PA Chairman Abbas
PA Chairman AbbasFlash 90

About 83 percent of Israelis believe that pulling back to the indefensible pre-1967 borders will not bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict nor bring a peace accord with the Palestinian Authority, a new poll shows.

The pre-1967 borders were termed "Auschwitz borders" by Israel's former ambassador to the United States, Abba Eban, who represented the Labor party.

The poll was conducted by Dr. Mina Tzemach on behalf of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, headed by Dr. Dore Gold, and was reported Monday in the Israel Hayom daily newspaper.

The poll measured the willingness of those polled to change who they vote for, if they found out that their party would be ready to cede east Jerusalem and the Old City in a peace deal. The majority, 69% among the general public and 78% among Jews only, said they would change their vote if their party was willing to relinquish land and Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem.

Center-left voters, surprisingly, were nearly as adamant about preserving a united Jerusalem, the poll found. 67% of them stated that they would reconsider their party affiliation if their party said it would relinquish parts of Jerusalem.

Another poll, conducted by Dr. Mina Tzemach and Rafi Smith for the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, showed that 67% of Israelis would support signing a diplomatic settlement with the Palestinian Authority if its leaders were to declare an end to the conflict and have no further demands.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, while claiming to the West that he seeks to achieve peace with Israel, has refused for almost four years to come to the negotiating table with Israel and has continuously tried to impose preconditions on talks.

One of his longstanding demands is that Israel accept the pre-1967 lines as final borders. He has also demanded that Israel release all Arab terrorists from its jails, and halt construction in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem for a second time before talks begin. At the same time, he has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. His Fatah party's newly adopted logo shows all of Israel as Palestine.

Even when Israel imposed a ten-month freeze on Jewish construction in an attempt to bring Abbas back to the negotiating table, he refused, choosing instead to impose more preconditions.

Last week he threatened that he will disband the PA unless there is Israeli movement toward renewing peace talks after Israel's elections on January 22.