Over three weeks, since the campaign in Lebanon began, despite the nonstop and lethal fire on populated areas and the rising number of civilian and military casualties, the Jewish public not only justifies the Israeli offensive in Lebanon and believes the government has clear goals that the campaign is meant to achieve, but also overwhelmingly supports continuing the fighting until the goals are attained. Similarly, there is almost full support for the ongoing attacks by the air force, even though they are causing destruction of infrastructure and suffering to the Lebanese civilian population.
Despite criticism in the media, the public gives high marks to the Israel Defense Forces' combat capability and to the credibility of its reports on the fighting. Hezbollah's combat capability is also rated high but the public does not view its reports on events as credible. In addition, the overwhelming majority believes Hezbollah initiated the attack on the northern border to serve its own interests and those of Syria and Iran, and not to help the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel.
Almost the entire public supports stationing an international force in Southern Lebanon to separate the sides and stop the fighting between them.
In the domestic sphere, a small majority defines the national mood as "moderately good or very good" - a reversal of the pattern observed in the previous month when the mood of the majority was "moderately bad or very bad." A large majority also defines their personal mood positively as well as their own and their family's sense of personal security.
There is also a very wide consensus on the high resilience of Israeli society so far, and apart from a few percentage points everyone is prepared to personally assist the residents of the North in various ways. An issue on which there is not a consensus is the right of protest: the Israeli Jewish public is evenly split between those who think opponents of the government's policy in Lebanon have the right to express their protest at present and those who think they should not exercise the right of protest at this point.
Those are the main findings of the July Peace Index survey that was carried out on Monday and Tuesday, July 31 and August 1.
The Jewish citizens of Israel currently believe almost unanimously (93 percent) that the campaign in Lebanon is justified. Only 5 percent view it as unjustified, and the rest have no position. A segmentation by gender reveals that an overwhelming majority of both sexes justify the campaign, but the majority is slightly smaller among women - 90 percent compared to 97 percent among men. Seventy-nine percent of the total Jewish public favors continuing the fighting until the goals that were set are achieved, while only 16.5 percent want an immediate declaration of a cease-fire and the beginning of a process at the international level leading to political negotiations.
A definite majority (57 percent) believes the government has clear goals for the operation, while 34 percent see it as lacking clear goals (9 percent do not know). A segmentation by voting for the Knesset in the recent elections shows that among voters for Yisrael Beiteinu, the Pensioners and United Torah Judaism, a higher rate view the government as lacking clear goals than the proportion of those who think it does have them. Meretz voters are evenly split, while a majority of voters for all other parties think the government has clear goals for the campaign.
In the same spirit of overwhelming justification of the war, 91 percent of the public say the air force attacks in Lebanon are justified even if they destroy infrastructure and cause suffering to the Lebanese. This holds true for a majority of the voters for all parties, though for Meretz voters it is only a small majority of 53 percent with 47 percent saying the air force attacks are not justified.
The survey results indicate that the criticisms voiced in the media of the IDF's achievements in the fighting do not resonate among the Jewish public. Eighty-seven percent assess the IDF's combat capability as good or very good, only 9 percent as bad or very bad (the rest do not have a clear opinion). Moreover, 78 percent view the IDF's reports from the Lebanese battlefield as credible or very credible, only 19 percent seeing them as unreliable (the rest have no opinion). Interestingly, regarding belief or disbelief in these reports a segmentation by party voting revealed no clear pattern.
Hezbollah's combat capability is also rated high (which might explain why the public is ready to accept continued warfare against the organization despite the many victims this campaign is claiming in Israel). Seventy-four percent assess Hezbollah's fighting capability as good or very good, only 17 percent as poor or very poor (the rest have no opinion). As for reports from the battlefield, however, the public does not give Hezbollah much credit - only 12 percent view its accounts as reliable or very reliable, 82 percent as moderately or totally unreliable.
An especially interesting finding is that an overwhelming majority of the Jewish public sees no connection between the Palestinian issue and Hezbollah's initial attack. Only 9.5 percent think Hezbollah opened the front in the North to help the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel; 81.5 percent say the organization did so to serve its own interests and those of Syria and Iran.
What will happen after the war? Seventy-one percent favor the stationing of an international force in South Lebanon to separate the sides and stop the fighting between them, as done, for example, in the battle zones in former Yugoslavia. Twenty percent oppose stationing such a force.
The high level of consensus on the different aspects of the war appears closely connected to the high level of national fortitude that the survey results reveal. Eighty-eight percent see Israeli society as standing up well or very well so far under the burden of the campaign, with only 9 percent seeing its resilience as poor or very poor. This strength is evident in the declared readiness of almost all the interviewees to help the residents of the North in one way or another, including hosting, contributions of money or goods and so on. A majority of 55 percent assesses the current national morale as good or very good, 41 percent as bad or very bad. Note that in the previous month the corresponding findings were 35.5 percent and 58 percent. In other words, since the war began there has been a substantial improvement in the national morale.
Indexes: General negotiation index: 45.8
Negotiation index, Jewish sample: 41.0
The Peace Index Project is conducted at the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research and the Evens Program in Mediation and Conflict Resolution of Tel Aviv University, headed by Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann. The telephone interviews were carried out by the B. I. Cohen Institute of Tel Aviv University on July 31-August 1, 2006, and included 617 interviewees who represent the adult Jewish and Arab population of Israel (including the territories and the kibbutzim). The sampling error for a sample of this size is 4.5 percent.
For the findings of the survey, see: http://www.tau.ac.il/peace
