Poll Shows Majority of U.S. Public Supports Israeli Aid Phase-Out

By Eugene Bird

So muffled are the voices of those who dare to question the U.S. government's passionate attachment to Israel that apparently there never has been a full-scale poll of the American public on the massive official U.S. aid to Israel, the largest aid program in our history. There is one now. The Council for the National Interest commissioned the Wirthlin Group to poll more than 1,000 Americans between Sept. 6 and 8 about phasing out aid to Israel. The phase-out was supported by 53 percent of those polled, with only 36 percent favoring continuation of such aid.

Israel Preparing to Expand Settlements

The poll comes at a time when Israel is preparing to expand settlements, using American money, in order to pre-empt negotiations on final status of the West Bank. The poll is particularly pertinent because the Clinton administration soon must decide how much of Israel's $2 billion in U.S. government loan guarantees for 1995 has to be cut back because of Israeli spending on Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Last year the amount was cut by $334 million, about two-thirds of the actual spending by Israel on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Will Congress ignore such a poll and grant Israel still more aid? It is entirely possible, even though the poll showed the desire of the American people to begin phasing out aid to Israel.

In a second series of questions aimed at determining how many favored continuing the present levels of aid ($1,500 per year per Israeli citizen of Jewish faith), only 18 percent of those polled supported current aid levels. Another six percent called for increasing aid to Israel. According to Wirthlin, the poll has a 95 percent confidence level.

Majority Favor Phasing Out Aid

What does all this mean? It means that the current aid program for Israel is seen by a majority of Americans as unnecessary and in need of phasing out as soon as possible. Across the board, in terms of regions, sex, ethnicity and income, the results were very consistent: One-third or more of Americans strongly favor phasing out aid to Israel, and another one-fifth call for reducing, not increasing aid as is planned by the administration and Congress in connection with an eventual withdrawal from Lebanon and the Golan Heights. Among those with some college, the numbers favoring phasing out aid to Israel were higher (64 percent) than among the general public.

The figures are not surprising to anyone who has talked about the subject with American groups not allied with Israel. The American public appears very aware both of how much has been spent on Israel and of the future cost of the peace process.

Will Congress pay any attention to such polls? The answer is, not immediately as an institution. But many congressmen are getting tired of being accused of voting aid for Israel as a requirement for re-election. If enough of these polls can inspire a debate at the local level, it is entirely possible that a heretical congressman can be found who will finally step up with a bill on the subject and demand a real debate about it in Congress.

Phase-out and Land for Peace

The direct connection between cutting back or, hopefully, phasing out American aid to Israel before final status negotiations begin between 1997 and 1999, and what might happen in those negotiations is starkly clear: If Israel continues to be subsidized in its policy of taking more land and building more settlements, then the Palestinians will have little to negotiate about. And they will end up being captives within an Israeli economy still highly dependent on American aid into the 21st century.

If, instead, there is a wake-up call by American policy-makers who signal that the end of U.S. aid is near, the leaders of Israel, regardless of the party in power, will have to make the decision to consolidate what they have and leave the West Bank to the Palestinians.

Everyone—congressmen, American supporters of Israel, the Israelis themselves—knows the importance to the Israeli military and industrial establishment of keeping up the U.S. aid flow, and even increasing it in every way possible, including through more military contracts. The poll is unwelcome news to them.

Democrats and Republicans showed little difference in attitude toward the phase-out of aid, with 51 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of Republicans favoring it. Independent voters favored a phase-out by a larger margin, 64 percent. Seventy-six percent of male independent voters favored phasing out aid to Israel.

The poll by the Council comes at a time when Israel's current government finally is admitting openly that new settlements and expansion of old ones are, in fact, going forward, against American policy and against the spirit and even the terms of the Declaration of Principles signed a year ago. In a Sept. 27 Associated Press dispatch from Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's housing minister was quoted as saying that within six months 1,000 new apartments would be built in the northern part of the West Bank as part of a program "to bolster Israel's territorial claims in future talks." Meanwhile, the Palestinians are not allowed to bolster their claims by building new communities, or even by replacing houses condemned for road expansion or other purposes, since Israel still holds all the power in determining what happens to Arab land and water.

Displacement Continues

Building permits to Arabs, including Arab Americans, are being denied not only in East Jerusalem but elsewhere on the West Bank. The displacement, under various pretexts, of Arabs from the West Bank continues in spite of the peace agreements. And it is American aid money that is being used to carry out these demographic shifts, including "thickening" Jewish West Bank settlements, in one way or another.

Eugene Bird, a retired career foreign service officer, is president of the Council for the National Interest in Washington, DC.