Last Week's PA Israeli Expansion Poll

Israel continues to expand. New measures to enhance that expansion are introduced almost weekly. It has historically been financed largely by American money. A large part of that money comes from American taxpayers.

The expansion is illegal. Israel expansion apologists claim the expansion and expenditure of American money to enable it are not illegal, but those who claim it is legal are wrong.

Last week I polled Progressive Alaska readers about the expansion. Here are the results:

Should Israel:

Be allowed to continue to expand.................3 (2%)

Be forced back to the 1967 borders............63 (44%)

Be forced back to the 1947 borders............48 (34%)

Frozen at current settlement levels.............19 (13%)

Be allowed to expel all non-Jews
(from inside Israel) and expand
(to occupy ALL the West Bank)....................8 (5%)

So, 7% favor continued expansion, 13% favor a freezing of expansion activity, and 78% favor withdrawal from some or all lands seized from the Palestinians so far. In other words, only 8% of PA readers who took the poll favor what is happening now.

How can that translate into something meaningful? I'm not at all sure. The poll certainly isn't remotely scientific. But I do think it is a powerful enough statement to encourage those who feel something more realistic needs to be done in Israel and Palestine.

In the United States we have a new administration that is sending very mixed signals to a new Israeli administration that is moving at least as far to the right as ours has just moved to the left. The new Israeli administration is about to appoint a man, Uzi Arad, as security chief, who can't enter the USA, because he will be arrested for past espionage against us, as soon as he leaves the airplane.

At this point, I think I should convey the results of the poll to fellow Alaska Democrats. I'm not going to urge any action, though. I'd like to see similar polls taken nationwide, in a more meaningful, accurate way, though. Polling on this subject is seldom done with the questions couched the way these were here.