There has been confusion about Israeli sentiments regarding the country’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and skepticism which he has declared regarding diplomatic overtures toward the West being made by Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. Netanyahu had emphasized that the Iranians may be duplicitiously using the prospect for negotiations to lock in nuclear infrastructure on the way toward constructing a weapon.

Some reports have gone so far as to suggest that a recent speech Netanyahu gave to the United Nations General Assembly fell flat in Israel, though more or less the opposite was the case.

A poll published Wednesday by Israel’s widely read Israel Hayom sought to directly address the question. The results were not close:

A majority of Israelis would support unilateral military action against Iran, according to a poll published Friday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was ready to act alone. Some 65.6 percent of 500 Jewish Israelis surveyed by the pro-government Israel HaYom newspaper said they would support military strikes to halt Iran’s nuclear programme, and 84 percent believed the Islamic republic had no intention of reining in its alleged drive to build a bomb.

[Photo: Oren Rozen / Wiki Commons]