Israelis most want ties with Saudi Arabia next - poll
The UAE is the country most Israelis want to visit.
By LAHAV HARKOVGIRLS STAND next to a poster depicting Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (right) and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2017. (photo credit: REUTERS/REEM BAESHEN)
More Israelis want the country to deepen relations with Saudi Arabia than with any other country in the region, a new poll by Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies found.About a quarter of respondents (24%) said it is “most important for Israel to develop cooperation” with Saudi Arabia, followed by Egypt at 12%, the United Arab Emirates at 11% and Jordan at 4%.The most popular answer to that question was “no Arab country” at 28%; Arab-Israelis were far more likely to give that answer, with 54% of them saying so, while only 23% of Israeli Jews did.The UAE is the country the most Israelis would like to visit, at 23%, followed by Lebanon at 7%. Here, too, a plurality (42%) answered “no Arab country,” and slightly more Arabs said so than Jews.Nearly half of Israelis (44%) said the economic field – specified to mean tourism, trade and technology – is the most important to develop in cooperation with the UAE. That was followed by security at 24%, political at 16% and civil at 5%.Following peace with the UAE, 67% of Israeli Jews believed the next most important step is for Israel to reach similar agreements with other Arab countries, while 24% said it is to try to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians. Among Arabs, 29% said to make deals with other Arab states, while 48% preferred the Palestinians.Forty percent of Israelis said they believed the agreement with the UAE did not impact the prospects of achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace, while 34% said it increased those prospects, while 12% said it decreased them.Israel’s suspension of extending its laws to parts of Judea and Samaria, as part of the agreement with the UAE, was approved by nearly half (46%) of Israelis, while 21% thought it was a bad move.The vast majority of Israelis (74%) believed regional cooperation between Israel and Middle Eastern countries is possible, and a narrow plurality of Israelis (29%) believed the country is more Middle Eastern than Mediterranean (25%) or European (24%).Nearly half of Israelis (43%) saw Europe as unfriendly to Israel, and only 29% said it was friendly.After the US, the country respondents saw as most important for Israel was Russia (18%), followed by Germany (12%), the UK (6%), Egypt (6%) and Japan (5%). Russia has topped this category in each annual poll since 2014, but it has sharply declined since 2017, when 51% of Israelis ranked it most important.Israelis ranked relations with the US at 8.05 out of 10, and 50% wanted Donald Trump to be reelected as president, while 21% wanted Biden. This result differed somewhat from an i24 News poll released this week that showed 63.3% of Israelis preferred Trump, while 18.8% preferred Biden.Israelis gave the government’s handling of foreign policy an average score of 6.05 out of 10, a ranking that has risen steadily over the past five years. About half (48%) did not think the Foreign Ministry’s status had changed under Gabi Ashkenazi’s tenure as minister, but 46% said it would worsen if Miri Regev becomes foreign minister in accordance with the rotation agreement between the Likud and Blue and White.The Rafi Smith Institute conducted the poll for Mitvim in September, among 700 people, a representative sample of Israel’s population. The margin of error is 3.5%.
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