Most Americans disapprove of the war, poll shows

NEW YORK: A majority of Americans disapprove of Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip, in a pronounced shift from November, according to a new poll released by Gallup on Wednesday.

In a survey conducted from March 1-20, 55% of US adults said they disapproved of Israel’s military actions — a jump of 10 percentage points from four months earlier, Gallup found.

Americans’ approval of Israel’s conduct in the war dropped by an even starker margin, from 50% in

November, a month after the war began, to 36% in March, while the proportion of Americans who said they had no opinion on the subject rose slightly to 9% from 4%.

The findings are the latest evidence of growing American discontent with Israel over the course of five months in which it has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including nearly 14,000 children, according to local health officials and the United Nations. Israeli officials say roughly 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attack on Oct 7.

The Gallup poll found that American approval of Israel’s military actions dropped across the political spectrum. While a majority of Republicans still said they approved, that figure dropped from 71% in November to 64% in March. Independents’ approval dropped to 29% from 47%, and Democrats’ approval dropped to just 18% from 36%.

An AP-NORC poll conducted in late January found that half of US adults felt Israel’s military response in Gaza had “gone too far,” up from 4 in 10 in November.

That poll also showed a rise in public disapproval across political parties, by some 15 percentage points for Republicans, 13 for independents and 5 for Democrats.

Another recent survey from the Pew Research Center — which, like Gallup and AP-NORC, is a wellregarded leader in the polling industry — found notable schisms in public opinion along generational and religious lines.