Backing for Invasion Remains Strong

Support for the onslaught on Gaza is solid across the spectrum of Israeli opinion despite international horror at the mounting death toll, according to the latest polls.

More than 90% of Jewish Israelis back the invasion, although that view is reversed among Israeli Arabs, according to the latest War and Peace Index in December.

Attitudes among Israelis are so hardened that 80% would oppose Israel opening its crossings to Gaza even if Hamas stopped firing on southern towns such as Ashkelon and Sderot, the monthly survey, conducted by Tel Aviv University for the last 15 years, showed.

"There's no doubt that Israelis feel that justice is on their side," said Ephraim Yaar, who conducts the survey.

The base point for the Israeli perspective is 2005, when the Jewish state unilaterally withdrew its military bases and settlers from inside Gaza. "The Israeli public sees that the Palestinians had their chance and instead of using it they decided to attack," said Yaar.

Palestinians see the conflict in longer terms, dating back at least to 1967, when Israel began occupying the West Bank and Gaza following the Six Day war.

But to Israelis, the past three years have unfolded exactly as the right predicted. Hamas and other militant groups, who claimed the withdrawal was the result of their resistance, turned Gaza into a launching pad to fire rockets into southern Israeli towns.

"The left is now buying the argument that if you can't make the Israelis and the Palestinians love each other then the best we can have is a balance of fear, the old idea of deterrence," said Paul Frosh, senior lecturer in communications at Hebrew University, who said he normally voted for Meretz, a leftist party closely aligned to the peace movement.

The mistrust that has characterised Israeli attitudes to politicians over the past three to five years virtually vanished with the beginning of the war.

There is little doubt in the public's mind that this war was launched for the right reasons. "Most Israelis thought it was about time for the politicians to do something about Hamas in the south," said Tamar Hermann, of the Israel Democracy Institute, who also conducts the War and Peace survey.

The government's "reading of the public desire was one of the major inputs into the decision to launch this operation," said Hermann.

The War and Peace index suggested that Israelis could live without peace as long as they had quiet.

For instance, in April last year it showed few were willing to "pay" for peace by ceding land. It also showed that the conflict with the Palestinians was the least of their worries, with only 12% of Israelis rating an intensification of the conflict as the gravest threat on their horizon.

The top threat, perceived by 28% of Israelis, was Iran's nuclear capabilities. Next, perceived by 20% of people, was that the military would not be ready to fight the next conflict.

"This is the mentality of a besieged nation," said Yaar, arguing that Israel is behaving exactly as other countries do when confronted by war.

"If you take England and the US when they felt there was a need to end the war against Nazi Germany, look at what they did in Dresden. You are talking about tens of thousands of innocent German civilians who were killed," he said.

"Support for the operation is strongly related to the fact that the number of casualties among soldiers is relatively low," said Hermann.

Yet with the operation in its third week and fierce debate raging between the politicians as to whether to push deeper into the urban centers of the Gaza Strip, public opinion may be about to become more hostile to the operation.