Dave Bender, a beekeeper in northern Israel, finds his heart and head at odds over President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza.
In it, the Palestinians would resettle elsewhere, and the United States would then take it over, clean it up, and redevelop it into an international garden spot.
“My heart tells me to go with the plan, because anything is better than the point we’ve all reached, and the prospects, for a radical shift in the paradigm for better, are encouraging,” Bender, who’s on the security team of his community, told The Epoch Times.
“My brain, however, sees all of the pitfalls, and steadfast refusal of primarily Egypt and Jordan to take any [Palestinians] in, as hypocritical as that is.”
A vast majority of Jewish Israelis align with Bender’s heart, and plenty of them have the same doubts as he said his brain does, according to a poll conducted by the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), a Jerusalem think tank.
JPPI conducted the poll after Trump’s Jan. 25 public suggestion to relocate the Palestinians but a day before his Feb. 4 White House press conference at which he launched the more ambitious goal of U.S. redevelopment of Gaza.
Another poll conducted after the White House statement by Israel’s Channel 12 similarly found 69 percent of Israelis in favor and 18 percent against, according to Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at the JPPI.
The JPPI poll found that 43 percent of all Israelis thought the plan practical and worthy of pursuit. Among Jewish Israelis, 52 percent did.
Another 30 percent found the plan “not practical but desirable.” Altogether, more than eight of 10 Jewish Israelis support the plan.
Thirteen percent of Jews and 14 percent of all Israelis consider the plan to be “a distraction.”
A majority of Arab Israelis, 54 percent, regard it as “immoral,” and 3 percent of Jews share that view.
The plan was very popular among conservatives.
On the right, 81 percent of respondents saw the plan as both desirable and practical, and on the center-right, 57 percent did.
At the center and center-left, a majority favored the plan, but only 31 percent believed it practical.
Only on the left—a relatively small group constituting 7 percent of Israeli Jews—did a majority express reservations about the plan’s practicality or morality.
And 27 percent of left-wing Jews cited moral opposition to it.
A breakdown by major political parties suggests the same splits.
Of voters from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party voters, 71 percent find the plan practical and desirable.
In the centrist National Unity party, 51 percent find it desirable but not practical. And 62 percent of left-leaning Labor Party voters consider the plan either a “distraction” or “immoral.”
The JPPI found a significant shift in Jewish Israelis toward broad support for Palestinian relocation.
Support for the idea that Palestinians would relocate from Judea and Samaria, also called the West Bank, in the 1990s and mid-2000s was about 40 percent to 50 percent among Jewish Israelis, according to the JPPI.
Avi Cohen, 69, of Tel Aviv, an entrepreneur in software for graphics, printing, and publishing, said he fell into the 30 percent who like the plan but think it isn’t practical.
“If it were possible, I’m in favor. But I don’t think the people will agree,” Cohen told The Epoch Times, referring to both the Palestinians and the neighboring countries Trump wants to take in the Palestinians.
“It [sounded] fantastic when I heard it,” he said.
“Nobody actually believes it will happen.”
Cohen said he sees the need for it.
“People think something has to change. We cannot support this, neighbors whose only goal or main goal is to kill us,” he said.
One solution would be a change in attitude among the Palestinians.
“But it didn’t happen for the last 100 years,” Cohen said.
“The Palestinians don’t care about [life]. The culture is that it comes after other things, like honor, religion, and land. It’s very difficult. If you cannot compromise on anything, what’s left? Just war.”
Israeli Arabs are different, Cohen said.
“They identify with the Palestinian goals and people, but they understand the situation,” he said. “They are fairly treated in Israel, not completely, but better than in Arab countries. They understand we can live together.”
And they were as shocked by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack—which left 1,200 people dead and more than 250 people abducted—as Jewish Israelis were, according to Cohen.
He said he was recently hospitalized with an illness and saw for himself that 30 percent of health care professionals in Israel are Arabs. He received great care, he said.
“When you face health problems, you forget the BS and the problems,” Cohen said. “You see people for who they are.”
However, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are “brainwashed,” he said, taught to hate Jews in their schools from childhood.
“They are told we are colonizers, that we have no right to be here,” Cohen said.
Yoav Peretz, 33, a tech employee who lives in the Gezer Regional Council between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, concurred.
“The core issue is education in Gaza,” he told The Epoch Times. “The real solution is to reverse the indoctrination of the population. But that could take years, even generations.”
Peretz said it is natural for Israelis to agree with Trump’s proposal.
“It’s similar to asking someone who lives next to the worst possible neighbor if they would be pleased if someone came and removed them from the building,” he said. “Naturally, they would find it appealing.
“[However,] many Israelis are skeptical about its feasibility.”
Peretz said he thinks Egypt and Jordan don’t want to accept Palestinians because they recall how Palestinians destabilized Jordan in the 1970s and Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to a civil war.
“On a personal level, I believe coexistence is possible,” he said. “I live with Arabs, work with Arabs, we have friends from the Arab community, and some of my children’s kindergarten teachers are from the Arab community.”
Peretz also said he sees potential problems.
“Coexistence is not a far-fetched idea, but when there is such deep-rooted hatred, it becomes impossible. This applies to certain groups within Israeli society as well,” he said.
“We cannot live alongside a neighbor whose fundamental narrative is based on the very negation of my existence, my family, and my society.”
Micol Nizza, 43, of Jerusalem, a tour guide put out of work by the war’s effect on tourism, now works in the Research and Development Authority of Hebrew University.
“Trump’s proposal [to] transfer the Palestinians is crazy,” she told The Epoch Times. “If people want to leave, they should do it and maybe can be helped [to leave]. But they cannot be forced to leave.
“The Arab countries don’t want them and never did. In the past, they were put in refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan.”
Nizza said Trump’s remarks could be disruptive to the fragile cease-fire and phased hostage deal recently reached between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.
“Moreover, I think that this declaration can put in danger the actual agreement and Phase 2, resulting in danger for the kidnapped [hostages],” she said.
Laurie Rimon, 70, who lives on the Kfar Blum kibbutz in northern Israel, told The Epoch Times simply: “I doubt it will work. Most of Trump’s ideas are not feasible.”
She said she thought moving the Palestinians would destabilize neighboring countries and make the borders even more problematic than they are now.
