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The recent flare-up of violence in Israel and Gaza has placed a spotlight European divisions over the issue.
The 11-day conflict ended early Friday morning with a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, a development EU leaders uniformly welcomed. Yet during the deadly clashes, the EU itself struggled to present a unified front on the issue, with Hungary blocking a joint statement in a meeting of EU foreign ministers earlier this week.
A POLITICO analysis of Continent-wide sentiment on Israel and its treatment of Palestinians suggests those divisions are reflected in public opinion across different EU countries.
And while Brussels and EU capitals wrestle with the current crisis, the European public appears to not be highly engaged with the issue in general. To the extent that surveys are able to paint a representative picture, Europeans admit their knowledge about Israel is limited, with almost two-thirds saying it is fairly weak to nonexistent. That’s in contrast to the self-reported knowledge about Europe in Israel.
Israelis and Europeans also have different expectations of each other, with the former expecting Europe to show a greater sense of responsibility against the background of the history of the Holocaust.
A large survey conducted by ComRes for CNN in 2018 asked more than 7,000 Europeans in seven countries about their view on Israel, Palestine and the people living there. A large proportion of respondents either did not take a side in the conflict or said they didn’t know. But the data suggest that support for the state of Israel and the state of Palestine follows a generational divide within the EU, with older people more likely to hold a favorable view of Israel.
This age difference also emerged in a poll by Ifop, which offered a more granular breakdown by age and political views in France. While 57 percent of respondents aged 65 years or older have a positive image of Israel, only 32 percent of people younger than 35 say they do. Supporters of center-right parties show the highest support for Israel, while the far-right and the far-left tend to have similarly lower sympathy levels.
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