What is American public opinion on Israel-Palestine conflict? Pew answers

Opinion by Mya Jaradat

While the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians seems intractable, Americans’ views on both parties is not, according to new data from Pew Research Center.

The report shows the public is increasingly warming to both parties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with growing numbers reporting they view the two peoples favorably. Pew also found that more than half of America’s youngest adults view Israelis and Palestinians favorably — a departure from the views of older generations.

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“That’s a positive development, not a negative development,” said Leonard Saxe, director of Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, who said it might suggest that young people don’t hold negative stereotypes about Muslims.

Overall, 67% of Americans report seeing Israelis in a positive light, up three percentage points from 2019 and 52% say that they see Palestinians favorably, a 6% increase from 2019.

Among 18- to 29-year-olds, there was less of a gap: 56% reported holding favorable views of Israelis and 61% said the same of Palestinians. While, at first glance, those numbers seem to suggest that Palestinians hold an edge in the war for public opinion, Becka Alper of Pew Research Center said she wasn’t sure that the difference was large enough to be significant.

However, she added, “There’s an age story here. (Among young people) there aren’t these large gaps in their views between Palestinians and Israelis. If you look at 60 and older there’s a gap.”

While a plurality of 18- to 29-year-olds view both peoples favorably, 17% of young American adults reported viewing the Palestinian people favorably and Israelis unfavorably while 11% of 18- to 29-year-olds reported feeling favorable towards Israelis and unfavorable towards Palestinians.

“Compared with their elders, younger U.S. adults tend to express cooler views toward the Israeli people and warmer views toward the Palestinians,” Pew noted in the study, which was released Thursday. “For example, 56% of adults under 30 say they feel favorably toward the Israeli people, compared with 78% among those ages 65 and older. And a solid majority of those ages 18 to 29 (61%) express favorable views toward the Palestinians, compared with 46% of those 50 and older.”

“Older people who lived through the ’60s — the 1967 war, the 1973 war — and who remember what happened during the 1990s,” he said, referring to the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, “they have a different perspective.”

While the age gap might seem to suggest a broader shift in sentiments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is on the horizon, experts cautioned against drawing based on the views 18- to 29-year-olds are expressing today.

“What does this mean for a longer term trend? That can be hard to say especially when public opinion is so sensitive … to historical events and how they unfold,” said Arielle Levites, managing director of George Washington University’s Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education.

While there’s a difference in the numbers, Levites called that gap “fairly modest,” adding that “because we’re not really tracking this over a long period of time that can get confusing and can confound things — we don’t always know what is an age effect and what is a cohort effect. We know there are some attitudes and experiences that change as we age.”

It could be that views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict change as people age and that, in the future, today’s 18- to 29-year-olds will look similar to older Americans, she said.

Not only are there generational gaps in views about Israel and the Palestinians, differences show up according to political party, as well. About half of Democrats or those who lean left see both Israelis and Palestinians favorably, Pew reported. This is true of only 34% of Republicans and those who lean right.

Almost half of Republicans (44%) indicated that they viewed Israelis favorably and Palestinians unfavorably. A very small percentage of Republicans — just 3% — see Israelis unfavorably and Palestinians favorably.