32/2023
2024-01-03
On which Side of the Israeli – Palestinian Conflict Do Polish Sympathies Lie?
The CBOS November survey showed that the Israeli – Palestinian conflict taking place in the Middle East is an important topic of conversation among Polish people. In an expansion of this subject in December, respondents were asked which side of the conflict they sympathised with more. It turned out that Poles are slightly more favourably disposed towards Israel (14%, compared to 10% sympathising more with the Palestinian side). It is worth noting, however, that people with clear views about this war are in a minority: the dominant response was ‘hard to say’ (43%), closely followed by sympathy for both sides in equal measure (33%).
CBOS also decided it would be interesting to compare Polish views with those of western countries where the Israeli – Palestinian conflict was being widely discussed in public. Thus, the question asked by CBOS was modelled on that posed in November by YouGov, to respondents in the UK and USA. In both these countries the ‘hard to say’ responses were significantly lower than in Poland (31% in the UK and 21% in the US), while more people had a formulated opinion about the conflict. In the UK in November sympathies towards both Israelis and Palestinians were at the same level (19%), though when the Israel – Palestine conflict was relatively dormant before the October Hamas attack, sympathies had been more pro-Palestinian. In the USA, on the other hand, sympathy for the Israeli side was considerably more marked than in Poland (37%, as against 15% sympathising with the Palestinians).
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Returning to the CBOS Polish survey, the groups much more likely to be favourably disposed towards Israel were men, respondents aged 55-64 and those who had been through higher education. Pro-Palestinian sympathies were clearly dominant among the youngest respondents and those who were at school or college. When it came to party political preferences, voters for The Left were, unlike any of the others, more sympathetic towards the Palestinians, and also presented a decidedly higher percentage of respondents sympathising with both sides equally. The exceptionally small percentage of ‘hard to say’ responses among Left voters suggests that, on average, they may be more informed about this conflict than other groups.
More on this subject in the CBOS report.
This ‘Current Events and Problems’ survey (404) was conducted using a mixed-mode procedure on a representative sample of named adult residents of Poland, randomly selected from the National Identity Number (PESEL) register. Respondents independently selected one of the following methods: Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI); Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI), respondents receiving researchers’ telephone numbers in an introductory letter from CBOS; Computer Assisted Web Interview (CAWI), where respondents filled in the online questionnaire independently, gaining access by means of a login and password provided in an introductory letter from CBOS. In all three cases the questionnaire had the same structure and comprised the same questions. The survey was carried out between 28 November – 12 December 2023 inclusive on a sample of 961 people (56.8% using the CAPI method, 31.1% CATI and 12.1% CAWI). CBOS has been conducting statutory research using the above procedure since May 2020, stating in each case the percentage of personal, telephone and internet interviews.
