To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (7807 ) 11/10/2004 12:11:10 PM From: Peter Dierks Respond to Fascinating work. Thank you Haim.Arafat's illness has not softened the animosity toward him in the Jewish street, with 79 percent characterizing him as a terrorist and only 5 percent as a statesman. Fifteen percent placed him in the middle. A segmentation of this characterization by party voting shows that while a majority of voters for all the parties indeed puts the Palestinian leader at the terrorist pole, this majority clearly differs from party to party. Thus, 93 percent of National Union voters, 92 percent of National Religious Party voters, 88 percent of Likud voters, 82 percent of Shinui voters, 76 percent of Shas voters and 50 percent of Meretz and Labor voters define him as a terrorist; as for defining him as a statesman, 11 percent of Labor voters, 10.5 percent of Shinui voters, 10 percent of Meretz voters, 5 percent of Shas voters, 3 percent of Likud and NRP voters and none of the National Union voters define him as a statesman. On the question of whether, the Oslo process having failed because of Arafat, it is now possible to achieve peace with a different Palestinian leadership or, conversely, impossible to reach peace with the Palestinians no matter who stands at their helm, the Jewish public is divided, with a slight advantage for those who believe peace can be reached with a different leadership (49 percent) over those who think peace with the Palestinians is impossible and it makes no difference who leads them (43 percent). Still, the majority - 58 percent - believe that the chances of reaching a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians today, after Arafat's removal from political life, are low or nonexistent (32 percent view these chances as quite or very high). The disparities here between voters for the different parties are large, with a majority of the optimists in the left-wing parties (80 percent of Meretz voters and 63 percent of Labor voters) and a majority of the pessimists in the parties on the right, even after Arafat's leaving the scene (83 percent of NRP voters, 81 percent of Shas voters, 79 percent of National Union voters and 64 percent of Likud voters).
