Sunday, June 3 7:46 PM SGT

Three out of four Palestinians support suicide bombings: poll

JERUSALEM, June 3 (AFP) -

Three out of four Palestinians support suicide bomb attacks against Israel, said a poll released Sunday in wake of the weekend's blast in Tel Aviv that killed the bomber and 19 others.

The poll, conducted in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion from May 24-26 -- before the Tel Aviv explosion -- said 76 percent of respondents favoured operations like the May 18 suicide blast in the northern Israeli coastal town of Netanya, which killed five Israelis and the bomber.

Only 12.5 percent opposed such tactics and 11.5 percent had no opinion.

Meanwhile, 49 percent of the respondents said they would resist a halt to the intifada, the uprising against Israel now in its ninth month, if called for by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, while 34.4 percent said they would back him.

Another 16.5 percent declined answering.

Arafat, pledged publicly on Saturday, in the wake of the Tel Aviv blast and Israeli threats of retaliation, to do "whatever is necessary to achieve an immediate and unconditional ceasefire" with Israel.

Palestinian security sources said Arafat had issued a written order for his security forces to halt the violence.

The Palestinians surveyed by the poll were more evenly divided on the question of a halt to the violence. Thirty-eight percent said they supported a ceasefire by both sides, while another 43.6 percent were opposed and 18.4 percent said they were undecided.

But 80 percent of the Palestinians said they did not believe Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's two-week-old declaration of a unilateral ceasefire.

The poll also cast doubts on the deterrence value of Israeli military strikes on the Palestinian territories as a punishment for attacks on Israeli civilians.

Asked whether an attack by Israeli F-16 figher jets on the Palestinian territories on May 18, in revenge for the same day's suicide bombing in Netanya, had increased Palestinian support for the intifada, 73.7 percent of Palestinians said yes, while only seven percent disagreed.

Almost 76 percent of Palestinians surveyed said they supported the continuation of the eight-month-old Palestinian intifada, while another 17 percent said they were opposed and the rest remained undecided.

Asked if they endorsed the continuation of the peace process with Israel, 49.6 percent said they opposed it, while only 36.8 percent were in favour, and 13.6 percent were noncommital.

A majority of Palestinians surveyed, 58 percent, said they did not believe peace between the two sides would ever prevail, while only 4.8 percent said they believed it would.

The Palestine Center for Public Opinion, located in the West Bank town of Beit Sahur near Bethlehem, surveyed 707 people. The poll has a margin of error of four percent.

-- Anonymous, June 03, 2001