2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll: Palestine-Israel, Not Democracy, Takes Center Stage
The Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings released the 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll today and held an event (full notes forthcoming from POMED) marking the publication of the results. The poll– conducted in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon, and the UAE from June 28-July 20 of this year, in conjunction with Zogby International — recorded a striking drop in optimism among Arabs toward American policy in the Middle East. While at the beginning of the Obama administration’s term, 51% of respondents expressed a positive outlook on U.S. regional policy, the new poll indicates that only 16% still felt hopeful, with 63% describing themselves as “discouraged.”
Shibley Telhami, nonresident senior fellow at the Saban Center and conductor of the poll, commented that “the data leaves little doubt that the deciding factor in the shift of opinion toward the Obama administration is disappointment on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.” Analyst Laura Rozen confirms in a piece at Politico that “hopes in the Arab world about how much Obama might transform U.S. foreign policy may have been unrealistically high as he came into office, and considerable disappointment has set in as the administration encounters difficulties in making significant progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, among other issues.” In another significant finding, 57% of participants in the survey said that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would prove “positive” for the region, versus only 29% in 2009.
Meanwhile, Marc Lynch writing in Foreign Policy highlights changes in Arab opinion as indicated in the poll regarding a number of important issues. Lynch points out that only 20% of respondents expressed positive views of President Obama versus 45% in 2009, while negative opinion of Obama rose from 23% to 62%; additionally, 12% registered favorable views toward the U.S. in general, versus 15% during the final year of President George W. Bush‘s administration. Significantly, 61% of those polled pointed to a continuing lack of progress on the Palestine-Israel front as the area of their greatest disappointment, whereas a mere 1% cited failures in “spreading democracy” as their major concern. On the other hand, Lynch cites encouraging data from the survey showing that 20% of respondents indicated that they were the most pleased with Obama’s attitude toward Islam and Muslims, while those expressing “very unfavorable” views toward the United States dropped from 64% in 2008 to 47% in 2010.
According to Lynch, the survey’s results “should be sobering for supporters of the administration’s foreign policy. The perceived failure to deliver meaningful change has taken its toll.” Nevertheless, he cautions against focusing exclusively on the statistical data, stating, “Public opinion surveys are only one part of the story — the goals of engagement are always broader than ‘moving the numbers’,” and adding that “if the administration begins to deliver — on Israeli-Palestinian peace, on the withdrawal from Iraq, on engagement with Iran — then the numbers will change.”
