How Do Americans Feel About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Now? It's Complicated, Says a New Study.
The Brookings Institution’s Saban Center is a fixture of Washington’s Middle East policy establishment. Prime ministers and secretaries of state have spoken at the center’s yearly forum, and when a respected Brookings-affiliated researcher finds that a 46 percent plurality of Americans back U.S. action on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the UN, the think tank’s imprimatur strongly suggests that the finding reflect some broader reality in public opinion. But University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami’s latest poll of American attitudes on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, published earlier this month, is worth a closer look, both in spite of, and because of, its lofty provenance. Along with its discovery of a broad base of support for prospective American peacemaking efforts at the UN, the study contains a number of startling findings.
According to the survey, 55 percent of Democrats agree with the statement that Israel is a burden to the United States—but 70 percent also agree with the statement that the country is an “important ally.” Some 46 percent of respondents—including 60 percent of Democrats—agree with the U.S. imposing “economic sanctions or more serious action” over Israel’s West Bank settlement policies. Only 34 percent of respondents, and just a slim 51 percent majority of Republicans, support the U.S. using its Security Council veto to block a resolution on Palestinian statehood.