Obama's popularity may be down in US, but he's even less popular among Arabs

A year ago, 51 percent reported they were “hopeful” about Obama's policy toward the Middle East compared with 15 percent who reported they were “discouraged.” Those numbers shifted to 15 percent hopeful and 61 percent discouraged this time around.

Why? Of those polled, 61 percent said they were “most disappointed” by Obama’s Palestine-Israel policy, followed by Iraq at 27 percent and the administration's “attitudes towards Islam” at 5 percent.

The impression in the region is that Obama, who had indicated he was going to get tough on Israel settlement expansion in his Cairo speech and a few times during his first year in office, had defaulted to a US foreign policy status quo that has long infuriated Arabs and Muslims.

To Marc Lynch, a professor of political science at George Washington University in DC, the reasons are clear. Writing on his blog at Foreign Policy magazine.

Mr. Lynch, who closely follows Arab public opinion and US public diplomacy in the region, says the poll should be taken with a grain of salt since polls in the region are generally less reliable than in the US and Europe. He also says there's still some hope for the administration's foreign policy in the region.

But by and large, the poll tracks with other recent polls and research and the Brookings results "do point to some significant and uncomfortable realities about the costs of failing to deliver meaningful change," Lynch writes. "The survey's findings suggest overwhelmingly that it is the administration's failures on the Israeli-Palestinian front which drove the collapse in Arab attitudes towards Obama."

"The perceived failure to deliver meaningful change has taken its toll. Public opinion surveys are only one part of the story --- the goals of engagement are always broader than "moving the numbers" in opinion surveys, even if any administration would happily trumpet positive numbers, and deny the significance of bad numbers. If the administration begins to deliver -- on Israeli-Palestinian peace, on the withdrawal from Iraq, on engagement with Iran -- then the numbers will change."

But for now, one could argue that overall views of the US are only marginally improved from the Bush Administration, if at all. While 64 percent had “very unfavorable” views of the US in 2008 and only 48 percent do so today, most of those opinions have moved into the “somewhat unfavorable” column (38 percent now against 19 percent in 2008). Fewer Arab’s have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable views of the US now than they did in 2008 (12 percent view the US favorably now against 15 percent then).

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