Palestinian-Americans likely to vote for Obama

Palestinian-American citizens are likely to vote for Barack Obama in the US presidential election, according to a survey conducted in Ramallah. They consider the incumbent president to be the least worst of the two candidates for the White House.

Most Palestinians covered by the survey said that they don’t really care about the US election but still insist that Obama is the least worst of the two candidates. “The foreign policy of the Democrats is not as bad as that of the Republicans,” said Fawzi, who lived in the US for 12 years. A spokesman for the US Consulate in Jerusalem said that very few voting slips have been returned by Palestinian-Americans.

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The Palestinian attitude is no different to other Arabs who hold American passports. A survey conducted by the Arabic-European Centre for Study and Research said that most Arabs who have US citizenship couldn’t care less about the election. Nevertheless, the survey suggested that 16.6 per cent of the Arabs with US passports are going to vote for Obama for the same reasons mentioned by Palestinians.

The same survey said that 6.7 per cent believe that Obama and Romney are both working against Arab interests by supporting Israel. However, they prefer Obama over Romney as they think the latter is leading the Middle East towards a disastrous war with his views on Iran.

Latest polls in America show that the election could go either way, with 47 per cent of Americans ready to vote for Barack Obama and 46 per cent for his rival Mitt Romney. Both candidates have pledged their allegiance to the State of Israel in the hope of garnering the influential Jewish and pro-Israel Christian vote in key states.