Offbeat Israel: Polling Israelis on Obama and Settlements
Every month, Tel Aviv University pollsters gauge Israeli public opinion, and the Bintel Blog closely follows the results.
The latest poll, which was conducted last week just before Barack Obama’s speech, found that 55% of the Israeli public felt that the American president leans in favor of the Palestinians.
Few Israelis, 5%, said that he favors their county’s position, and 31% said they view him as neutral.
As Obama sets about changing America’s relationship with the Muslim world, 60% of Israelis do not trust him to protect Israel’s interests in the process.
Asked about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, 65% of respondents said it was unsuccessful and just 19% deemed it successful.
Given all the international attention to settlements, the pollsters decided that in this month’s survey they would gauge opinion on this subject.
More Israelis feel that settlements are bad for the state’s interests than those who think they contribute: the figures were 48% and 43% respectively.
Nevertheless, Israelis tend to expect large settlement blocks close to the Green Line to remain part of Israel in any peace settlement (as do most analysts), and therefore 53% of respondents said Israel should not agree to evacuate all settlements, even if a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians hinged on doing so, while 41% said it should.
The figures were very different when it came to illegal outposts and smaller settlements that are among Palestinian towns and villages. Regarding these, just 29% of respondents were against evacuation while 53% were in favor.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
