War and Peace Index: Israelis Give Government Top Marks for Security; Less Approval of Economic and Social Policies
Posted on: January 11, 2010

The Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University recently released its War and Peace Index for December 2009.  Among the key findings:

  • A majority of the Israeli Jewish public considers that the present government is functioning well or even better in the security sphere, medium in the economic sphere, and not well to poorly in the social sphere.
  • In the Israeli Arab public, a majority thinks the government is functioning not well to poorly in all the spheres.
  • When it comes to forecasts for the coming year in the security sphere, a clear majority – 57% – of the Jewish pubic believes the situation will remain as it is, 19% think there will be significant progress in peace talks, and only 13% foresee a further round of violent struggle between Israel and the Palestinians (11% do not know). In the Arab public the segmentation of the forecasts is very similar, though the rate of the optimists who expect progress in peace negotiations is higher – 35%.

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