WASHINGTON (AP) — After decades of overwhelming support for Israel, U.S. sympathy in the Middle East has shifted sharply toward the Palestinians, according to a new Gallup poll.
This shift accelerated during the Gaza war. Three years ago, 54% of Americans were more sympathetic to Israelis, compared with 31%.
Now, their approval ratings are roughly even, with 41% saying they sympathize more with Palestinians and just 36% expressing the same sympathy for Israelis.
These figures reflect the fact that support for Israel is highly controversial in the United States and has a profound impact on American politics and foreign policy. This change in sentiment has been driven largely by Democrats, who are now more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians. U.S. aid to Israel has been a key dividing line in the party’s primary campaign this year.
Gallup’s data suggests that this shift occurred before Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and then intensified during Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, meaning sentiment among Israelis and Palestinians is roughly even.
“This is the first time they’ve reached parity, which is really quite astonishing,” said Benedict Wiggs, senior global news writer at Gallup. “In just a few years, that huge gap in public opinion has now completely closed.”
Democrats and Independents
About two-thirds of Democrats now say they worry more about the Palestinians, while only about 2-in-10 sympathize more with the Israelis. As recently as 2016, the picture looked very different: About half of Democrats were more sympathetic to Israelis, and only about a quarter were sympathetic to Palestinians.
The shift began even before the Israel-Hamas war turned the issue into a flashpoint within the Democratic Party. Palestinian militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took another 251 hostages in the initial attack, but Israel’s response was widely seen as disproportionate, with Gaza health officials reporting that more than 72,000 Palestinians, nearly half of them women and children, had been killed and large swathes of the territory reduced to rubble. Many progressive politicians and activists now describe Israel’s actions in the war as genocide – a charge Israel vehemently denies.
Democrats have expressed more sympathy for Palestinians than for Israelis since 2023 (the Gallup poll was conducted before the Oct. 7 attacks), but Gallup’s survey shows that since around 2017, their support in the conflict has been leaning toward Palestinians over Israelis.
The early decline in sympathy appears to be linked in part to dissatisfaction with right-leaning Israeli leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to another Gallup poll, Netanyahu’s approval rating in the United States dropped by nearly 15 percentage points between 2017 and 2024.
Netanyahu clashed with former President Barack Obama in his final year in power before forging warmer ties with President Donald Trump, who delivered several victories for Netanyahu during his first term, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Trump also persuaded three Arab countries to establish commercial and diplomatic ties with Israel. The close relationship between Trump and Netanyahu has continued into Trump’s second term.
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a point of tension for Democrats during President Joe Biden’s administration and leading up to the 2024 presidential election. An AP-NORC poll in late 2023, just months into the Gaza war, found that Democrats were deeply divided over whether the United States was too supportive of Israel, while another AP-NORC poll in 2024 found that Democratic voters were more likely to believe that the Israeli government bore “a lot” of responsibility for the escalation of the war.
Gallup polls show Democrats becoming increasingly sympathetic to the Palestinians and independents’ views changing as the war progresses. This year, for the first time in Gallup Trends, independents are more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. About 4 in 10 independents are more sympathetic to the Palestinians. By comparison, Israelis’ share was about three in 10, a new low.
A majority of Republicans continue to side with Israel — about 7 in 10 say they are more sympathetic to Israelis — but that’s down slightly from about 8 in 10 before the war began. Some figures in the isolationist “America First” wing of the Republican Party are also increasingly questioning America’s traditional support for Israel.
generation gap
Young people (aged 18 to 34 in this poll) are also increasingly sympathetic to the Palestinians, according to Gallup.
Since around 2020, sympathy among young Americans has begun to shift toward the Palestinians, reaching new highs this year. About half of respondents aged 18 to 34 said they had more sympathy for Palestinians, while only a quarter felt more sympathy for Israelis.
During the war, student protests against the Israel-Hamas war took place on college campuses across the country, demanding universities cut investments in support of Israel.
But Wiggs said the shift is “partly a generational story.”
The new poll also found for the first time that middle-aged Americans ages 35 to 54 are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis, a reversal from last year. While Americans over 55 are more sympathetic to Israel, the gap is narrowing.
“Adults over 55 are more sympathetic toward Israelis, but the share is at its lowest level since 2005,” Vigers said.
state of palestine
About six-in-ten U.S. adults (57%) favor the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to a new poll. That’s not much different from recent years, as at least half of U.S. adults have supported an independent Palestinian state since 2020.
Wiggs noted that “party polarization is at or near an all-time high” on this issue, although that polarization is not increasing significantly year over year.
Support for a two-state solution has grown among Democrats and independents over the past few years. About three-quarters of Democrats and about six-in-ten independents now say they support an independent Palestinian state. Only about a third of Republicans said the same.
People directly affected by the two-state solution see it very differently. According to a Gallup World Poll conducted in 2025, only about three in 10 Israelis living in Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem expressed support for a two-state solution, in which an independent Palestinian state coexists with Israel.
“Across the region, when asked very similar questions, far fewer Israelis and Palestinians than Americans tell us they support a two-state solution,” Wiggs said. “There’s an interesting disconnect between the region itself and how Americans view it.”
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Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
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The Gallup Poll was conducted February 2-16, 2026 among 1,001 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, drawn from Gallup’s probability-based panel. The overall margin of sampling error for adults is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
