Poll Due Out On Attitudes Toward the Middle East Peace Process

Laura Rozen writes that at 2:00pm the Brookings Institute is going to release a report this afternoon on attitudes towards the Middle East peace process:

A poll to be released Thursday at the Brookings Institution shows that two-thirds of Americans polled believe that the Arab-Israeli issue is among the top five American interests in the world, while one quarter believe it is one of top three American interests.

The findings "are really striking," the poll's coordinator, Shibley Telhami told POLITICO on Wednesday. "The American public thinks this is a big-time issue."


Telhami is the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a nonresident fellow at Brookings.

With 71 percent of those polled supporting American diplomatic efforts to mediate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, President Barack Obama can't just walk away from the issue, Telhami said.

The poll also showed striking partisan differences in attitudes toward the conflict, with 46 percent of Republicans wanting American diplomacy to lean toward Israel, compared to 11 percent of independents and 14 percent of Democrats.

First of fall, of course Obama can walk away. If his actions were really dictated by the polls and the will of the people, we would not be talking about the opposition to Obamacare.

In any case, the poll only indicates that those polled support the peace talks--not that they insist on them. If Obama continues to push the talks, it is as much to do with his own political agenda as with a belief in world peace.

The fact that a greater number of Republicans than Democrats favor Israel should not really be news at this point, but to get a better idea of what we are dealing with, take a look at this chart from Laura Rozen's blog:

The fact that only 14% of Democrats think US diplomacy should favor Israel does not mean that the rest of the Democrats think it should favor the Arabs.

You could just as easily claim that 3 times as many Democrats as Republicans believe the US should favor the Arabs--it would be true, but it would be misleading too.

The poll will cover not only US attitudes, but also Israeli and Arab attitudes as well.

Hat tip: The Bibi Report

Technorati Tag: Middle East.