How's It Going?
Ahead of Israel Independence Day, IDI and Tel Aviv University Peace Index offers a statistical snapshot of how Israelis feel about life in Israel
Happy birthday, Israel!
On the 5th of the Hebrew month of Iyyar (Tuesday, May 2), the State of Israel will celebrate its 69th birthday. The Israel Democracy Institute’s Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research and Tel Aviv University this month asked Israelis, “How’s it going?”
The answer: Nearly 50% of the Israeli public said they see Israel’s overall situation as “good” or “very good” (Jews: 43.9% and Arabs 66%). And when it comes to their personal situations, 74 percent of Jews and 57 percent of Arabs said they see their situations as good or very good.
Citizens are fairly proud and optimistic. Some 80 percent of Israeli citizens are proud to be Israeli (Jews: 86.1% and Arabs 51.1%). Seventy-three percent of Jews and 61 percent of Arabs are optimistic about Israel’s future, and the majority of both Jews (82%) and Arabs (58%) said they feel “to a moderately large extent” or “to a very large extent” a part of the state of Israel and its problems.
Nearly 50% of the Israeli public said they see Israel’s overall situation as 'good' or 'very good.'
The survey asked how Israelis assess Israel’s achievements on a number of issues:
Maintaining security: Eighty-one percent of the Israeli public sees Israel’s ability to maintain the country’s security as “moderately good” or “good.” Only 2.6 percent see it as “not good at all.”
Maintaining economic stability: Here, too, Israelis are confidence in their state. Some 62% of Jews and 75% of Arabs see the situation as moderately good or good. However, when it comes to reducing social gaps, more than one-third (35.6%) of the public sees the situation as “not so good” or “not good at all.”
Attentiveness to what citizens want: Only 2 percent of Jews and 5 percent of all Israelis think Israeli leadership is doing a moderately good or very good job at paying attention to what citizens want. In fact, a majority of Jews believe the situation is not so good (47.9%) or not good at all (28.7%).
Not surprisingly, when it comes to questions of medicine, health, education and science, Israelis rank their state high. Some 70 percent of Israelis see Israel’s achievements in the fields of medicine and health as moderately good or good, and 61% see its achievements in education and science the same.
This Independence Day survey was taken as part of the monthly Peace Index, a project of the Evens Program for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research of the Israel Democracy Institute. This month's survey was conducted by telephone on April 18-19, 2017, by the Midgam Research Institute. The survey included 600 respondents, who constitute a representative national sample of the adult population aged 18 and over. The maximum measurement error for the entire sample is ±4.1% at a confidence level of 95%.
For more information, interviews or a copy of the complete questionnaire (in Hebrew): Maayan Hoffman, Director of International Communications, +972-50-718-9742 or jaffemaayan@idi.org.il.