THE MIDDLE EAST — Only about one-third of Israelis support a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Iran, according to polling expert Dahlia Scheindlin, a policy fellow at the Century Foundation and columnist for Haaretz. The war, which escalated after the United States and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February, remains popular in Israel despite public opinion polls showing a strong conviction that it had not succeeded in its aims.

"I think of myself as somebody who's pretty in touch with Israeli public opinion, but even I was surprised to find out that only about a third of Israelis support the ceasefire," Scheindlin said. Support for the ceasefire is primarily driven by the Arab population of Israel, while the Jewish population is particularly opposed to it.

At the start of the war, over 90 percent of Jewish Israelis and over 80 percent of all Israelis supported the conflict. Arab citizens of Israel supported the war at much lower rates than Jewish citizens from the outset. By the end of one month, support among Jewish Israelis had fallen below 80 percent, and the overall weighted average across all residents of Israel had dropped to about two-thirds.

"What I think we saw in the surveys was a very strong conviction that the war had not succeeded in its aims, which frankly it doesn't take a political analyst or expert to know, because Prime Minister Netanyahu had quite clearly stated the aims of the war, and they quite clearly were not achieved," Scheindlin said. She noted that one of the stated aims of Israel's military actions against Iran has always been to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons program, another to destroy its ballistic-missile capabilities, and a third to incapacitate Iran's proxy network known as the "axis of resistance." "None of these aims have been achieved," she added.

More than 3,000 Iranians have died since the attacks at the end of February. Schools, shops, and theaters were closed across Israel for almost six weeks during the war. "There is great disappointment in the ceasefire," Scheindlin said.