That alarming poll showing 82% of Israelis back Gazans’ expulsion? It’s wrong

Right-wing Israeli activists hold banners that say ‘Only transfer will bring peace’ at a demonstration in Jerusalem in February 2025

Lior Sheffer, Alon Yakter and Yael Shomer write in Haaretz on 4 June 2025:

A recent poll among Israeli Jews, as reported in Haaretz, produced truly shocking results: 82 percent of respondents reportedly supported the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, while 56 percent supported expelling Palestinian citizens of Israel. The poll suggests an extreme reality and has garnered significant attention.

We, too, were alarmed by these findings, for an additional reason: we believe they are wrong.

At around the same time this poll was conducted, Tel Aviv University fielded a comprehensive, large-scale survey as part of its ongoing Israel National Election Studies research project. In that study, participants were asked whether they would support a solution for Gaza that includes transferring its population to another country or countries. Among Jewish respondents, agreement stood at 53 percent, and among the entire Israeli population – including Arab citizens – it was 45 percent.

In other words, while support for population transfer is indeed appallingly high, it is far from a public consensus.

How, then, did the Haaretz-reported survey yield an expulsion support figure that was nearly 30 percent higher than that found in the Tel Aviv University study? The first explanation lies in the sample itself. An analysis of the raw data (which the poll’s authors shared with us in full transparency) revealed several sampling issues that largely account for the inflated support levels.

One issue was the over-representation of certain right-wing demographics, such as young people and Likud voters, beyond their actual proportion in the general population. Another issue was the inclusion of “suspicious” respondents who provided implausible, ideology-incongruent responses. For instance, 30 percent of survey respondents identifying as voters of the left-leaning Labor Party expressed support for murdering the entire population of any cities the army might occupy.

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Another factor contributing to the skewed results was question wording. Respondents were not allowed to answer “Don’t know” or “I’m not sure.” Forcing participants to choose a side often leads them to take a position even when they don’t genuinely have one.

By contrast, a survey conducted in February by the aChord Center also asked Jewish respondents about their views on the forcible expulsion of Gaza residents. In that study, about a quarter of respondents expressed no opinion. A lack of opinion is itself a meaningful opinion, and masking it artificially inflates active support.

Beyond these technical considerations, we believe the survey’s choice of questions failed to capture the deep complexity and confusion currently shaping Israeli public opinion regarding the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at the Flag March in Jerusalem earlier this month. Public opinion is shaped by the boundaries of public discourse.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi
When viewed through a broader lens, many Israelis indeed harbor deep resentment toward Palestinians – resentment often accompanied by skepticism and dehumanization. These sentiments have intensified significantly since October 7, 2023. At the same time, however, there has been no rightward convergence regarding possible solutions to the conflict. In fact, no single plan currently enjoys majority support among the Israeli public. According to Tel Aviv University’s study, 37 percent of Israelis support a two-state solution, while 34 percent favor a single state without equal rights for Palestinians.

The study also offered a range of policy options for Gaza beyond expulsion. Notably, 44 percent of respondents supported transferring control of Gaza to international actors or foreign governments – a figure roughly equal to those favoring expulsion. In contrast, only 15 percent supported rebuilding Israeli settlements in Gaza.

Even within the 45 percent who expressed support for expulsion of Gazans, the picture was more complex than it might seem. About half of these respondents also supported placing Gaza under foreign control, and only a quarter supported reestablishing settlements.

Either way, there’s no denying that these findings are alarming. But do they reflect deeply held beliefs or are they a response to current events? Demonization of the enemy, support for indiscriminate killing and population expulsion are unfortunately characteristic of ethno-national conflicts like ours, especially during periods of active fighting. Fear and the erosion of hope fuel such attitudes.

And according to the Tel Aviv University study, fear does dominate Israelis’ thinking: it finds that two-thirds of Israelis believe the Palestinians ultimately seek to conquer Israel and destroy a significant portion of the Jewish population. This fear should be factored into interpretations of current trends, and we should be cautious in assuming they would remain the same when the fighting stops.

Equally crucial is the fact that support for different kinds of solutions is shaped by the range of political options our leaders offer us. When members of Netanyahu’s government promote extremist “solutions” such as population expulsion – actions that constitute war crimes – without encountering strong opposition from political rivals, and when the president of the world’s most powerful nation legitimizes such ideas in his own voice, they gain dangerous normative traction. When Israeli opposition leaders fail to present a clear, alternative vision, they leave the field wide open for radical ideas to take root.

In other words, public opinion responds to the changing boundaries of public discourse. And history shows that opinion can move in the opposite direction as well. In the 1980s and early 1990s, two-thirds of Israelis supported encouraging Arabs to emigrate from Israel. Within the span of just a few years, following the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the creation of the Palestinian Authority, support for annexing the West Bank and Gaza and expelling their populations stood at only 11 percent. Likewise, support for a Palestinian state, which stood at below 10 percent in the 1980s, soon became the preferred solution for half the Israelis.

The bottom line is that current support for population transfer – and even for atrocities like annihilation – is considerably lower than the figures reported in the Haaretz poll suggest. That nearly half the Israeli public supports expelling Palestinians from Gaza is appalling and a horrifying finding on its own. However, the data indicate that this support is not necessarily rooted in firm ideological conviction.

Moreover, it is doubtful that such views reflect the influence of figures like Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, whom the Haaretz article identified as a key source of these ideas. There is no convincing evidence that his barbaric teachings have gained meaningful traction among most Israelis.

In reality, support for expulsion exists alongside openness to other potential solutions, and its persistence will depend on the political climate and changing legitimacy space in Israeli public discourse.

We believe there is real potential to build broad-based support among Israelis for humane, sustainable solutions to both the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the present war. But to make this happen, we need political leaders and public figures who will fight for these ideas with courage, determination, and a clear alternative vision for what comes after the war.

Lior Sheffer, Alon Yakter, and Yael Shomer are faculty members at Tel Aviv University’s School of Political Science, Government and International Affairs

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