Forty-one percent of US adults now say they sympathize more with the Palestinians, compared with 36 percent who say they side with the Israelis.
Although the five-point gap falls within the survey’s margin of error, it contrasts sharply with last year’s results, when supporters of Israel held a 13-point lead.
From 2001 through 2025, Israelis had consistently enjoyed double-digit advantages in American sympathies.
The change reflects a gradual narrowing of opinion that began several years before Israel's genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Gallup said cumulative shifts in attitudes since then have erased Israel’s long-standing edge in public sentiment.
A sizable portion of Americans remain nonaligned, with 4 percent expressing equal sympathy for both sides, 9 percent for neither, and 10 percent offering no opinion.
Americans still view Israel more favourably than the Palestinian territories, but the gap has narrowed. Forty-six percent hold a favourable opinion of Israel, near its historical low, while 37 percent view the Palestinian territories favourably — the highest level Gallup has recorded.
Support for establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel stands at 57 percent, close to a 23-year high.
The shift in sympathies is driven largely by political independents, who now favour Palestinians over Israelis by 41 percent to 30 percent, reversing their previous lean. Democrats remain strongly sympathetic to Palestinians, while Republicans continue to back Israelis by wide margins. Nevertheless, Republican support for Israel has declined to its lowest level in more than two decades.
Generational differences are also pronounced. A majority of Americans aged 18 to 34 now express greater sympathy for Palestinians, while older adults remain more sympathetic to Israelis, though by narrower margins than in previous years.
Americans’ overall views of Israel have declined while perceptions of the Palestinian territories have improved, according to Gallup. The survey found 46 percent of US adults hold a favourable view of Israel, near its historical low, compared with a record-high 37 percent who view the Palestinian territories favourably. Despite the shift, Israel continues to be rated more positively overall, maintaining a long-standing advantage in American public opinion.
The poll also shows sustained support for a negotiated two-state solution. A 57 percent majority of Americans favour the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, nearly matching the highest level Gallup has recorded in more than two decades. Public backing for statehood has remained relatively stable in recent years, even as broader attitudes toward the conflict have shifted.
The shift in focus
Since the Israeli genociadal war began in October 2023, most of the globe watched with horor as the scale of destruction and slaughter became more unfathomable by the day.
Israel’s war, described by Amnesty International as Livestreamed genocide, has claimed the lives of at least 72,082 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 171,761 others.
Thousands more remain buried beneath the rubble of destroyed neighbourhoods.
The devastation borne by the Israeli relentless targeting of hospitals, schools, and essential infrastructure, provoked a global response and left Tel Aviv derided and isolated on the international scene.
It also forced many in the Western World to reconsider historic blank support to Tel Aviv and lend an ear to the legitimate cause of the Palestinians.
Massive street protests across the United States and European capitals placed immense pressure on Western governments that support Israel.
Changes in the US
By October 2025, two years into the Israeli genocidal war in Gaza, a New York Times poll found a starkly negative view about Israel, with a majority of voters now opposing further US economic and military aid to Tel Aviv.
The poll, carried out by the paper and Siena University, revealed that “Disapproval of the war appears to have prompted a striking reassessment by American voters of their broader sympathies in the decades-old conflict in the region, with slightly more voters siding with Palestinians over Israelis.”
The survey also argued that “younger voters, regardless of party, were less likely to back continuing that support.” Nearly seven in 10 voters under 30 said they opposed additional economic or military aid.
By September 2025, before the implementation of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, brokered by Washington, the Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research found that about half of Americans said the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip had “gone too far," compared to 40 percent in November 2023.
In the US, university campuses across the nation witnessed sustained student mobilization in support of Palestine and in protest against Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
Beginning in late 2023 and intensifying through 2024 and 2025, encampments, teach-ins, and mass demonstrations spread across institutions including Columbia University, Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Michigan.
Student groups demanded institutional divestment from companies linked to Israeli military operations, an end to academic partnerships with Israeli institutions, and greater transparency regarding university financial ties to defence contractors.
Campus administrations responded with disciplinary measures, police interventions, and restrictions on demonstrations, actions that further galvanized student activism and drew criticism from civil liberties organizations.
Networks such as Students for Justice in Palestine framed the protests as part of a broader global movement against occupation and mass civilian targeting.
Towards the end of 2025, Israel desperately launched a broad influence campaign in the United States to counter declining public support linked to the war on the Gaza Strip, but could not apparently turn the tide in America.
Indeed, the scale and persistence of the campus mobilizations contributed to wider public debate in the United States, particularly among younger demographics, reinforcing generational divides reflected in national polling on the war and its humanitarian toll
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