Qatari public wants compromise, not Iran's help

As the crisis between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain enters its fourth month, a timely, publicly available independent political survey among Qatar's roughly 300,000 citizens shows that they overwhelmingly want to settle this dispute in an amicable fashion. 

Eighty-one percent say they support "a compromise, in which all the parties make some concessions to each other" -- including 36 percent who feel strongly that way, The Washington Institute said in its survey. 

This willingness to compromise is all the more striking since not a single one of the respondents supports the boycott against Qatar by the four opposing Arab states.

Equally surprising and significant are the mixed views of Qatar's citizens about the key issues in the intra-Arab dispute.

First, regarding Iran, Qataris are solidly opposed -- by a margin of 79 to 16 percent -- to its current regional policies, despite charges by other Arabs that Qatar's royal family is too close to Tehran.

Iran's regional proxies fare even worse in Qatari public opinion: both Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen get negative ratings from fully 90 percent of Qatar's adult population.

According to the survey, a narrow majority (53 percent) of Qataris even say that "the most important issue in this situation is to find the maximum degree of Arab cooperation against Iran."

Also very unexpected and intriguing is the largely negative Qatari popular attitude toward another major bone of contention in this intra-Arab impasse: the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Although Qatar's government continues to support that organization, the country's citizens disapprove of it, by a margin of 56 to 41 percent. 

The US role in the region is one more issue on which Qatari public opinion defies the conventional wisdom about "the Arab street."

The survey indicated that even though a mere 11 percent express a positive view of current US foreign policy, four times as many (42 percent) -- as in most other Arab countries polled lately -- also say it is "important for us to have good relations" with Washington. 

Nearly that proportion (35 percent) agree that, right now, "Arab countries need help from outside powers like the US in order to overcome their differences." 

Remarkably, just 16 percent say the most useful gesture for the United States would be to "reduce its interference in the region."

Source: MENA