
