Backing for Palestine state increases in US

WASHINGTON, 24 April — “There are only two countries supporting Israel right now: Israel and America,” an American Israel Public Affairs Committee member, Irv Shapiro told journalists yesterday. AIPAC is holding its annual conference in Washington, and, for the first time ever, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the 3-day conference to protest Israel’s brutal reoccupation of the Palestinian territories.

It appears, however, that Shapiro should have been specific. According to recent polls, the US public is voicing doubts about America’s role in the Mideast, and US support of Israel.

Seventy-one percent of Americans tell a new Gallup Poll that the US government should not take either side in the Middle East conflict and 60 percent want to cut aid to Israel unless its invasion into Palestinian lands ends immediately.

One-quarter of Americans in a new Time/CNN poll said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is an enemy of the United States; 20 percent say he is a terrorist; and 65 percent say he cannot be trusted.

Forty-one percent said Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories are “mostly unjustified.”

And Americans strongly oppose — 71 percent to 20 percent — sending US troops to help end the conflict, because 81 percent fear US troops will be drawn into the fighting.