Poll: 60% pessimistic about the future of democratic governance in Israel

A new poll has found that 6 in 10 Israelis are concerned for the future of democratic governance in Israel.

The Israel Democracy Institute’s November 2024 Israeli Voice Index, which polled 750 people across the country last week, also found Israelis divided over whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is capable of functioning as needed while giving testimony in his corruption trial, and showed 42% of Jews in favor of resettling Gaza, among other findings.

Asked by the IDI how they felt “about the state of democratic governance in Israel in the foreseeable future,” 60.5% said pessimistic, 36.1% said optimistic and 3.4% didn’t know.

Among Jewish respondents, 57.7% were pessimistic; among Arab respondents 74.3% were pessimistic. Among Jewish respondents, 38.5% were optimistic; among Arab respondents 24.6% were optimistic.

Netanyahu testifying and governing

Meanwhile, the IDF found that nearly 50 percent of Israelis believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot function appropriately as a wartime prime minister while testifying in his ongoing corruption trial. He is set to begin giving evidence on December 10.

48% of Israelis believe he cannot function as needed while testifying, while 46% think he can.

The prime minister has been charged with fraud and breach of trust in two cases and with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in a third. He was indicted in January 2020, and a trial encompassing all three cases began in May of that year.

Two of the cases deal with efforts by the prime minister — whose government has been accused by journalists of working to stifle the free press — to allegedly obtain positive media coverage via unlawful means.

While 49% of Jewish respondents believe the prime minister can function under the circumstances, 61% of Arabs believe that he cannot both effectively testify and lead the country.

Among Jews, views on the issue are split along partisan lines, with 70% of left-wing respondents and 55% in the center saying he cannot function appropriately while testifying, versus 34% on the right.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu asked the Jerusalem District Court to reduce his expected testimony from three times a week to twice a week, citing his busy schedule due to security meetings and the need for communication with officials abroad.

Netanyahu also asked not to testify on consecutive days and to be allowed to start giving evidence an hour later than the scheduled time of 9 a.m.

The State Attorney’s Office said it was opposed to the request, prompting Netanyahu’s defense team to accuse it of unfairly creating difficulties for the premier.

The court rejected his request.

‘Longstanding anti-Israel bias’

Regarding the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant last month, 53% of Israelis overall and 61% of Jewish respondents told the IDI that they believed the move was motivated by “the Court’s longstanding anti-Israel bias.”

Twenty-three percent of Israelis, both Jewish and Arab, said that the warrants were issued because “Israel has been ineffective in its PR efforts abroad” while 16% said it stemmed from the way in which Israel has been conducting the war in Gaza.

Among Arab respondents, 50% said that they believed the warrants were tied to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip.

No to the judicial overhaul

Recent months have seen increasingly strident calls by members of Netanyahu’s coalition to fire Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and to resume the government’s judicial overhaul program aimed at curbing the power of the High Court of Justice.

Asked about their views on the revival of parts of the overhaul, 56% of respondents indicated that they believe it is wrong to advance such an agenda “against the backdrop of the continuing war and the need for social cohesion,” down from a larger majority of 65% this May.

Returning the hostages

Asked if Israel’s leadership is “doing its utmost to secure the release of the hostages,” 57% of respondents responded negatively.

Among Arabs, only 25% believe that the government is doing enough to return the hostages, down from 30% in March, while 43% of Jews think that the government is doing enough, down from 52%.

Among Jews, 14% on the left and 20% in the center believe the government’s actions are sufficient. Sixty percent of those on the right believe the government is doing its utmost, down from 66% in March.

Settling Gaza

On the question of reestablishing Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, 58.4% opposed resettling and 36.1% favored resettling. Of these, 52.2% of Jews and 88.6% of Arabs expressed opposition to reviving Gaza’s settlements, which were dismantled during the 2005 Disengagement. Forty-two percent of Jews support reviving Israel’s Gaza settlements, and 7.7% of Arabs back the move,

While Netanyahu is reportedly against doing so, members of his government have expressed support for reestablishing settlements.

Last month, Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf toured the Gaza border area with settler activists and was photographed with a map of potential settlement sites labeled, in English, “map of the [settlement nuclei] in Gaza.”

Speaking at a conference organized by the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing Israeli municipalities in the West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently stated that Israel should occupy Gaza and “encourage” half of the Strip’s 2.2 million Palestinians to emigrate within two years.

Regarding the establishment of an Israeli military government in Gaza, however, 49% are in favor, 42% are against and 9% don’t know. Among Arabs, 82% oppose such a move while only 11% expressed support.

Among Jews, support for Jewish settlement in Gaza rises from only 12.5% on the left and 18.5% in the center to 59.5% on the right. Only 11.5% of those on the left support a military government while 68% of those on the right are in favor.

Among those who support reestablishing settlements, 31% said that they were in favor “to correct the mistake of the unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005” while “Gaza is part of the Land of Israel” came in second at 25.5%.

And 23.5% said that they support resettlement “to provide better protection for residents of the Gaza border region” and 17% said that they were in favor of doing so as “punishment” for October 7.

Protecting Arab citizens from rocket attacks

There have been multiple Arab and Druze deaths from Hamas and Hezbollah rocket fire over the past year and the IDI has found that 52% of Israelis believe that the state should “invest more resources in providing protective structures in Arab localities.”

However, while 88.5% of Arabs agree with this sentiment, only 44.5% of Jews agreed.