POLITICS: Poll Finds Optimism for Obama's Mideast Diplomacy

• by Ellen Massey (washington)
• Saturday, December 12, 2009
• Inter Press Service

The new findings indicate that Israelis have a more nuanced view of the U.S. president and his role in the Middle East peace process than has been portrayed in the media lately.

One example of the new picture painted by the poll is that of the 1,000 Israelis surveyed this November, 41 percent have a positive view of Obama, while 37 rate him unfavourably.

These numbers also emphasise the many facets of Israeli public opinion toward Obama. For example, 52 percent believe that his election will be good for addressing the problems facing the world. A plurality of those polled indicated that they view Obama as a strong leader and trustworthy, even while 55 percent believe that he does not support Israel.

This picture provides a significant contrast to the four percent of Israelis who were found to consider President Obama more 'pro-Israel' than 'pro-Palestinian' in a poll conducted this summer by The Jerusalem Post. In a survey of 500 Jewish Israelis, that poll found that 51 percent believed Obama to be more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel.

Those numbers have dominated much of media's narrative about the president's relationship with Israel and his administration's role in the peace process.

At a time when tensions between the United States and Israel are running high and the peace process lacks forward momentum, the revised perspective on how the Israeli public sees the U.S. president suggests that there is much more to the relationship between leadership in the United States and the Israeli people.

'By a two-to-one margin, [Israelis] view the United States as in irreplaceable ally,' Jim Gerstein told Daniel Levy in an interview on the day of the poll's release.

Gerstein's firm, Gerstein Agne Strategic Communications, conducted the poll in Israel over a period of eight days from Nov. 8-15. Levy is the co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, and is part of the team that commissioned the survey.

There were many ideas presented, both in the results of the poll and from the panelists at Thursday's event, for why Obama received a relatively low approval rating. The most concise, and maybe the most intuitive reason was offered by Gil Tamari, Washington Bureau Chief for the Israeli TV station, TV10. He said that until now, President Obama has given Israel the 'cold shoulder', and they are giving it back to him.

Indeed, as was pointed out by several of the experts, there has been little in the way of public outreach between the Obama White House and the Israeli population. Obama has yet to visit the Jewish state as president, despite unprecedented outreach to the region.

He has also approached some of the most controversial issues between the U.S. and Israel within the first six months of his presidency, namely settlements - issues that his predecessors waited until much later in their administrations to address.

Despite these new numbers, the residue of the previous poll and the misreporting it engendered still linger on the Obama presidency. According to the panelists on Thursday, the president has been buffeted by negative press in Israel for months.

'A narrative has settled in that President Obama is weak in his ability to move the peace process forward,' Gerstein said in his interview with Levy.

This poll also reveals important aspects of Israelis attitudes toward the peace process and their country's role in the Middle East.

When asked whether Israel could afford to sustain the current situation with Palestinians, or if it must find a way to achieve a secure peace in the near future, the division in responses is striking.

Of those polled, 50 percent believe that Israel must find a way to peace within two to three years, while 46 percent think that Israel has the capacity to maintain the status quo and therefore should not rush into a peace agreement.

While it might be somewhat hopeful that a plurality of Israelis seeks a path toward peace in the next few years, Levy concluded that these numbers demonstrate that Israelis don't feel a sense of emergency in resolving the conflict.

'For me the most stunning finding was just how little urgency Israelis attribute to the need to get a peace deal,' he said in a broadcast following the event.

Additional statistics from the poll also pointed toward this conclusion. While close to 60 percent of Israelis believed that their country would never have peace and economic prosperity without achieving a peace settlement, the public was split on whether Israel's current economic situation was incentive enough to work for an agreement in the next few years.

Fifty percent of respondents indicated that there is economic incentive now, while 46 percent said that there was no incentive to rush into a peace deal.

The Israeli public's opinion of their own leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, held interesting implications for the peace process. As stated in the analysis by Gerstein Agne Strategic Communications, the firm that conducted the survey, 'The public fundamentally trusts Prime Minister Netanyahu on security matters, and they will support any peace agreement he signs.'

The poll also sought, somewhat indirectly, Israeli opinions on the hot button issues that surround a peace settlement like the division of Jerusalem, land swaps for settlements in the West Bank, and the status of refugees.

When posed with a hypothetical peace agreement that included these elements and was supported by the U.S., the Israeli public was divided on whether or not they would support such an agreement, even if Netanyahu had signed on.

As a whole, the new picture painted by this poll offers a more optimistic view of the peace process under President Obama than has been depicted by the media recently.

It also generated new ideas about how the U.S. can approach the peace process. Not least among these was the call for direct U.S. engagement with the Israeli people, a necessary, dynamic, and important partner for any lasting peace.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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