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Arab Center finds Israelis back the wars and reject a Palestinian state
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The Israeli public supports its government's wars and is dissatisfied with what they produced. That is the finding Mtanes Shihadeh sets out in a paper published on 17 August by the Arab Center Washington DC, a research institution founded to put Arab analysis into the American policy debate.
Shihadeh, who directs the Israel Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel in Haifa, reads two survey series: the Mitvim Institute's foreign policy index for 2026, published in June, and the monthly national security surveys of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University.
The numbers he draws are not close ones. On an international agreement that would establish a demilitarised Palestinian state, 45 percent were opposed and 39 percent in favour. Thirty-seven percent backed a return to fighting and the full occupation of the Gaza Strip until Hamas's capabilities are destroyed.
Thirty-three percent approved annexing Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Twenty-two percent supported two states.
On Iran, 49 percent wanted the war resumed to bring down the government in Tehran, while 66 percent judged the American agreement with Iran bad for Israel and 37 percent said Iran had won it.
Shihadeh's conclusion is about incentives rather than mood. In an election year, he argues, a coalition reading those figures will hold to the military answers it believes improve its standing at the ballot box.
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