What Kind of Salmon is She Smoking?

Condoleezza Rice had the following exchange with Cal Thomas in an October 25 interview that was excerpted in Jewish World Review on October 28:

QUESTION:  You’re all over the conservative Jewish blogs for remarks you made recently on the Palestinian state, your commitment to it, living side by side with Israel, and that’s been the policy of the Administration since day one.

SECRETARY RICE:  Yes.

QUESTION:  I’d like to know what evidence you have — I read, and I know you do and a lot more than I do, the sermons, the editorials in the Middle East, the right of return idea, which a lot of people think is just basically overwhelming for a Jewish population with millions and millions of Arabs in the so-called Diaspora.  What evidence do you have that teaching their schoolchildren at the ages of four and five to be martyrs, to show up in their little uniforms with plastic guns and their headbands, textbooks one grenade plus two grenades equals, you know, three grenades — what evidence do you have out there that if they had an independent state that they would lay down their arms and not complete the mission of killing the Jews and throwing them out?

SECRETARY RICE:  Well, you can look at any opinion poll in the Palestinian territories and 70 percent of the people will say they’re perfectly ready to live side by side with Israel because they just want to live in peace. . . .

Well let’s look at the most recent poll in the Palestinian territories, conducted last month by the Jerusalem Media & Communication Centre — an organization established by Palestinian journalists and researchers with offices in East Jerusalem and Ramallah.  The JMCC states that it provides services to “journalists, researchers, international agencies, individuals and organizations interested in obtaining reliable information on the Palestinian territory”:

Q. 1  Some believe that a two state formula is the favored solution for the Arab-Israeli conflict, while others believe that historic Palestine can’t be divided and thus the favored solution is a bi-national state on all of Palestine where Palestinians and Israeli enjoy equal representation and rights, which of these solutions do you prefer?

Here are the numbers for the answers in the poll:

A.  Two-state solution:  46.6%.

B.  Total for “Bi-national state on all of historic Palestine,” “one Palestinian State,” “Islamic State,” and “No solution”:  50.9%.

C.  Total for “Don’t Know” or “No answer” or “Other”:  2.1%.

Somebody needs to let Condi know that, based on the most recent poll, a majority of Palestinians prefer a one-state solution (or no solution), not a two-state one. 

Apparently the CIA doesn’t know or hasn’t briefed her, so it falls to a conservative Jewish blog.