Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Lebanese public opinion--based on surveys and not on the impressions of the handful of Lebanonese that US correspondents talk to. Ad-Duwaliyyah li-l-Ma`lumat is a reputable polling and consulting company in Lebanon. (The owner (who I respect) has offices in An-Nahar building and refuses to refer to the building as "An-Nahar building"). The survey revealed that 57% of Lebanese supported the Hizbullah operation that resulted in the capture of the two Israeli soldiers, while 33.9% of Lebanese opposed. And 65.5 % of Lebanese described the war as "an American-Israeli" war, while 15.6% of Lebanese described it as a Syrian-Iranian war against US/Israel. 59% of Lebanese considered the end of the war a victory for Hizbullah, while 3.7% considered the end of the war a victory of Israel/US. And 9.6% of Lebanese supported the disarming of Hizbullah by force, while 17.4% supported the preservation of Hizbullah weapons, and 34% supported a dialogue about the disarming, and 22.3 support the preservation of the arms in coordination with the state, 11.4% support its removal after the liberation of Shib`a farms and the release of prisoners, while 3.8% support it until the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict.