Middle East Monitor / June 6, 2022
A study conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute in March revealed that 60 per cent of Jewish Israelis want segregation from Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The rate is significantly higher compared to the institute’s previous study in April 2021, when the number stood at 45 per cent, Haaretz reported.
However, last year’s study was conducted before the 11-day Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip that killed more than 260 Palestinians, including 41 women, 60 children and 16 elderly people.
“The report shows a complex picture,” said Dr Tamar Herman, who led the study.
“Among Arabs [Palestinians], there has been an intensification of their sense of discrimination as a collective, as opposed to a weakening of the perception of this discrimination among Jews. The former show a rise in the desire to participate in decision-making, and among Jews, there is a declining willingness to share that privilege with them.”
There was almost no change in the rate of support for living apart among Arab [Palestinian] respondents, who make up 20 per cent of the population of Israel.
According to Haaretz, “there has been a decline in willingness among Jews to live in proximity to Arabs or allow them to purchase land outside of Arab municipalities,” added Dr Tamar. However, recent events “have not harmed the high willingness of both groups to share workplaces.”
The data was part of the “Limited Partnership” study, which examines Jewish-Palestinian relations in Israel, and included 760 Jewish and Palestinian respondents.
The results of the survey come alongside the recent poll conducted by the Israeli Congress research group, which found that mistrust and hostility between Palestinians and Jews in Israel is increasing.
Suspicion between populations is reflected in routine day-to-day activities, the poll found, as 34 per cent of Jews and 55 per cent of Palestinians testified that they had changed their lifestyle in some way since the unrest in mixed cities during last year’s Israeli offensive on Gaza.
“The events of May 2021 left a deep imprint on the Arab and Jewish public, and increased the fears and hostility between the populations even more in the cities involved,” said the Director-General of the Israeli Congress, Dr Adv Gilad Weiner.
