While they may not seek direct Israeli conflict, a Palestinian majority overwhelmingly supports incentives for terror attacks.
A new survey conducted among the Palestinian public shows the majority of Palestinians do not support armed violence against Israel, but overwhelmingly support the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) payment of salaries to terrorists and their families.
The survey, conducted by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in collaboration with Dr. Khalil Shikaki’s Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, was based on interviews with Palestinians from Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Palestinians in those areas were polled on issues such as Gaza electricity, the PA-Hamas feud, and violence against Israel.
According to the survey, 39 percent of Palestinians support an intifada (violence) against Israel, down 12 percent from a poll conducted three months ago. More than half of respondents said they favor nonviolent forms of “resistance.”
Yet 91 percent of Palestinians polled believe the PA’s terror payments should not be stopped.
Both the US and Israel have demanded that PA President Mahmoud Abbas halt the terror payments.
Israel says that such stipends for families of Palestinians killed or wounded while committing terror attacks promote violence by rewarding the terrorists, and has stepped up a campaign against terror payments after a series of murders of Jewish citizens living in Judea and Samaria.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the payments “an incentive for murder.”
“Terror has become a comfortable business for families,” said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon. “This encourages violence.”
In a joint appearance with PA head Mahmoud Abbas in May, President Donald Trump said “peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded.”
Days earlier, an adviser to Abbas called Trump’s request to end the payments to terrorists “insane.”
By: JNS.org and United with Israel Staff
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