The Bitter Polls with the Sweet

I've blogged before when public opinion polls out of Palestine have yielded heartening results. Due avoidance of selection bias means that I have to do the same when the polls are less positive. The latest poll data from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research is just a cascade of bad news. Most Palestinians (67%) support stabbing attacks. A plurality (46%) think that armed resistance is the best way to achieve Palestinian national aspirations; that number shoots up to 60% in the absence of peace negotiations.

Perhaps most disheartening are the numbers regarding end-game solutions. Only 45% of Palestinians support a two-state solution, 54% are opposed. Lest one thinks that what is favored in the alternative is a liberal egalitarian paradise, that polls even worse: a whopping 70% oppose "a one-state solution in which Arabs and Jews enjoy equal rights," with only 29% in favor (this, at least, is consistent with the more optimistic polling I linked to several years ago, which also had "equal rights in one state" a distant third place choice behind two states for two peoples, and a one-state solution for Palestinians only).

One can dig into the data and try to extract some pearls of hope, but they're few and far between. This is really just all around bad.