One year after Benjamin Netanyahu of the nationalist Likud party took office at the helm of a right-wing coalition, nearly two-thirds of Israelis would like their prime minister to form a more centrist government, a poll showed Friday, according to dpa. According to the Dahaf Institute survey, 65 per cent of Israelis want to see the largest opposition party, the centrist Kadima, replace the ultra-nationalist Israel Beitenu of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the ultra-Orthodox Shas parties in the governing coalition. The survey, which polled 500 people and has a margin of error of 4.4 per cent, was commissioned by Israel's biggest-selling daily, Yediot Ahronot, ahead of the first anniversary of the Netanyahu government, on March 31, 2009. The poll also found that if new elections were to be held today, Netanyahu's governing coalition would obtain 68 of the 120 mandates in the Knesset (parliament), down from the 74 it won a year ago. However, Defence Minister Ehud Barak would emerge as the biggest loser in a hypothetical new ballot, with plummeting support for his Labour Party delivering it just eight mandates, compared to its current 13, the poll found. That finding was likely to increase pressure on Barak, who has faced increasing calls from party activists to quit Netanyahu's coalition of otherwise pro-settler and hawkish parties. According to the Dahaf poll, a narrow majority of Israelis - 51 per cent - think Israel should continue building in occupied East Jerusalem, while 46 per cent of them think the government should freeze construction in East Jerusalem. Nearly 60 per cent of respondents said they did not believe that the current government would be able to achieve a breakthrough in negotiations with the Palestinians.
