In January this year protests broke out across Israel against plans by the coalition to reform the judiciary, widely seen as a move designed to end judicial review of the government’s policies. Haaretz, the left-leaning Israeli newspaper, described the new government as “the most extreme right-wing, racist, homophobic and theocratic coalition in Israel’s history” - an impression Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich did nothing to dispel with a speech in March in which he declared: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.

Such skepticism has been fueled by the policies of the right-wing governments of Benjamin Netanyahu, who since 1996 has served 15 years as prime minister, over four separate terms in office.Īfter the formation in December 2022 of the latest Israeli coalition government, widely regarded as the most right-wing the country has seen, Netanyahu’s Likud party unnerved even its US allies by announcing plans to “advance and develop settlements in all parts of Israel - in the Galilee, the Negev Desert, the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria (West Bank).” Unsurprisingly, the survey finds that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians - 86 percent of the 693 who expressed a view - believe that the current Israeli government is not serious about signing a peace deal, a prospect about which only 14 percent remain optimistic. The survey, titled “Prospects, Peace and Politics: Where do Palestinians stand?,” was published on the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. LONDON: A new Arab News/YouGov survey has identified a broad sense of despair among many Palestinians who feel trapped between an Israeli government they believe has no interest in forging peace and a Palestinian leadership they do not trust to successfully negotiate a deal with Israel.

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