JERUSALEM: Nearly one out of every two Israelis thinks the country's international standing is poor following Israel's most serious crisis with the United States in decades, according to a poll published Monday on the eve of the Passover holiday. As Jews around the world were making last-minute preparations for the spring festival — which marks the biblical story of the Hebrews' exodus from Egypt — a poll in the Maariv daily showed increasing concern following the open rift between the governments of the world's two largest Jewish centers. The US and Israel are at odds over Israeli construction in east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city claimed by the Palestinians. The US is demanding that Israel halt building to facilitate peace talks. Israel says it can build anywhere in the city. Asked how they would define Israel's international standing, only 14 percent of Israelis said it was good, 37 percent called it reasonable and more than 48 percent called it bad. The TNS/Teleseker survey questioned 500 people and had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points. Israel has been under fire internationally since last winter's Gaza war, with a UN commission accusing it of war crimes. Israel's relations with allies such as Turkey, Britain and Australia have also faltered. Relations with the US administration has reached such a low point, said an editorial in the daily Haaretz, that Washington has demanded written Israeli commitments, since "the spoken word has no meaning." The Maariv poll showed that more than 46 percent of Israelis still support a peace deal with the Palestinians that includes the return of almost all of the war-won territory in the West Bank. Just under 39 percent said they were opposed to such a deal and 15 percent did not respond. On Sunday, Israel said it was imposing a closure on the West Bank as a security measure for the weeklong holiday. The routine measure, which was to begin at midnight, bars almost all Palestinians from entering Israel. At the height of Israeli-Palestinian fighting last decade a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a hotel Seder in 2002, killing some 30 people.
