Americans Still Favor Israel While Warming to Palestinians

Who should make the necessary compromises, the Palestinians or the Israelis?

PRESSURE ON ISRAEL. NRC Correspondent Merijn de Waal wrote last week about the impact of the war between Israel and the Palestinians on American domestic politics (Is Biden Sensitive to Growing US Criticism of Israel?). De Waal showed that the weight Americans attach to the Middle East in their daily lives has diminished. In a periodic Gallup poll, you see sympathy for the Palestinian cause rising over the years, although support for Israel is still significant.

Now that a ceasefire has been agreed upon, partly under pressure from President Biden, Israel, and Hamas, it is interesting to underline the party-political positions. Trump has tried to make Israel a domestic political issue. At every rally, he spoke about the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem. Given the Gallup poll, that seems to have been a futile effort.

The same poll contains a breakdown by party. Across the board, Israel is the Americans’ favorite. But the difference between what Democrats think versus the Republicans and Independents is growing. The differences emerge from the survey, and this chart shows the dynamics of those differences. Since President Obama took office, Republicans have not changed their mind about whether the US administration should put more pressure on Israel when the conflict flares up. The Independents have shifted somewhat to that position. On the other hand, most Democrats have embraced the idea to apply more pressure on the Israelis.

Biden has entered the challenging phase of politics. After the first weeks of record numbers of presidential decrees and record amounts of government aid, now comes the months of the gravel, the political mills that grind in Washington. However cautiously Biden maneuvers – “Until the neighboring countries unequivocally recognize Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state, there can be no peace, says Biden” –

 
Under pressure from that shift in position from his constituency and especially from the left Avant-Garde, the Democratic Party will start to shift its position among Biden’s party members. And that’s currency for the Republicans.