Given that the long-awaited Donald Trump Mideast peace plan has yet to be published, it was always going to be a stretch for The Guardian‘s Oliver Holmes to write a detailed analysis of its terms.
So in the absence of facts, he turns to conjecture: the peace plan is bad for the Palestinians. For Holmes it’s all about “the implementation of Israel’s wishes by the most accommodating US administration in its history.”
But Holmes goes beyond conjecture with this claim:
Trump’s team will know that from Israel’s perspective there is very little appetite for peace compared with the past. An August poll found only 9% of Israelis wanted their government to prioritise reaching a deal with the Palestinians in 2019.
So are Israelis really so disinterested in peace?
Actually, a look at the very poll that Holmes refers to reveals something far more nuanced.
Israelis are understandably skeptical about the prospects for a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Therefore, it’s not surprising that, when asked to name their ONE priority for the new year, many prioritized other issues such as the economic situation or closing socioeconomic gaps.
Holmes is simply misinterpreting the Israel Democracy Institute Peace Index poll to suggest that Israelis can only think about only one issue at the expense of any interest in peace. This is misleading and quite simply untrue.
In fact, the first question in the same poll reveals that 61% of Jewish Israelis are strongly or moderately in favor of conducting peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Indeed, it may come as a surprise to Guardian readers or anyone who gets all of their information about Israel from the international media, but Israelis’ lives are not always dictated by conflict or the Palestinians. Israelis have families, jobs, pay bills and deal with myriad of domestic issues concerning the direction of a young and still developing country.
Does this sound like Israelis aren’t interested in peace?
