Almost half of the people in the UK would consider ending a friendship with someone over their views on Israel-Palestine, a new poll has revealed.
Polling company More In Common UK asked 2,000 people whether finding out a friend had a different position on Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians would lead to them severing their relationship.
The survey found that 43 percent of pro-Palestine respondents said it would, while 46 percent of pro-Israel respondents also said it would.
The polling also found that 75 percent did not feel comfortable talking about the issue on social media, while around three in 10 said they felt either somewhat or very uncomfortable talking about the issue with friends.
Israel’s war on Gaza has stoked tensions across the UK, with repeated pro-Palestine demonstrations across country prompting calls by Israel supporters for bans.
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The proscription of the pro-Palestine direct action group Palestine Action has seen at least 2,094 people arrested for opposing the ban, which the government imposed in response to the group vandalising British planes at RAF Brize Norton in June.
Luke Tryl, director of More in Common UK, told the Independent that the war was having a “divisive” effect in the UK.
“As people with strong views on the conflict have switched off from mainstream media, there is a risk that they move to their own sources of information online, making it much harder for them to have conversations based on shared facts,” he said.
“People also assume that those on the other side of the debate are motivated by bad faith, such as that people support Israel because they are anti-Muslim or Palestine because they are antisemitic.”
