Survey data collected by the Brookings Institution, a Washington research and policy-development organization, suggests Arab public opinion supports a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but most Arabs don’t believe it can happen.

In a survey of 4,046 people in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Lebanon and Jordan, 73 percent said they accepted in principle an independent Palestine living side-by-side in peace with Israel, but 55 percent said they don’t believe it will ever happen and 27 percent said they believe the two-state outcome is inevitable but it’s going to take a very long time to achieve.

Researchers suggested that skepticism fuels violence, which makes a two-state solution very difficult to achieve. (See “New Research Shows Increased Arab Support for Two-State Solution.”)

Specifically, people who believe the two-state solution is either impossible or far in the future “end up in effect acting like they support militancy, and in fact supporting militancy,” Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat professor at the University of Maryland, said at a Brookings briefing on the survey.

Is there an approach that will help translate the intellectual acceptance of a two-state solution into behavior that will support that solution? Or will the region remain trapped in an endless circle of skepticism?