The prospects for a peaceful two-state solution to the deepening Israeli-Palestinian conflict look bleak, with Israeli forces pushing deeper into the Gaza Strip’s “last refuge” of Rafah as their leaders struggle to set out a postwar regional vision. 

New polling data released by the Pew Research Center on Thursday revealed a sharp acceleration of the long-term decline in the number of Israelis—primarily Jews, but also Arabs—who believe that the country can exist peacefully alongside a future independent Palestinian state. 

The project surveyed 1,001 Israelis in face-to-face interviews between March 3 and April 4, 2024. Only one quarter (26 percent) of respondents told Pew they believe a way can be found for Israel and a Palestinian state “to coexist peacefully.” Fifty percent said they did not believe it was possible at all, with 20 percent saying it depends on future developments. 

Hopes for peaceful coexistence had been waning in the years running up to the current conflagration. Half of all adults surveyed in 2013, for example, believed it possible, dropping to 35 percent in 2023 before the surprise Hamas infiltration attack.  

Israeli Jews account for the collapse in hope, with just 19 percent now believing peaceful coexistence is possible versus 32 percent who believed so in 2023. More Israeli Arabs—44 percent—now believe it is possible than the 41 percent who thought so in 2023. 

Those on the right of the political spectrum, generally less supportive of Palestinian sovereignty, appear have grown more so since October 7, when Hamas and other militant fighters killed some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted more than 250 hostages.  

Pew’s poll found that only 8 percent of right-wing respondents believe it possible to coexist peacefully alongside a Palestinian state. Thirty-three percent of those in the center believe it possible—down from 53 percent in 2023—and 60 percent of those on the left. 

Israel’s effort to “eradicate” Hamas in the Gaza Strip, now nearly eight months old, has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians—per figures from the Gaza Health Ministry cited by the Associated Press—and razed much of the territory. The majority of those living there have been displaced, some multiple times, and the threat of famine looms. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly rebuffed international calls for restraint, and Israeli forces are now closing in on the southern border town of Rafah, which has become a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the fighting elsewhere.  

Israel’s policy vacuum on Gaza was reflected in the Pew results. Forty percent wanted Israel to govern the Strip postwar—a proposed reestablishment of Israeli occupation that President Joe Biden has said would constitute a “big mistake.”  

Rami Igra, a former member of Mossad who served as the head of the agency’s Europe station, told Newsweek during a Jerusalem Press Club briefing on Wednesday that he believes there is little alternative to empowering some kind of “Palestinian entity." 

“We have to realize that we are not dealing with a friendly population that is waiting there to be released from Hamas,” he said. “There are pro-Hamas, and there will be pro-Hamas in the future. Now, how are we going to change the situation? If you try to bring some foreign entity upon them, I would imagine it would be much more difficult than enlisting the Palestinian Authority to run the Gaza Strip.”

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