Israelis saw two-state solution become a distant reality even before Oct 7 Hamas attack, Pew Research finds

A large number of Israelis grew skeptical of the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine even before Hamas launched its all-out offensive against the Jewish country in October, a survey by Pew Research has found.

According to the survey, conducted between March and April 2023, only 35 per cent of Israelis think “a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully.”

The optimism about the two-state solution simmered down among Arab and Jewish Israelis alike. Even so, the views of Arabs living in Israel have shifted more than their Jewish counterparts.

The survey found Arab Israelis are now 33 points less likely than they were in 2013 to see the possibility of the existence of Israel and an independent Palestinian state as opposed to Jewish Israelis are 14 points to see that possibility.

Divisions among political alignments

Views on the two-state solution differ among people based on their political affiliations. For example, 73 per cent of Israelis on the political left believe that a way can be found for the two states to co-exist peacefully as compared to 53 per cent of those in the center and 14 per cent of those on the right who do not.

Meanwhile, people who do not support the Israeli coalition government are more likely to think that the two-state solution is possible than those who support the governing coalition to believe a way can be found to coexist peacefully.

‘Iran, Israel has only one thing in common’

The only thing Iran and Israel share is that both do not believe in a two-state solution, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said on Monday via translation at an international forum in Doha.

During the forum, Amirabdollahian reiterated Iran’s proposal that a referendum be held to determine the fate of Palestine, with only descendants of those who lived there prior to 1948 being permitted to vote.

With inputs from Reuters