Voters dispersed to their respective Palestines

The majority of supporters of parliamentary parties of the Russian Federation, like Russians in general, support Palestine in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, sociologists have found. Voters of A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP) are the most pro-Arab, while the electorate of New People sympathizes with the Palestinians least of all. But if the latter prefer to focus on domestic political topics in the presidential campaign, then, for example, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation considers the issue of foreign policy priorities to be one of the important election issues.

The Russian Field research group, together with the Dubravsky Consulting company, conducted an all-Russian telephone survey on the sympathy of Russians for the parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on January 11–19 among 1,600 respondents. As it turned out, two out of five respondents (41%) sympathize with Palestine, 17% said they support Israel, and 20% do not approve of the actions of either side. The pro-Palestinian position is characteristic of respondents regardless of gender, but is more popular among the older generation. The only group where people sympathize with Israel more often (25%) than Palestine (19%) are young people aged 18–29 (20% of them found it difficult to answer).

As Pavel Dubravsky, head of Dubravsky Consulting, notes, the Russians’ attitude to this conflict was formed on the basis of two events – the Hamas attack on October 7 and the response operation by Israel. “Before the second event, the attitude was approximately the same, but the operation and numerous images from Gaza greatly changed public opinion towards Palestine. Moreover, the information side of Israel is poorly represented in the Russian-language media space,” the expert points out.

The majority of supporters of Russian parliamentary parties also support Palestine. This support was at a record high among SRZP voters – 57.4% versus 8% who sympathize with Israel. For other parties, this ratio is approximately the same: 51.5% versus 11.5% for the United Russia electorate, 48.4% versus 11.3% for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, 49.1% versus 11.6% for the Liberal Democratic Party. But supporters of the “New People” differ noticeably in their views on the Middle East conflict: only 28.9% of them support Palestine, while 23.9% give preference to Israel. And among the non-parliamentary parties, Yabloko clearly stands out: 65% of its supporters support Israel and only 10.5% support Palestine.

State Duma deputy from SRZP Nikolai Novichkov explained the survey results to Kommersant by saying that SRZP since 2014 is “the main Russian party in supporting Donbass and the “Russian spring”,” and “genocide in the Gaza Strip” for voters is “a direct analogy with genocide committed by the Kyiv regime against the people of Novorossiya.” “In both cases we see injustice, disregard for the rights of citizens, the commission of war crimes and a humanitarian catastrophe. The reluctance of one of the parties to admit the obvious (the choice of the people of Donbass and the entire Novorossiya to be with Russia or the right of the Palestinians to have their own state) also gives rise to certain analogies. But in general, of course, our party stands for peace,” the deputy emphasized.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation also has quite unambiguous views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it intends to promote them, including within the framework of the presidential elections, where the party is represented by State Duma deputy Nikolai Kharitonov. As Dmitry Novikov, deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and first deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on International Affairs, explained to Kommersant, an election campaign of this level serves as the basis for a broad discussion about the country’s development paths and its priorities in foreign policy. At the same time, the communists have always consistently defended the interests of the Palestinian people, the deputy recalled. “The Russian Foreign Ministry rightly insists on the need to implement the UN resolution so that Palestine has its own state. This is a position on which I do not see any big differences between the parties represented in the State Duma. Our team is aimed at defending the interests of the Palestinian people and their right to statehood, regardless of the results of the presidential elections. This position is fundamental for us and does not depend on sociological research. We will pursue this line precisely because it meets the interests of Russia in the Middle East, the interests of justice for the Palestinian people,” said Mr. Novikov.

The press service of New People, from which State Duma Vice Speaker Vladislav Davankov is running for president, told Kommersant that in the election campaign the party is focusing on solving domestic policy problems. There will be no emphasis on the Palestinian-Israeli theme in the campaigning of the LDPR presidential candidate, party leader Leonid Slutsky. “There is no need to convince the Russians of anything. Everyone knows the monstrous data about the dead Palestinian children, old people, and women. International issues in general will be included in Leonid Slutsky’s program, where a vision of the development of relations with foreign countries in the next six years will be presented,” the LDPR press service explained to Kommersant.

Ksenia Veretennikova