JERUSALEM - Fifty-seven percent of Israelis said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not have rejected US President Barack Obama's outline for Mideast peace, according to a telephone survey conducted by the Ma'ariv daily Tuesday night.

The poll is comprised of 550 adults, among them immigrants and Arab Israelis.

Nearly half (46.8 percent) said that Netanyahu should have declared his support for Obama's peace plan while "voicing reservations." About 48 percent said the prime minister should have kept his criticism of Obama to closed meetings.

In his Mideast policy speech last Thursday, Obama called for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 cease-fire lines as the basis for renewing negotiations with the Palestinians. Netanyahu rejected the idea in a televised meeting the following day, saying that Israel cannot go back to "indefensible" borders in light of the demographic and security changes that have taken place over four decades.

The prime minister reiterated that message in an address before a joint session of the US Congress on Tuesday.

"Israel will be generous on the size of the Palestinian state, but will also be firm on the borders it shares with it," Netanyahu said. "We will not go back to borders of June 4, 1967."

Netanyahu's address did not include a diplomatic initiative that would enable the stalled peace process to resume. Rather, Netanyahu laid out his conditions for a peace deal: A Palestinian recognition of Israel's right to exist; resolving the Palestinian refugee problem outside Israel's borders; a Jerusalem remaining undivided and under Israeli sovereignty; a continued military presence in the Jordan Valley; and a future demilitarized Palestinian state.

However, despite the demands, Netanyahu said he was willing "to make painful compromises in order to achieve a historic peace." He said that some Jewish settlements in the West Bank will remain outside Israel's borders in a future peace deal, though he did not say if their residents would be expelled, as in the Gaza Strip pullout in 2005.

The address, accompanied by applause and some 30 standing ovations by American lawmakers, had also bolstered Netanyahu's popularity in Israel.

Netanyahu, according to the survey, is still also seen as the best fit to lead Israel. Fifty-six percent of the polled, however, said they were unsatisfied with his "functioning" as prime minister.