The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University recently released its War and Peace Index for May 2008. Among the key findings:

On the eve of President Obama’s address in Cairo, only about one-third (31%) of the Israeli Jewish public saw his position on solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as neutral. A majority of 55% think he leans more to the Palestinian side, and only 5%
say he favors the Israeli side. Moreover, 60% do not trust the president to take into account and uphold Israel’s interests in his efforts to improve America’s relations with the Arab world.

One can perhaps understand, then, the view of the majority — 65% — that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington was not successful (19% think that it was), even though 56% think the positions he presented there were
appropriate, neither too tough nor too compliant (13% think he presented overly tough positions, 9% that they were too compliant, and the rest do not know).

Yet, despite views Netanyahu has recently voiced on a solution to the conflict, and particularly his refusal to declare his support for a Palestinian state, an overwhelming majority of the Jewish public still thinks a settlement with the Palestinians is
impossible outside of the two-states-for-two-peoples formula (67%), with only 18% saying it would be possible. A segmentation of the answers by party vote in the latest
elections shows that, with the exception of the National Union, voters for all the parties see it as impossible to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians outside of the two-states-for-two-peoples solution. At the same time, the majority, 52%, opposes a two-state solution if it requires substantial concessions by Israel, compared to 41% who are prepared for an agreement entailing such concessions.

Click here to download the entire War and Peace index in PDF format »