New poll shows waning American support for Israel war in Gaza
New Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans (55%) now oppose Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, while 36% approve of it. It also shows only 27% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of issue.
Six months into Israel’s war against Hamas, American support for the Israeli military campaign is waning.
A new Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans (55%) now oppose Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, while only 36% approve of it. That marks a sharp drop in support for Israel’s military campaign since its poll in November, which then found that 50% of Americans approved of Israel’s military action in Gaza, compared with 45% who disapproved.
It also shows that approval for President Biden’s handling of the conflict stands at only 27%, with fewer than half of Democrats (47%) approving of how he is managing the issue.
The new findings come as American efforts to try to secure a new deal to gain the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and secure a six week ceasefire appear to be at another impasse. They also come as American officials have been frustrated in their efforts to try to persuade Israel not to pursue a major military operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah.
The Israeli “Prime Minister's office has said they'd like to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah,” a U.S. official said today. “We are now working with them to set a convenient date.”
“We held constructive discussions with Israel's Defense Minister over the last two days,” the official said. “Rafah was one of the many topics discussed with Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, and Bill Burns.”
The Gallup findings suggest that the American public is even more impatient than the U.S. administration with Israel’s conduct of the war.
“All three major party groups in the U.S. have become less supportive of Israel’s actions in Gaza than they were in November,” Gallup senior editor Jeffrey Jones wrote in his summary of the findings. “This includes declines of 18 percentage points in approval among both Democrats and independents, and a seven point decline among Republicans.”
Israel launched its military campaign following a savage Hamas massacre on October 7 that killed 1,200 Israelis and took over 200 people hostage. Israel’s war to eradicate Hamas in retaliation, now entering its six month, has killed over 31,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has displaced more than two million people, virtually the entire population. Meantime, numerous Israeli restrictions on aid entering Gaza and the destruction in the war of Gaza’s infrastructure have put much of the population on the brink of famine, particularly in northern Gaza, the United Nations has repeatedly warned.
Biden’s handling of the conflict received the lowest approval ratings among Democrats of five issues surveyed, by over twenty points, Gallup said.
“Biden’s approval rating for his handling of the situation in the Middle East, at 27%, is his lowest among five issues tested in the survey,” Gallup wrote. “This is because far fewer Democrats (47%) approve of how he is handling the situation…than approve of his handling of the economy, the environment, energy policy and foreign affairs, broadly.” Meantime, “just 21% of independents and 16% of Republicans approve of his performance on this issue.”
In other words, Biden has lost over half of Democrats on his handling of this conflict, while he is not picking up any independents or Republicans on it either.
“On this particular issue, ratings of Biden’s handling of the Middle East have been poor among not just the U.S. public, but among independents and Republicans, and they’ve not improved over the course of the past six months,” Gallup’s Justin McCarthy told me. “Additionally, among his own party’s rank and file, approval of his handling has continued to fall.”
As someone who closely listens daily to U.S. officials discuss what the United States is doing to try to manage the conflict, I would hazard a guess that part of the reason Americans have such low approval of Biden’s handling of this conflict is just how very ineffective the United States appears to be.
American officials travel to the region often, and sometimes announce that they got Israel to agree to open a new aid crossing, for instance. But for all the U.S. diplomatic efforts over the past six months, the American public sees that the United States is not really getting meaningful results, either in averting famine in Gaza, or in getting a new hostage release deal, or in ending the war.
It isn’t that most Americans want the United States to tilt more in favor of the Israelis or in favor of the Palestinians, but that they have “deep disillusionment” about the effectiveness of U.S. policy, and want the United States to support a set of principles, said Shibley Telhami, an expert on public opinion and the Middle East with the Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland Anwar Sadat professor of peace and development.
“In my own polling, it isn’t so much that people were not supporting one side or the other,” Telhami told me. “In fact, Americans throughout the polling, including in October and November, maintained that they wanted the U.S. to have an even-handed policy.”
“It is more about…supporting a set of principles,” Telhami said. “They’re appalled by the degree to which there are violations of international law, the humanitarian crisis, and the inability of the Biden administration to stop it.”
The Gallup write up of its findings said that while approval of Biden’s handling of the Israel Hamas conflict is low, his overall current job approval rating (40%) is slightly up from surveys it conducted in October and November (37%), probably due to growing American confidence in the U.S. economy.
As the war drags on, “U.S. support for its ally’s actions in the war is slipping,” Gallup concluded. “Although Americans rate Biden’s handling of the conflict poorly, his overall job approval rating is no lower now than before the conflict began. The issue does not register highly when Americans are asked to name the most important problems facing the U.S.”
But the Biden team should not be sanguine about that, it continued. Disapproval of his handling of the conflict among specific subsets of Democratic voters, including Arab and Muslim Americans, young people, and African Americans, “could hurt the president by dampening turnout among would-be Biden voters who care deeply about the issue and are upset with his handling of the situation.”
**