Thursday, February 14, 2013

Panels Poll: 3/4 Israelis Think Obama is Either "Pro-Palestinian" or Merely "Neutral".


Ahead of President Obama's highly anticipated Israel visit, only 14% of Israelis believe that Obama deserves to be called 'pro-Israel', a drop of 7 points since September 2012, according to a new Panels poll. This is Obama's lowest score on an Israeli survey since May 2011, writes Shmuel Rozner, based on his Israeli Opinion on Obama tracker. Three out of four Israelis view Obama as "pro-Palestinian" (29%) or merely "neutral" (a whopping 44%).  

 
The survey conducted by Panels Politics, supervised by pollster Menachem Lazar, provides a updated view of Israelis' thoughts about Obama prior to his planned visit to Israel in March. 50% of Israelis support the "two state solution", but only 30% of them believe that "reigniting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process" should top the agenda for President Obama's visit to Israel.  A Majority of 48% believe that coordinating the two countries' policies on Syria and iran should be President Obama's main goal.

Only 20% of Israelis blame Obama alone for the "tense relations" between him and Prime Minister Netanyahu; 34%, blame Netanyahu, and 41% of Israelis think both leaders are equally responsible for the 'marital problems' between the two leaders.
 
Despite of the vigorous debates in Washington over Obama's recently appointed Secretary of State, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, 44%  think these appointments have nothing to do with Israel, while 23% reveal that Obama is not Israel's friend. Only 8% of Israeli think Obama's appointees, Kerry and Hagel, reveal the notion that he's pro-Israel.
 

Pol data and graphs provided by Rosners Domain