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Pretty Stunning Results

SHOCK POLL: Most Israelis believe Trump's Gaza relocation plan is "doable"

A new poll by JPPI shows a large majority of rightwingers and a small majority of those on the center and left support President Donald Trump's plan to relocate displaced Gazan civilians to Jordan and Egypt.

President Donald Trump.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Shutterstock

A poll conducted for the JPPI shows a large majority of Israeli Jews in favor of President Donald Trump's plan to relocate the displaced population of Gaza - some 2.4 million people - from the Strip to Egypt and Jordan.

According to the JPPI's statement:

Survey respondents were asked about their stance on President Trump's proposal to relocate Gaza Arabs to another country.

43% of all Israelis believe the Trump plan is "practical" and should be pursued. A small majority of 52% of Jews in Israel think similarly. An additional 30% of Jews responded that the plan is "not practical, but hopefully" - meaning they support it but don't believe it has a real chance of being realized. In total, more than eight out of ten Jews in Israel support the plan.

Overall, about 14% of all Israelis (13% of Jews) consider the plan a "distraction" - a response that doesn't express explicit opposition but shows reluctance to engage with it.

The percentage of Israelis who believe the President's proposal is "immoral" because it involves a "transfer that cannot be accepted" is 13%, with almost all of these being Arabs (a majority of 54% of Arabs responded this way). Among Jews, only 3% believe the proposal is "immoral".

Breaking it down by ideological stance, there's a clear majority supporting the plan and considering it practical in the right-wing and center-right groups (81% on the right, 57% in the center-right). In the center and center-left, there's a majority in favor of the plan, but a minority believes it's practical (31% in the center).

Only in the "left" group, which is relatively small (about 7% of Jews), is there a majority expressing reservations about the plan or its morality, though even in this group, moral reservations are not dominant (about 27% of the left, which is about 3% of the total Jewish population).

Examining support by party affiliation: A majority of Likud voters believe the plan is desirable and practical (71%), a majority of National Camp voters consider it desirable but impractical (51%), and a majority of Labor voters consider it a "distraction" or "immoral" (62%).

Overall, a proposal that would involve a significant transfer of Palestinian population from the Gaza Strip - which was previously considered illegitimate by many Israelis - is now a proposal that receives widespread support among Jews, and when it doesn't receive support, the reason is usually practical (a "distraction") rather than principled.

Surveys from the 1990s or the first decade of the 21st century that addressed the transfer of Arabs from the territories typically found support from about 40-50% of Jews for population transfer.


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