Hillary Clinton’s views on illegal settlements don’t mesh with Democratic voters

Democratic front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke  out strongly against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at a recent fundraising event in Washington D.C hosted by Israeli Democratic mega-donor Haim Saban. At the event she described BDS as anti-semitic and stated that it was hurting U.S. efforts to combat terrorism in the Middle East.

While these views might sit well with AIPAC and Saban, who is avowedly Zionist and Islamophobic, they don’t sit too well with her own base—Democratic voters. According to a recent article by Philip Weiss, Democratic voters are a lot more critical of Israel than Clinton would hope.

When it comes to the way the United States should deal with Israeli settlements, a recent Brookings Institution poll shows that 49 percent of Democrats recommend either imposing economic sanctions or taking more serious action regarding Israeli settlements, as opposed to 46 percent who recommend doing nothing or limiting U.S. opposition to Israel.

Here we can see how Clinton’s aggressively pro-Israel and anti- BDS positions are at odds with the base of the Democratic party who want to see some type of action taken against Israel for its settlement policy.

Another recent Brookings Institution poll shows that 33 percent of Democratic voters prefer a single state defined as “a single democratic state in which both Jews and Arabs are full and equal citizens, covering all of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories” compared to 45 percent who support a two state solution. However according to the same poll other groups are also in support of a single democratic state with 33 percent of Independents and 29 percent of Republicans who were polled supporting the option as well.

While the two state solution  is still the top choice for Democratic voters, the amount of people in support of a single democratic state in Palestine shows that Israel is losing its support among voters in the U.S.

Despite this, all of the major Presidential candidates from both parties have aggressively supported Israel and its oppression of the Palestinian people, leaving those who support a single democratic Palestine without any options among the two major political parties.