Voters reject Labor's push for Palestinian state

From The Australian, March 13, 2018, by Simon Benson:


Carr: leading agitator in mindless Israel-bashing

Federal Labor is at risk of alienating its support base over the party’s pursuit of Palestinian statehood ahead of its national conference, with a majority of its own voters rejecting the move without the Palestinian Authority striking a peace deal with Israel.

With several state Labor branch¬es last year adopting a platform of recognising a Palestinian state as a means of pursuing a two-state solution after 60 years of conflict, the policy is now likely to be adopted at the national conference in July, which would then become binding on a federal Labor government.

However, a poll conducted by research firm YouGov Galaxy has found that a majority of Labor voters in Australia support recognition of a Palestinian state only if a peace agreement can be reached.  



Almost as many Labor voters also support a position of never recognising a Palestinian state as those who favour immediate recognition with or without peace.

The Labor position on Palestinian recognition appears further at odds with the wider electorate, with 52 per cent of all voters backing the view that either some or all of the criticism of Israel is motivated by antisemitism.

The poll ...revealed that only 13 per cent of Australians across all voting preferences believed Australia should recognise a Palestinian state immediately with or without a peace deal.

The same number, however, either didn’t believe a Palestinian state should ever be given recognition or could be recognised only when Palestinian groups, most of which do not recognise Israel’s right to exist, renounced violence.

The largest number, 25 per cent, agreed that recognition could come only if and when Palestinians reached a peace agreement with Israel.

The poll, however, revealed that the question was a fringe issue for a greater percentage of both Labor and Coalition supporters, with more than a third not expressing an opinion on the issue.

...YouGov Galaxy, a subsidiary of UK pollsters YouGov, is widely respected in testing public opinion and is often engaged by the left for campaign polling.

Surprisingly, the poll of 1205 voters across all demographics showed that a majority of Labor voters also backed the US-supported position of moving Israel’s capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — which Palestinians also lay claim to as their capital.

...Only 7 per cent of voters believed the greatest obstacle to peace was Israeli settlements, with three times as many claiming it was Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist.

However, 44 per cent of voters expressed no opinion.