Most Americans Oppose Taking Sides In Israel-Palestinian Conflict

This is according to a poll done by WorldPublicOpinion.org:

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.

In the actual poll, here is the summary for results for the US (PDF):

Seven in ten Americans think the US should take neither side in the conflict. However the number who thinks the US should take Israel’s side is relatively high among the other nations polled—second only to India. Americans are divided over whether their own nation is doing its part and six in ten think that Israel is not. Their ratings of Palestinian efforts, and Arab countries’ efforts, are the lowest of all nations polled. Half oppose the Security Council offering to protect Arab countries in the event of a settlement—the highest resistance to the idea of any nation in the study.

• Seven in ten Americans (71%) think the United States should take neither side in the conflict. Twenty-one percent think the United States should take Israel’s side and 3 percent think it should take the Palestinians’ side.

• Three in five (59%) think Israel is not doing its part well in making efforts to resolve the conflict; 30 percent think it is. A larger 75 percent think the Palestinians are not doing their part well; only 15 percent think they are. Even more—78 percent—think the Arab countries are not doing their part well (12% think they are).

• Americans are sharply divided about the United States’ own performance: 46 percent think it is not playing its part well (15%, “not well at all”), while 44 percent think it is doing so—though only 7 percent say “very well.”

• Americans support the idea of the UN Security Council offering a peacekeeping force in the event of an agreement, 61 to 31 percent. A modest majority supports offering a commitment to protect Israel (53 to 37%); but only four in ten support offering a commitment to Arab countries (38% favor, 50% oppose).

Interestingly, although the survey does not cover what Israelis think, it does cover what the Palestinian Arabs think:

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

A majority of Palestinians are critical of the efforts of their Arab neighbors and the United States, as well as Israel, in their efforts to resolve the conflict. While Palestinians would like the UN to play a greater role in other ways, they show the highest levels of opposition to a UN commitment to protect Israel if it is attacked by its Arab neighbors.

• Eight in ten Palestinians think that Israel is not doing its part well in trying to resolve the conflict, and 61 percent say “not well at all.” Palestinian opinion is only slightly less critical of the United States; more than three-quarters (77%) say that the US is not doing its part well, with a majority (55%) saying “not well at all.” Palestinians are also critical of the efforts of their Arab neighbors: a majority (57%) says that they are not doing their part well, while one-third (33%) says that they are. On the other hand, three-quarters of Palestinians (75%) say that their own nation is doing its part well in its attempts to resolve the conflict, and 40 percent say “very well.”

• Palestinians support the United Nations taking a stronger role in the conflict in two out of the three proposed ways. Sixty-three percent support an offer to send a peacekeeping force in the event of an agreement, with 35 percent opposed. Seventy-five percent would support the Security Council offering a commitment to protect Arab countries if attacked by Israel, while 20 percent oppose. However, 85 percent would oppose such a commitment to protect Israel if it were attacked by its Arab neighbors.

I'm not sure how to reconcile the results of this poll with the US polls that show the percentage of those favoring Israel far greater than that favoring Palestinian Arabs.

I have no idea what biases WorldPublicOpinion.org has--a quick look via Google did not turn up anything and I did not recognize any of the people listed on the about page--though Steven Kull, the director of WorldPublicOpinion.org "plays a central role in the BBC World Service Poll of global opinion."

WorldPublicOpinion.org does not do the entire poll themselves, but outsources to pollsters in the individual countries covered in the survey. While that is understandable, and I assume the same methodology and questions were used, I don't know if that takes anything away from the reliability of the results. You can see the questions and raw data here. On Q32d-IP2d, how well are the Arab countries doing their part, the results from Egypt are not shown--does this indicate differences in the questions asked in different countries?

But regardless of how reliable the poll is, the fact is that polls create opinion as much as they measure it, and there are people who are going to read this and think that the whole thing should just be turned over to the UN.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East.