WASHINGTON: More Americans sympathise with Palestinians than Israelis for the first time since Gallup began tracking the sentiment, according to a poll released on Friday, the Financial Times reported.
The shift comes after more than two decades of Americans favouring Israelis by a significant margin, according to Gallup, and as Palestinian efforts to recover from Israel’s two-year war against Hamas in Gaza have stalled amid an Israeli blockade and intermittent fighting since a US-brokered ceasefire in October.
Forty-one percent of Americans said they sympathise more with Palestinians in the Middle East conflict, compared with 36 per cent who sympathise more with Israelis, Gallup said. This contrasts with a clear lead for the Israelis only a year ago, 46 per cent compared with 33 per cent for the Palestinians, and larger margins over the previous 24 years.
“From 2001 to 2025, Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies,” the report said.
More than 72,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and most of the densely populated territory has been reduced to rubble since Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, when militants killed 1,200 people.
The shift in popular opinion comes as the US gears up for midterm elections, which could see Democrats regain control of the House and Senate.
Foreign policy is rarely a major issue in US elections. But analysts say frustration with former president Joe Biden’s handling of the Gaza war played a role for some voters in the 2022 presidential race, while some Americans have already criticised President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza reconstruction.
While a significant majority of Democrats polled say they sympathise more with the Palestinians than the Israelis (65 percent vs 17 percent), much of the broader shift was driven by independent voters who now favour the Palestinians by 41 per cent compared with 30 per cent for Israelis. Last year they favoured Israelis by 42 per cent versus 34 per cent for the Palestinians.
Among Republicans, sympathy for the Israelis has declined by 10 points since 2024 to reach its lowest level since 2004, Gallup found.
