U.S. public opinion overwillingly believes that Israel should "stop building the new settlement (at Jabal Abu Ghnaim) and restart peace talks with the Palestinians."

This is one of the conclusions of a nationwide poll of U.S. voters conducted for Al-Sharq Al -Awsat and the Washington-based Arab American Institute (AAI]) by Zogby International, a leading U.S. polling firm.

In what should be bad news for Israeli efforts to convince Americans of the legitimacy of their move in Jerusalem, 59% of U.S. voters oppose the settlement, while only 13% support the Israeli position.

At the same time, the As Sharq Al Awsat/AAI poll shows that 56% of American voters believe that the Clinton Administration should pursue a more balanced approach to Middle East foreign policy. Only 15% believe that the Administration's policy should favor Israel.

The Al-Sharq Al Awsat/AAI results closely track other recent national polls which show a strong decline in U.S. support for Israel since the election of Likud's Benyamin Netanyahu in June of 1996.

A Harris poll of 1006 Americans conducted during the last week in March, for example, showed that the American public evenly blamed Israel and the Palestinians for the current problems in the peace process, and evaluated Netanyahu and Arafat as equally responsible for breaking previous peace agreements.

Netanyahu is not trusted by U.S. voters. The Al- Sharq Al Awsat /AAI poll shows that 21% of Americans believe that the Israeli Prime Minister is committed to peace while 25% feel that he is not committed. This stands in stark contrast, for example, to Egyptian President Housni Mubarak who Americans believe by a margin of 2 to 1 is committed to peace (21% to 10%).

Despite Israeli efforts to put the blame for the collapse of the peace process on the back of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. it is Israel that is losing ground in U.S. public opinion.

Serious questions do remain in U.S. public opinion about Palestinian President Yassir Arafat's cormmitment to peace with only 15% of U.S. voters believing that the Palestinian President is committed and with 40% believing he is not. Nevertheless, U.S. attitudes toward Palestinian rights have not been negatively effected. By a margin of 4 to 1, American voters support the Palestinian right to statehood (47% in favor, 13% opposed).

It is clear from the overal results of the poll that the U.S. public would not support one-sided policies toward the Middle East. For example, there is a division over support for U.S. vetoes of Security Council resolutions against Israel's settlement building. The Al-Sharq Al Awsat/AAI poll finds that U.S. voters are evenly divided 1/3 for the U.S. veto, 1/3 opposed and 1/3 without opinion.

The recent Harris poll showed much the same ambivalence in public opinion wilt 43% in favor of the veto and 43% opposed.

Clearly the President had no public mandate in his consecutive U.N. vetoes.

The Al-Sharq Al Awsat /AAI poll was conducted durmg the second week of April while the Israeli Prime Minister was in Washington delivering a number of major policy addresses and meeting with President Clinton.

It is useful to note that Netanyahu and his policies scored low in public opinion despite the fact that the poll was taken during the Prime Minister's visit to Washington. During that period, Congressional supporters and the Vice President gave televised pro-Israeli speeches and some U.S. commentators wrote articles defending Israeli policies None of those appeared to help the Israeli leader's standing in the U.S. polls.

The polling firm, Zogby International, gained significant national prominence for its accuracy in the 1996 U.S. presidential elections. The firm was praised by Business Week magazine, theWashington Post, and USA Today for being the only polling firm to correctly predict the outcome of the Presidential race and other Senate and Congressional races.