April/May 1992, Page 18

Public Opinion

Skepticism About Israel Accompanies Opposition to Loan Guarantees

By Nathan Jones

The overwhelming public opposition to providing unconditional loan guarantees for $10 billion to Israel is not just an outgrowth of increasing skepticism about foreign aid in general. Polls show that public attitudes toward Israel itself have hardened in recent months. In fact, Americans are more favorably inclined toward giving aid to countries of the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe than to Israel.

Throughout the 1991, a fiscal year in which Israel received $5.7 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance (including $400 million in previous loan guarantees), taxpayer resistance to the loan guarantees grew. Although the mainstream U.S. media is correct in describing some of it as disapproval of foreign aid in general, the inference that taxpayer resentment is not specifically directed at Israel is disproved by polls taken during the second half of 1991 and in 1992.

The Principle, Not the Principal

The administration of President George Bush has focused its opposition to the loan guarantees not upon their amount, but on the fact that Israel refuses to halt the West Bank settlement activities that the president believes will wreck the peace process. This, too, is reflected in U.S. public opinion, which is more informed on the subject than Israel's U.S. lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), wants members of Congress to realize.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll on Aug. 2, 1991 revealed hostility toward Yitzhak Shamir's Israel even before the loan guarantee battle was joined. Asked who was the biggest obstacle to peace, 37 percent of the respondents said Israel, to 35 percent who said "the Arab countries."

In the same poll, asked if the U.S. should provide Israel with the $10 billion in loan guarantees, 11 percent said no under any circumstances, and another 45 percent said not unless Israel halts settlements-for a total of 55 percent negative on the loan guarantees. Only 29 percent favored providing the loan guarantees to Israel unconditionally.

These figures were reinforced three weeks later by an Aug. 25 Gordon F. Black poll commissioned by USA Today. Respondents said 55 to 27 percent that the U.S. should stop aid to Israel if it would not participate in a Mideast peace conference.

In the next Gordon F. Black poll, this time commissioned by the Arab American Institute and conducted Sept. 11, at the height of President Bush's battle with AIPAC over the loan guarantees, 43 percent of respondents said the U.S. should not provide the loan guarantees, 36.4 said they should be provided with conditions (for a combined 79.4 percent negative response), and only 9.7 percent said the loan guarantees should be provided unconditionally.

Respondents to the same poll supported an independent Palestinian state by 52.9 to 20.8 percent, and supported the concept of land for peace by 50.2 to 26.7 percent.

On Sept. 26, when a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked if the U.S. should provide any economic aid to Israel, 46 percent said no and 44 percent said yes. There was far less opposition to economic aid to the Soviet Union (32 percent said no, 58 percent yes) and aid to Poland (29 percent no, 55 percent yes). Asked who is the biggest impediment to a Middle East peace settlement, 34 percent chose Israel and 33 percent chose the Arabs.

By Jan. 17 to 21, 1992, the opposition to Israel had solidified, even though the wording of the question asked on a Wall Street Journal/NBC News national telephone poll was much more positive for Israel. Asked "Do you favor or oppose the United States providing $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel in order for them to finance the resettlement of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union,'' 18 percent were in favor, 73 percent opposed, and 9 percent not sure. Asked "Who is currently the biggest obstacle to finding a peace settlement to the Arab-Israeli dispute," respondents split evenly, with 31 percent naming Israel, 31 percent naming the Arab countries, and 22 percent blaming both equally.

An even more recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News national telephone survey conducted from Feb. 28 to March 2, 1992, with the same positively worded question linking the loan guarantees to "resettlement of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union," yielded even greater opposition: 49 percent said no under any circumstances; 32 percent said provide them only with a freeze on new settlements (for a total of 81 percent negative response); and only 13 percent were for unconditional guarantees.

Public opposition to unconditional loan guarantees to Israel has grown steadily from roughly 2 to 1 against them in the summer of 1991 to better than 4 to 1 against them early in 1992.

That's very good news for President Bush, because it shows that huge numbers of Americans who do not support him personally do support him on this long-overdue confrontation with the Israel lobby. It's bad news, however, for members of Congress who for too long have been able to please Israel's Washington lobby without serious concern about constituent backlash.

Now, just as President Bush has forced the Likud government of Israel to choose between settlements and immigrants, his position on the loan guarantees is forcing members of Congress to choose between defying the most powerful and demanding lobby on Capitol Hill, or defying the wishes of their constituents. Perhaps members of Congress will make a wiser choice than did Israeli Prime Minister Shamir.

End of the Affair?

Gallup polls ask the same questions over a period of many years. They revealed that Americans had few preferences between Arabs and Israelis at the time Israel was created, but by the time of Israel's six-day victory in the June war of 1967, Americans having a "basic sympathy" toward Israel outnumbered those having a "basic sympathy" toward the Arabs by 13 to 1.

Other polls showed Israel's edge briefly vanished in September and October of 1982, right after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the massacres of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra-Shatila refugee camps in Israeli-occupied West Beirut. In more normal times, however, Gallup figures over the years have indicated that of the approximately 50 percent of Americans who took sides at all, partisans of Israel outnumbered partisans of the Arabs by 3 or 4 to 1.

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