The 2017 Global Peace Index has just been published by the Institute for Economics and Peace. Israel has the misfortune of being ranked 144 out of 163 countries ranked. It fell one place from the 2016 report due to continuing failure to make progress in the peace process.
Among the most alarming findings were that Israel’s “militarization index” was rated 3.9 out of 5 (5 being the worst). For nuclear weapons and arms exports, Israel ranked 5 out of 5. Under “relations with neighboring countries” it ranked 4 out of 5. Military expenditure ranked 3.5 out of 5. It ranked 3 out of 5 under the categories of “perception of criminality (in society), level of incarceration, access to weapons, intensity of internal conflict, level of protest violence, impact of terrorism.
Pretty much, if your country is in the news a lot for the kind of “if it bleeds, it leads” stories TV journalism loves, you wind up closer to the bottom than the top. Iceland is at the top, Syria is at the bottom. (Iraq and Afghanistan are list neighbors because, like Syria, active wars are going on inside them.) For a country not fighting a civil war, Israel is at an amazingly low position on the list, and all it took was never coming to a legitimate peace agreement with the Palestinians, and being the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East. With some work they could vie with North Korea for the 150th slot.