New poll finds that 48% of Americans say the U.S. should increase pressure on the PA to compromise for peace, rather than on Israel.
As President Barack Obama is set to arrive for his visit to Israel, the results of a new Gallup poll released Monday find that a majority of Americans prefer that, should the President choose to pressure one of the sides in the Israeli-Arab conflict over the peace process, he should choose to pressure the Palestinian Authority.
According to the poll, 48% of Americans say the United States should increase pressure on the Palestinian Authority to compromise in order to achieve peace, rather than on the Israelis. 25% believe that Israelis should be the ones to be pressured by Obama, while an additional 18% think the U.S. needs to ramp up pressure on both sides, or on neither.
The results are from Gallup’s February 7-10 World Affairs survey. The previous two times Gallup asked this question, in 2007 and 2008, somewhat fewer Americans than today said the U.S. should lean more heavily on PA Arabs; however, it was still the modal response.
Anywhere from a slim to a solid majority of Republicans, conservatives, and adults with less than a college degree want the U.S. to put more pressure on the PA, Gallup found. By contrast, Democrats and postgraduates are closely divided in their views of where more pressure is needed, while liberals want the U.S. to put more pressure on the Israelis.
All age groups would put more pressure on PA Arabs than the Israelis, but this preference is more pronounced among older adults than among those aged 18 to 34.
A majority of Americans continue to support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the poll found. 44% favor establishing an independent Palestinian state, down from 51% in 2009 and 2012, while 37% oppose it. Nearly one in five, 19%, have no opinion.
The same groups that are more divided in their views of where U.S. pressure is needed or that lean toward pressuring Israel — Democrats, liberals, and postgraduates — broadly support an independent Palestinian state, including a striking 71% of postgraduates. However, pluralities of moderates, independents, and college graduates are also in favor. Republicans, conservatives, and adults with no college education are more likely to oppose than favor Palestinian statehood.
Obama recently signaled there would be no big Middle East peace initiative on the table when he arrives in Israel on Wednesday, for his first visit to the region as president.
During a meeting with American Jewish community leaders at the White House as he prepared for the trip, Obama said the visit was not aimed at resolving a “specific policy issue.”
The White House had clarified last month that Obama’s visit to Israel is not meant at presenting a new proposal for peace talks with the PA.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that the timing of the visit is intended to coincide with the beginning of the second terms in office of both Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Last week Obama said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 News that his trip is meant to “listen” to both sides and hear their views on how to move forward after over two years without peace talks.
An earlier Gallup poll released on the weekend found that Americans’ sympathies lean heavily toward the Israelis over Palestinian Authority Arabs, 64% vs. 12%.
In fact, the poll found, the 64% ties the highest Gallup has recorded in a quarter century, last seen in 1991 during the Gulf War. At that time, 7%, sympathized more with Arabs.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Hi Arnold, let us use your SS monies and buy a yaught and decorate it with Monets,Gauguans, and Van Goughs and sail aroud Lake Michigan.
Hi Arnold Are you including Social Security and Medicare in government handouts? Because most of us have paid into these programs all our working lives. We’ve earned it, and although at today’s life span, we may collect more than we paid in, most of us are still contributing members of society and keep paying taxes in many areas.
I hear complaints about Obama care. The alternative is to charge those with insurance much more to pay for those who don’t have insurance. We pay no matter what. Yes, changes need to be made to the system. I read that some retirees in Florida have expensive medical tests every six months or yearly. Unless there’s an illness, there should be a limit on these tests. Investigating fraud has sped up and they’re catching more crooks.
It’s not fair to criticize some other programs, like food giveaway and unemployment, because we’re still in a bad economy for the working stiff. Dying makes them even stiffer.
We live in an economy where some have billions to spend on art and yaghts while others are looking for their next meal. The rich need to pay more taxes.
This is not a majority, its a plurality.
Obama in particular and the West in general are pressuring Israel rather than the Arabs solely because you seem the weaker and most internationally dependent of the two sides in this protracted conflict of civilizations. There is no substitute for power. There never has been and there never shall be a substitute for power. And when it comes right down to it, power means the capability of bending someone else to your will.
It really is as simple as that. They pick on Israel and the Jewish nation because they despise Israel and the Jewish nation, and they perceive that because Israel and the Jews always act like weak supplicants begging this or that goyische state or leader for the wherewithal that enables the weak to imagine themselves as equals of the strong. But true independence is an attribute solely of those who have the power to maintain it.
The USA, which I loyally served for three years as a soldier in the United States Army late in the Korean War, is now an obviously fading power. The people of this country have set aside American nationalism and self-reliance with American liberalism and a majority population dependent on government hand-outs to sustain themselves. Therefore, I assume that in the long run, the American empire is finished and that the day may well come when the unity of this once-great commonwealth will be broken, with individual states going there own way; in short, a new Confederate States of America may arise based on the determination of as many as half the present US states that they no longer wish to be dominated by states such as New York, California, Illinois and others with their mobs of unemployed and more or less permanently unemployable who elect the Obamas that will destroy the United States of America of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S Truman.
As a born member of the Jewish nation, I take Jewish nationalism seriously. But I mix that nationalism with the toughest standards of objective reality. Which means that I never indulge myself in wishful thinking.
Israel can attain greatness. But to do so, the Jewish nation must distance itself from western liberalism and even from the democracy that destroys commonwealths. The only trustworthy leaders who have made their appearance in Israel have been Vladimir Jabotinsky, David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Yitzchak Shamir. The great Rav Meir Kahane could have become one of them, had he not been foolish enough to trust his physical safety to a pack of American Jews who called themselves the Jewish Defense League but who could not even protect him from assassination by an Arab killer in a New York hotel ballroom. All these were ruthless men and women who purposely tried to steer the Jewish nation in the direction of authentic Jewish nationalism.
The false national leaders such as we have seen in Israel in recent years must be cast aside and replaced with true Jewish nationalists. And to the extent that Israel needs foreign allies, these should be sought among powers and smaller nations that have reason to oppose either or both Arab nationalism or Islamic nationalism. These include China, Russia, the Balkan Slavs and Greeks who feel threatened by Islamism in their midst and are tough enough to disregard democracy and fight their enemies. In the Middle East, the Kurdish nation, now struggling toward unity and independence, should be militarily aided by Israel. If a great Kurdistan can come to life, it will imply the dismemberment simultaneously of Turkey, Syria and Iraq, and the weakening of Iran. Remember, and never forget, that the enemy of your enemy is your friend.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI