Nearly half of coalition voters say security worse under current gov't

The Israel Democracy Institute published on Sunday "The Israeli Voice" survey, which deals with conscription matters as well as internal security in the country and the general military situation.

This comes ahead of discussions on the issue of repealing the reasonableness law at the High Court of Justice and the expected engagement with conscription laws.

The survey shows that 40% of the public supports the enactment of a law that exempts ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service.

The survey also asked whether it is legitimate in the eyes of the public that young people, before conscription, make moves to avoid compulsory conscription as part of their opposition to the legal reform. To this, a total of 20% of the respondents answered it is legitimate.

Even among respondents opposed to the judicial reform, there is a majority of 56% who oppose avoiding compulsory conscription, alongside 34% of the respondents who claimed that it was a legitimate step.

Support for avoiding conscription, stronger if the Draft Law passes

Regarding avoidance of conscription with regard to the exemption of yeshiva students from conscription, the supporters of the anti-judicial reform protest are divided: 46% support such a move by those required to draft while 45% are opposed.

Among those who do not support the protest, 32% favor avoiding conscription under these circumstances, and 62% oppose it.

Some 63% of secular respondents who defined themselves as "left-wing" support measures to avoid conscription due to the ultra-Orthodox exemption, 42% of secularists who identify themselves as "center" voters, and another 30% among secularists who define themselves as "right-wing" support to a certain extent not being drafted into the army. This shows that this issue is expressed in all political camps.

Meanwhile, the Democracy Institute's survey also examined the government's performance in the field of internal security and strategic military security.

In the survey questions, the interviewees were asked to refer to the functioning of the government with reference to the previous government, whether in the past the situation was better, worse, or unchanged.

In the field of internal security, 61% of the respondents answered that the situation today is worse compared to only 15% who answered that the situation today is better.

In the field of military and strategic security, the negative trends in public sentiments are more moderate but still negative. 48.5% answered that the situation today is less good, 20.5% answered that the situation is better, and 27% claimed that the situation remained unchanged under the last two governments in Israel.

On this issue, the most typical pattern among Likud voters in the military security field holds that there is no change in the security picture between the governments (37%).

This contrasts with the the internal security issue results according to which the prevailing position among Likud voters is that the situation today is worse than it was under the previous government ( 46%).

Prof. Tamar Herman, a senior fellow and the academic director of the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research who conducted the survey together with Dr. Or Anbi: "As expected, most of the voters of the opposition parties think that Israel's external security and internal security have been damaged under the Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben-Gvir government. But much less expected is the widespread assessment among the voters of the coalition parties that the situation in both areas has not improved but remains as it was under the previous government, whose performance in these areas the prime minister and his supporters constantly criticized."

"As for avoiding mandatory conscription, a minority of the public is in favor of it, but it depends on the circumstances," she added, "As part of the protest, this is a small minority that supports such a move, but as a response to the enactment of a new conscription outline that will exempt the ultra-orthodox soldiers from service, this is already a very large minority that is expected to grow if a law is proposed this will come to a vote in the Knesset. And if that were to happen, the Israeli national consensus would fall under the feet of the 'people's army' model and all that implies."

The August 23 Israel Vote Index was conducted by the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion Research at the Israel Democracy Institute. In the survey conducted on the Internet and by telephone, 621 Jewish men and women were interviewed in the Hebrew language and 150 in the Arabic language, which constitute a representative sample of the entire adult population in Israel aged 18+.