Summary: Introduction
• In general, JMCC's July polls showed a further decline in support for the peace process, the Oslo agreements, the Palestinian Authority, President Arafat, and the Palestinian Legislative Council. Although, in general, the changes fall within the margin of error, it remains a change to the negative. In the case of people's attitude towards Arafat's performance, however, the drop was beyond the margin of error.
• The level of pessimism about the future has increased by 3.3% since last May, from 22.5% to 25.7%.
• When asked how their opinion has changed in comparison with last year on the peace process and Oslo 7.1% of the people surveyed said their opinion of the peace process worsened (compared to 7.5% improved), while 65.2% said that their opinion worsened on Oslo (compared 4.3% improved). Similar trends appeared regarding opinions on the Palestinian Legislative Council, opposition groups, Fatah and Hamas, although less extreme.
• More specifically, strong support for the Oslo agreements dropped 19.7% in December 1996 to 8.2% today. Opposition to the agreements increased to 30.4% compared to 19.1% last December.
• The percentage of people rating President Arafat's overall performance as "good" dropped from 53.8% last May to 49.5%. In actuality, this drop could be translated into a loss of more than 75000 supporters. This drop was evident in the Gaza Strip than in the West Bank. Those who rated Arafat's performance as "good" in Gaza dropped from 67.1% in May to 59.5% in July; in the West Bank there was a decline from 46% in May to 43.8% in July.
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