European poll calls Israel a big threat to world peace
Thomas Fuller IHT
Friday, October 31, 2003
PARIS Almost 60 percent of Europeans say that Israel is a larger threat to world peace than North Korea, Iran or Afghanistan, according to a poll scheduled to be made public Monday by the European Commission.
The result from a survey of about 7,500 people across the European Union was confirmed Thursday by an official at the commission.
Although Europeans have been consistently critical of Israel in recent surveys, the poll appears to show a severe souring of attitudes toward the Jewish state.
Full details of the survey were not available Thursday but an official at the commission confirmed that Israel was rated first when pollsters presented a list of 15 countries and asked: "Tell me if in your opinion it presents or not a threat to peace in the world." Fifty-nine percent of Europeans chose Israel, according to the official at the commission, who said the data were still being processed and could change, but only by "a matter of decimals." The poll was limited to Europe so there is no way to directly compare the results to U.S. attitudes. Americans tend to be sympathetic toward Israel in surveys.
El Pais, the Spanish daily newspaper, said in an article Thursday that the Dutch, Austrians and Luxembourgers were most likely to see Israel as a "threat in the world" whereas the French were less likely. The full results, with breakdowns from each country, will be included in the report Monday.
El Pais said that the survey - which included many questions about Iraq and the U.S. presence there - was due out earlier but that the European Commission waited until after the Iraq donors' conference in Madrid finished last week and then released only partial results on Monday.
Five of the questions, including the one about which countries were seen as a threat, were held back and will be released Monday.
A spokesman for the commission, Gerassimos Thomas, said the delay was due to "technical" reasons. He refused to comment on the substance of the survey or whether it represented the commission's views.
"This is nothing more than providing a service," he said of the survey, which is known as the Eurobarometer.
The commission regularly makes opinion polls public but this was the first time that the question about threatening countries was included.
The survey was coordinated by the commission but carried out by a contractor in October.
The same number of people - about 500 - were polled in each of the EU's 15 countries, giving much more weight to the views of people in small countries like Belgium, Luxembourg and Ireland.
In the parts of the survey made public Monday, 80 percent said they wanted Europe to be more involved in the Middle East peace process.
Some 58 percent of those polled said the United Nations should manage the reconstruction of Iraq, compared with 44 percent who said the Iraqi provisional government should and 18 percent who said it was a job for the United States.
But 65 percent said they thought the United States should pay for the rebuilding of Iraq.
A majority of Europeans surveyed (54 percent) said they were not favorable to sending European peacekeepers to Iraq. And more than two-thirds said that the war in Iraq was not justified.
In a survey conducted last year for the Pew Research Center for the People the Press and the International Herald Tribune, British, Italian, French and German respondents said they sympathized more with the Palestinians than Israelis.
By contrast, 41 percent of Americans said they sympathized with Israelis and only 13 percent with the Palestinians.
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