'69% of Israelis favor US-Israeli strike on Iran'

JPost -- Joint Israeli-Palestinian poll find fewer Israelis are keen on a unilateral Israeli strike than one in cooperation with US.Sixty-nine percent of Israelis are in favor of cooperation between Israeli and the US in a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities while 26 percent oppose it, a joint Israeli-Palestinian poll released Wednesday found.

In a scenario in which Israel acted unilaterally, however, the percentage of Israelis supportive of a strike on Iran drops to 42%. The majority of both Palestinians and Israelis believe that an Israeli strike would lead to a large-scale regional war, and 46% of Palestinians believe an Israeli strike will take place.

The poll was conducted by the Harry S.Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

The majority of both Israelis (64%) and Palestinians (68%) are skeptical that a Palestinian state will be established alongside Israel in the next five years, the survey found. Almost half of Israeli respondents answered that a two-state solution is doomed to fail, while 44% think it is still relevant. The solution of one state for two peoples did not fare any better, with almost two-thirds of both sides opposing the idea.

On both sides the majority supports their respective government's stance on Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Most of the Israelis polled (68%) rejected the Palestinian pre-conditions that Israel commit to return to the pre-1967 lines with land swaps and a halt of settlement construction. Meanwhile, 58% of Palestinians polled opposed returning to the negotiation table without those conditions.

The Palestinian sample was drawn from residents of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and east Jerusalem and included 1,270 respondents aged 18 and over, from 127 locations in those areas who were interviewed face-to-face. The interviews were conducted between March 15 and March 17, 2012. The margin of error was 3%.

The Israeli sample included 600 respondents interviewed by telephone in Hebrew, Arabic and Russian between March 11 and March 15, 2012. The margin of error was 4.5%.