A new poll found Democrats in the US are more likely to sympathize with Palestinians than with Israelis for the first time since 2001.
For the poll released on Thursday by Gallup, Democrat voters were asked: “In the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?”
In response, 49 percent said that they sympathized more with the Palestinians and 38 percent sympathized more with the Israelis.
There has been an eleven-point increase over the past year in sympathy toward Palestinians from those who voted Democrat.
Meanwhile, the same voters’ sympathy for Israelis has been on the decline for more than a decade, since a high point in 2014 when 58 percent sympathized with Israelis and only 23 percent with Palestinians.
Israeli violence against Palestinians has been on the rise since the beginning of 2023, with at least 85 people killed, including 16 children and 2 women by Israeli forces and settlers, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
According to the poll, Sympathy toward the Palestinians also hit a new high among political independents, with 32 percent sympathizing with Palestinians.
Gallup’s new poll finds that, overall, “sympathy toward the Palestinians among US adults is at a new high of 31%”.
According to Gallup, the most consequential changes in public opinion on the questions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have occurred in the past five years, as support for the Palestinians has ticked up and support for Israel – as well as ambivalence about the conflict – have both declined.