Yediot Aharonot poll: 67% of Israeli public oppose assassinations 

[Translated and excerpted by TOI-Billboard from an article by Sever Plotzker, prominently published today (June 13) in Yediot Aharonot, Israel\'s largest mass-circulation paper.]

Majority of Israelis Opposed to Policy of  Liquidations. 

According to an opinion poll conducted by Dr. Minah Tzemach for our weekend supplement, only a third of the public consider the liquidations to be in Israel\'s interest. Opposition to the liquidations
is 
especially tied up with giving a chance to the new Palestinian administration. 58% of Israelis call upon Sharon and Mofaz to suspend the liquidations at least temporarily, so as to enable Abu-Mazen and his people to establish themselves at the Palestinian helm. This in 
addition to the 9% who just demand an end to the liquidations, period. 

This sweeping opposition to liquidations is a new and unprecedented phenomenon. The poll whose results are presented here was conducted in the immediate aftermath of the failed Rantisi assassination, the bloody suicide bombing in the Jerusalem bus and the retaliatory helicopter gunship attack on Gaza. It can be said to measure in real time the public\'s instinctive, gut-feeling reaction to
this new outbreak of  the suicide bombing/liquidation cycle. In the past the public, trapped in the inexorable logic of war, tended to support be great majorities any anti-terrorist measure proposed and implemented by the army and security services. No more. 

The cheering which in the past followed news of (yet another) Hamas arch-terrorist liquidated is replaced with deep anxiety about the results of such a deed. The public seems finally to have overcome its addiction to seeing senior Palestinians assassinated. Even if the liquidations 
reach the very top of Hamas, to Sheikh Yassin himself, would not another Sheikh immediately step up to fill his place? And what terrible revenge would the Sheikh\'s followers exact? 

And the shift in pubic opinion is not limited to the issue of liquidations alone. The war in Iraq, the appointment of Abu Mazen and the Akaba Summit have had far more influence then expected on the Israeli collective consciousness. Cynicism and scepticism gave place to belief. Suddenly, hope was born, a willingness to give a chance to the 
the new processes. The attempted assassination of Hamas activist Rantisi shocked by its evident stupidity. About half the respondents in this poll conceive it as liquidation, not of Rantisi but of the new chance. 
True, 43% of the public do accept at face value the official explanation on which the Prime Minister and other political and military leaders insist: i.e., that Rantisi is a dangerous terrorist leader, and that when intelligence about his movements became available it had to be immediately used in order to kill him. But an equal 43% don\'t buy this operational explanation. 40% of the public directly accuse the political echelon of using the \"Rantisi excuse\" for the sole purpose of sabotaging  the Roadmap. Another 3% consider the government to have acted out of a mixture of the two motives, the legitimate one and the sly one. The percentage of citizens rejecting the government\'s 
explanations and attributing pernicious motives is very high by all criteria. 

The army, too, should be worried. When the number of citizens who regard the army as a willing pawn in a cynical power game equals that of those who believe in the bona fides of the generals\' professional judgement, the army seems to have developed a credibility problem which it did not have at any previous moment of the ongoing intifada. 
The shift in public opinion is evident also in the answers to other questions, most conspicuously with regard to opposing the occupation. This loaded word, \"occupation\", which prime ministers hitherto always  rejected, is now widely accepted in the Israeli pubic as a fitting and accurate description of the situation in the territories. Our poll shows 67%, two out of every three Israelis,
accepting the assertion that \"the occupation is bad for Israel\".