Poll: Nearly half of U.S. voters support total settlement freeze

[Violet_Crumble]

Almost half of all U.S. voters believe that Israel should be made to cease all settlement construction as part of a future peace deal with the Palestinians, a Rasmussen Reports poll said on Wednesday.

The American institute claimed that a recent poll showed 49% of voters approved of forcing Israel to stop settlement construction, with only 22% of voters disagreeing, saying Israel should not be required to stop building those settlements. Another 29% were not sure.

U.S.-Israel ties have been strained of late, as a result of Israel's approval of 1,600 new East Jerusalem housing units during an official visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden last week. U.S. President Barack Obama, however, denied Wednesday the existence of a crisis in the ties between Washington and Jerusalem.

The Rasmussen Reports poll also showed that 75% of U.S. voters said that the Palestinians should be required to acknowledge Israel's right to exist as part of such an agreement, with only 6% disagreeing.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1157419.html

[Craftsman]

1. It is none of our business what Isreal does in its borders.

[Violet_Crumble]

2. The West Bank is NOT part of Israel...

Apart from that, considering the US gives Israel so much financial aid, I suspect most reasonable people would think that it is the business of the US even if it was in Israel's borders...

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. What about outside its borders? NT.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

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[oberliner]

4. ...as part of a Middle Eastern peace agreement

It's actually amazing that so many U.S. voters do not think Israel should stop building settlements as part of a peace agreement.

[Violet_Crumble]

6. I think those voters have a funny idea of what *peace* means...

Or they're just totally confused about things and like the poster in this thread think that the West Bank is part of Israel. I'm sure very few of them have considered that supporting the continued building of settlements is basically supporting the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, because it can't have both a Jewish majority and remain a democracy if its going to end up with most of the West Bank and its population as part of Israel...

[oberliner]

7. 75% said Palestinian leaders be required to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state

in the same poll, with only 6% saying they shouldn't and 20% unsure.

[Violet_Crumble]

8. I wonder how many of them support the continued settlement construction...

Because they're the ones where I'd be very suspicious that they're not really interested in Israel being a democracy as long as it's got a Jewish majority and they can keep on building settlements...

[aranthus]

9. How could you even have a peace agreement if Israel kept building settlements?

Either people were confused by the question, or there are a lot of Americans who don't understand the situation.

[Violet_Crumble]

10. I suspect it's mainly the latter...

Except for conservative Americans, who's abject stupidity and ignorance is due to their ancestors successfully breeding with vegetables :)

[Jefferson23]

5. 49% is much higher than what I would have thought for a Rasmussen poll, and the

29% not sure is interesting. In the coming months I imagine that at least half of that percent will shift to stopping settlement construction.