Palestinian poll: media and al-Qaeda

A new poll of the Palestinians, by Fafo (a Norwegian NGO I'd not heard of before), contains one question about the media:  "which TV news source do you trust the most?"  The main finding, which shouldn't be a surprise, is that al-Jazeera is head and shoulders the number one choice:  74% rank al-Jazeera number one in the West Bank, and 73% in Gaza.  Second place goes to Palestinian TV (9% in the West Bank, 13% in Gaza).  Following that, a smorgasborg of very low scoring stations:  Abu Dhabi TV gets 2%,  Israeli TV gets 1% overall, BBC 1%, and CNN 0%;  "other Arabic TV" (which could mean anything, unfortunately - al-Arabiya, al-Manar, who knows?) gets 8% and "don't watch TV" gets 4%.   Also unsurprising, since it has been reproduced in numerous similar surveys, is that preference for al-Jazeera goes up with level of education (only 50% of completely uneducated respondents preferred al-Jazeera, compared with 80% of those with higher education).

There's a lot of interesting findings relevant to internal Palestinian considerations, but one set of findings jumped out at me about al-Qaeda.  When asked whether they supported al-Qaeda actions "like bombings in the US or Europe", 38% strongly supported and 27% supported, while 19% opposed and 16% strongly opposed.   But when asked whether they supported al-Qaeda actions "like bombings in Iraq", only 33% supported (14% strongly) while 67% opposed (3% strongly).  And when asked about actions "like the recent bombing in Jordan," only 12% supported (4% strongly) and 88% opposed (55% strongly). 

For the optimists who saw the angry Jordanian and Arab response to the Amman bombings as a sign of the tide turning against al-Qaeda, these results might  suggest a note of caution:  even strong opposition to the Amman bombings does not seem to necessarily translate into opposition to attacks against the West. For al-Qaeda, the results strongly support the Zawahiri position in his (presumably authentic) dispute with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:  striking against Western targets seems to mobilize support, but attacks against Arab targets alienates mainstream Arabs and Muslims.  To the extent that Zawahiri and 'al-Qaeda Central' retain control over the course of al-Qaeda operations - and given their very clear attentiveness to mainstream Arab and Muslim public opinion - these kinds of public opinion survey results would seem to increase the likelihood of more attacks against the West, and fewer against Arab targets.   

Comments

[Ibn ad Dunya]

People closely tied to FAFO played an instrumental part in the Oslo-backchannel, that later gave us the famous handshake on the white house lawn in Sep 1993. FAFO was founded in Oslo 1982 by amongst others Terje Röed Larsen, it is linked to the Norwegian trade union. in 1988 FAFO commisioned a pilot study on living conditions in the west bank and on the Gaza strip. Marianne Heiberg was the researcher, heading the project. In 1990, Terje Roed Larsen was the head of FAFO and living in Cairo with his wife Mona Juul, a Norwegian diplomat. He took a personal interest in the study, and met with Fathi Arafat,head of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Cairo,and the brother of Yasser Arafat. he also met with Abu Aláa. The study proved to be a perfect smokescreen for the norwegian backchannel-talks, alltough not intended to in the first place. It provided the norwegian research team with invaluable contacts in Palestian and Israeli academia and political circles. Through flux of luck, political changes in Israel ,stalled Washington talks and a new social democratic government in Norway with extremly good ties to FAFO(Johan Jörgen Holst(Marianne Heiberg´s husband) was the new Minister of Foreign affairs. Also Terje Roed Larsen had direct access to the government. The Oslo channel started of as a academical exercise/political test baloon with Norwegian government backing. Present at the first rounds of talks was Yair Hirshfeld & Ron Pundak from Haifa University and Abu Aláa , Hassan Asfour and Maher al Kurd from the PLO. Hirshfeld and Pundak was close to Yossi Beilin. The rest is history...

So AA go out and change the world, i´d rather see you doing it than the American Enterprise Institute...