Poll: 50% of Jews don't want Arab neighbors

However, 69% would welcome a friendship with an Arab; Arab responses reflect similar trends.

By EHUD ZION WALDOKS
Jerusalem Arabs 248.88 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Jerusalem Arabs 248.88
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Fifty percent of Jews polled do not want Arabs living in their neighborhoods, even though 69% would welcome a friendship with an Arab. Conversely, 56% of the Arab public supports living in Jewish neighborhoods and 85% would welcome having Jewish friends. Haifa University professors Faisal Azaiza and Rachel Hertz Lazerovich conducted the survey among 501 Jewish respondents and 513 Arab respondents, which is a representative sample of the adult populations. There was no margin of error given. In all of the categories polled, the Arabs were much more willing to cohabitate or befriend Jews than vice versa. Fourteen percent of Jews would object to any sort of friendship with Arabs while 17% would be amenable to it, but would prefer befriending another Jew. Among the Arab population, just 6% would object to such a friendship and 10% would prefer making friends with other Arabs. Fifty four percent of the Jews said they did not have any Arab friends and another 23% said that while they did have Arab friends they had not visited them at home in at least two years. Nineteen percent of Arabs polled did not have Jewish friends and half had visited their Jewish friends at home in the last two years. Integrated schools and dialogue groups received mixed responses from the Jews and the Arabs. Thirty-five percent of the Jews polled did not want to see Arabs in Jewish schools and 23% disdained dialogue groups. Forty four percent gave full support to integrated schools and 61% supported dialogue groups. Among the Arabs, 44% supported integration, and 80% supported dialogue. In addition, Haifa University Faculty of Sciences Dean Prof. Sammy Smooha recently discovered that 75% of Arab youth would support some sort of volunteer national service. Smooha polled 910 people, 500 aged 23 and up, 204 aged 18-22, and 206 aged 16-22. In addition, 78 Arab public figures were also asked for their opinions in late 2007. Despite the negative campaign against national service being run by Arab leaders, 77.4% of the adults knew little to nothing about the national service program for Israeli-Arabs and 79.6% of the youth knew little to nothing about the project ostensibly for them. However, once told about the project 71.9% of the men supported it and 83.8% of the women did.