A poll commissioned in April by The Israel Project indicates that the "opinion elite" in the United States has warm feelings for Israel but is not convinced Israel wants peace.

The survey's results are being published here for the first time.

TIP, an organization that strives to improve Israel's image in America and the rest of the world, polled 500 representatives of the "opinion elite": college graduates with annual incomes above $75,000, who vote in elections, and read newspapers and magazines.

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They were asked, among other things, to rank their attitude toward Israel and Hamas, Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, on a scale of 1 to 100, with below 50 indicating a "cold" attitude and above it a "warm" attitude. Israel received a 66, while the others scored between 19 (Hezbollah) and 30 (Syria).

"Who is to blame for the instability in the Middle East?" the poll asked. Seventy-three percent blamed "Islamic extremism" and only 12 percent named "Israel and its policies."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who on Sunday begins his short visit to Washington, which will include meetings with the president and vice president, was already familiar with these survey findings several weeks ago when he hosted in Jerusalem the president of TIP, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg and President Bush's former press secretary, Ari Fleischer.

They brought figures, data and also recommendations with them. Among the officials who granted the visitors some of their precious time were also Benjamin Netanyahu, Shaul Mofaz, Avi Dichter, Silvan Shalom, Avigdor Lieberman and many others.

TIP is a small but energetic organization that hires the best American pollsters to conduct public opinion surveys. They were initially greeted with distaste, even suspicion in the corridors of the Foreign Ministry, but relations are better now. Aviv Shir-On, the ministry's deputy director general for media and public affairs, delivered a short lecture at a TIP course when he was in Washington two weeks ago.

The poll contains some rather sad working assumptions: 57 percent "strongly agree" that "the Arab countries around Israel are hostile to its existence," and 85 percent overall said they "agree" with that statement. Some 75 percent said they agreed that "the Arabs don't really accept Israel's right to exist."

But there are also findings that suggest a possible course of action. For example, 70 percent cited the need to be "a leader in working for peace" as heading the list of 13 qualities required of an American "ally." But only 16 percent saw this among Israel's traits.

Sixty percent did not agree that "Israel is an obstacle for peace" - but 38 percent did, and 29 percent of them were Republican voters, while 42 percent said they were Democrats. The findings among the general public constitute an improvement over a poll from October 2005, in which 50 percent said Israel is not an obstacle for peace, compared with 43 percent who believed that it was.