On June 25-26, Jared Kushner orchestrated the “Peace to Prosperity” economic workshop in Bahrain. Kushner is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and his senior adviser on negotiating a Middle East peace. The White House plan closely follows a strategy proposed by the late Israeli President Shimon Peres. Peres assumed integration of the Middle East through widescale economic development would induce all parties to successfully tackle more difficult final status issues of borders, territory and refugees at a later time.
Palestinian government officials have broken off contact with the Trump administration since its December 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They did not attend the conference, but some Palestinian businesspeople did.
While the “Peace to Prosperity” plan mentions the West Bank and Gaza, it makes no reference to Jerusalem. The financing for “Peace to Prosperity” is extremely speculative with no firm guarantees that any funding would materialize even if the Palestinians accepted.
It is unlikely the Trump administration’s upcoming “Political Plan”—which has been written but not released—will recognize the Palestinian right to return or establish a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. The U.S. negotiating team members are essentially Israeli hardliners in all but domicile. Special Envoy for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt recently referred to illegal Israeli West Bank settlements as “neighborhoods and cities” that are not an obstacle to peace.
To gauge U.S. public opinion about the “Peace to Prosperity” plan, IRmep put a national sample of American adults in the shoes of Palestinian refugees, notably the 750,000 forcibly expelled during Israel’s creation and their descendants living in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. When asked the purposefully ambiguous question, “If you were expelled & resettled into a resource restricted area, would you fight to return or forfeit legal claims for a new life under a promised economic development plan?” a solid 68 percent of Americans said they would fight to return.
Grant F. Smith is the director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, DC. For more IRmep polls, visit https://IRmep.org/Polls.
I don’t think that poll actually tells us anything other than the fact that most people will claim to be willing to fight and even die for what they believe to be their own property, some probably even believe it (lol). It doesn’t tell us whether or not they actually think someone else should fight a losing battle when another better option might exist.
We often see the wisdom of other people making compromises when we personally would claim it to be beneath our dignity and we often claim to be a heck of a lot braver than we actually are. If confronted with the actual choice in real life I highly doubt most Americans today would have the courage to fight and die if given an alternative, no matter how lousy (and they don’t even know if it’s a lousy deal or not yet).
Someone put together a push poll and got the answer they wanted, but it certainly doesn’t tell us whether the American people think Trump’s plan is a good one or not.
All this poll tells us is what we already know; Most American’s have an inflated sense of ego and they perceive themselves as a heck of a lot braver than they have ever shown themselves to be in real life.
It is timely and worthwhile to ask Americans a general question about whether they’d accept in principle the same deal their government is pushing on foreigners. Not unexpectedly, none of the main U.S. pollsters have even tried to get similar feedback on the “Deal of the Century.”
A “push poll” attempts to manipulate or alter people’s views/beliefs under the guise of conducting an opinion poll. This poll does not mention Palestinians or the “Deal” so it obviously isn’t a push poll.
You are welcome to your opinion but don’t expect me to buy into it. In my opinion it’s less than worthless to ask a generalized question that includes a foregone conclusion. We already know what the “correct” answer to this question is. We all know we “As American’s are expected to say, WE Fight for our land, blah blah blah. All this poll did was reflect exactly how people are conditioned to believe. We American’s are always supposed to fight for our rights, blah blah blah, in reality we don’t, we sit by and watch as our rights are trampled on ever day.
And yes it’s still a push poll, people know what they are talking about when they say “fight to return” whether they come out and say it or not doesn’t matter. And It’s all about how you ask the questions. In fact if people couldn’t tell what this question was about then I’d say 100% of the people would have answered the question, with “Stay and fight” being the “correct” American Answer. The question has the answer built in, that’s why it’s a “Push”. The question itself suggests that answer, “Fight” for a better life, is the answer they pushed people into believing was the only answer. But the question itself isn’t a good reflection of what is actually going on. Does it say “Would you fight a hopeless lost cause, leaving your future generations in abject poverty or accept a great deal that would assure future generations have a better life”? See what I mean? You can ask the question any way you want and get whatever answer you want and in the process you “push” people towards your position.
Polls are rarely valid even when written with the best of intentions. This one isn’t close to valid but it does a good job of confirming people’s bias all the less.
Not “my” opinion, but rather the opinion of 1450 American adults.
There’s no forgone conclusion here. In fact, some who were perhaps expelled from Gulf Coast areas may have been in the category of wanting to relocate.
The poll accurately reflects the deal the Trump administration is trying to sell to the Palestinians, in generalized terms.
You’re characterizing the real issue as a “hopeless lost cause” as well as “a great deal”. Perhaps you should get up to speed. That “great deal” was cobbled together by a slum landlord.
https://www.wrmea.org/2019-august-september/2019-august-september-table-of-contents.html
It’s your opinion that this poll is valid, it’s my opinion that it’s not testing what it claims to be testing, therefore it has zero validity. (If something doesn’t test what it claims to be testing it has no validity, regardless of whether or not you think the question itself is a “valid or “fair” question).
The claim is that most people “Would Reject Trump’s Mideast ‘Deal of the Century” and they base that claim on a question that is so incredibly “leaning” that it’s almost falling over. As I stated, in America we all know the correct answer to the question without being asked. The only way anyone answered it otherwise is because they saw through the BS and realized it was a leading question about Israel.
And my point is that the “deal” isn’t even known yet so anyone can write a question in a way that they themselves claim is “accurate”. It’s your opinion the question is accurate, but is it? Nope, because you don’t even know if it’s a good deal or not. The question asked in the poll is no more accurate than the fake question I asked because neither of us know what’s in the deal. My Hypothetical question is every bit as useless to determining whether or not people support the actual deal and their useless hypothetical question because both questions are Leading questions.
I was not trying to actually write a question that would get to a valid answer, I was showing you how easy it is to write a question that won’t get you a valid answer to the question. I was just showing you how easy it is to write a leading question the way the author’s of this survey did.
Polls are rarely valid and this one doesn’t come close and that’s my Opinion.
The general terms of the Deal of the Century and character of the people who put it together are known. But you have to care enough to find that out by reading the relevant information. That does take a bit of effort.
The claim is that most Americans would reject the deal on principle. Not an opinion, but rather the accurate result of a statistically significant poll.
Economic development is a key to military power and political influence. There is no way the Israelis would ever allow Palestinians to develop. They may promise it, but they’d be lies. It is a stall, yet another way to avoid any deal while they try to drive away the Palestinians.