Polls are being taken around the world to gauge feelings about the current crises in the Middle East. Our own unscientific NOW poll "What group has the best chance of achieving peace in the Middle East" presented the following results:

• Independent bodies like the United Nations: — 60%
  
• The current political administrations in the region:— 17%
  
• Future generations:— 12%
  
• There will never be peace in the Middle East:— 8%

		75% (FOX News: March 12, 2002) 65% (TIME/CNN: March 15, 2002) % of Americans who responded that there will not be peace in the Middle East any time soon. 40% (Israeli MAAREV newspaper): % of Israel Jews pleased with Ariel Sharon's performance. However, 71% of those who answered the same poll support Israeli Army raids on refugee camps. 87.4% (reported by the BBC Monitoring Service): % of students at Al-Najah University in Nablus who support continuation of suicide missions. 64.5% of those questioned in the same survey opposed General Zinni's calls for cease fire and application of the Tenet Plan and Mitchell Report. 46% (Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies): % of Israelis who said they favored the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories. 50% (1994) 35% (2002) (TIME/CNN): Time/CNN asked Americans in 1994 and 2002 what they thought they chances of peace coming soon to the Middle East. In eight years the percentage dropped 15%.

Sources: THE BBC; TIME MAGAZINE/CNN; FOX NEWS; THE SUNDAY TIMES OF LONDON; JAFFEE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES

	NOW VIEWERS SPEAK OUT: Join them on the message boards. Yasser Arafat entered into agreements in which he agreed to crack down on the militants and renounce the use of violence as an instrument of policy. Had he maintained the agreements he entered into, Ariel Sharon would have never been elected Prime Minister.... --keithm The spectacle of tanks and bombs aimed at unarmed people, attempting to defend themselves with sticks and rocks is unconscionable, and should not be condoned by the US, or for that matter, by the international community·How can our country continue to condone such violence and brutality? -- yvonne "Human rights" indeed. Blowing up innocent people is "legitimate form of struggle", but killing the murderers is "human rights violation"· Does the bomb at a Bat Mitzvah party count as "human rights violation", or the murder in a discotheque? Or in a Pizza parlor? Or at a bus stop? In a shopping mall? On a busy street? In a train station? How about an attempt to blow up a school? How about in a cave? In a car? In a school bus? In a regular bus? All of this over one year? -- Kurtlane