Poll finds frustration with government 50 days in

The survey revealed that 27% of the general public gives the Likud-led government a grade of 0 (on a scale of satisfaction from 0 to 5) while only 8.8% gave the government a grade of 5.

By GIL STERN STERN HOFFMAN
Updated: JULY 9, 2015 02:03
The Knesset (photo credit: REUTERS)
The Knesset
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Israelis give poor grades to their government in the monthly Peace Index poll released Tuesday by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University that was taken last week to mark the government’s 50th day.
Twenty-seven percent of the general public gives the Likud-led government a grade of 0 (on a scale of satisfaction from 0 to 5) while only 8.8% gave it a grade of 5, the survey revealed.
Dissatisfaction with the main opposition party is even greater, with 27% of the general public giving the Zionist Union a grade of 0 for its performance at the head of the opposition, while only 3.5% gave it a grade of 5.
Fifty-seven percent of respondents do not trust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike an appropriate balance between the interests of Israel’s citizens as a whole and the government’s commitment to private companies, the survey found. But the public also doubts Netanyahu’s critics, with 43% saying that people who attack the prime minister for his position on a proposed natural gas deal are waging a political battle against him that is not necessarily related to the gas issue, and 39% who disagree.
The survey revealed that the general principles of the gas agreement that has been struck between the government and the gas exploration companies – the American Noble Energy and the Israeli Delek Group – are not clear to the majority of the public. Sixty-three percent of respondents indicated that the principles of this deal, which defines how the natural gas industry will be structured, how gas will be priced, and who will receive the profits, are not clear to them; 42% indicated that they “did not know” whether they support or oppose the deal. Equal shares of respondents supported (29.7%) and opposed (28.8%) the agreement.
The majority of the public (52%) supports Culture Minister Miri Regev’s policy on the arts and believes that as culture minister, she has the right to prevent state funding of artistic works whose content is not in line with the interests of the country.
Thirty-six percent of respondents indicated that they do not agree with her.
In addition, 52% of respondents felt that Regev was right when she announced that she would not support the Jerusalem Film Festival if it screened a documentary film on Yigal Amir, the assassin of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, as opposed to 32% who thought that Regev was wrong to make this assertion.
This survey, conducted by telephone from June 29 to July 1, included 600 respondents who constitute a representative sample of the adult population of Israel aged 18 and over. The maximum measurement error for the entire sample is ±4.1% at a confidence level of 95%.