NEW YORK, Feb 27 (APP): More Americans sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time since Gallup began tracking the sentiment, according to a poll released on Friday, after Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The shift follows more than two decades of Americans favouring Israelis by a significant margin.
Overall, 41 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36 percent sided with Israel, the poll said, with the rest undecided or saying they favoured both or neither.
The gap marks the first time since Gallup asked the question more than two decades ago that Israel was not on top.
It also marks a sharp difference from just a year ago, when Israel led in sympathies 46 to 33 percent.
When asked about their sympathies, independents sided with the Palestinian people by 11 percentage points.
Members of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party continued to back Israel strongly, with 70 percent siding with Israel, although that figure has declined by 10 percentage points over the past decade.
Democrats’ views of Israel have grown increasingly negative since a decade ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly broke with then US president Barack Obama on his diplomacy with Iran.
Israel, since then, has moved sharply to the right. Some Democratic voters faulted former president Joe Biden for not doing more to rein in Israel in its brutal war on Palestine’s Gaza after October 7, 2023.
In the latest poll, 65 percent of Democrats sympathized with the Palestinians and 17 percent with Israel.
Gallup surveyed 1,001 US adults by telephone from February 2 to 16.
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