This is a guest post by Doug Lieb of AJC.

A recent Rasmussen poll on U.S. public attitudes toward Israeli settlements has gotten some attention in major media sources. No matter where you stand on the settlement issue, it’s too bad the poll is literally nonsense.

Rasmussen asked: “As part of a Middle East peace agreement, should Israel be required to stop building new settlements in occupied Palestinian territory?” 49 percent said yes. 22 percent said no.

But once there’s a peace deal, there’s no such thing as a new settlement - or, for that matter, occupied Palestinian territory. Some current settlements would become part of Israel under an agreed territorial swap. They’re just towns, not settlements. The rest would either be dismantled or - if Salaam Fayyad’s offer to extend citizenship is genuine - could become municipalities in Palestine. Rasmussen’s question is irrelevant, or even structurally impossible, by definition.

If they were actually answering the question, the 22 percent who said “no” would be saying that Israel should build new, unauthorized satellite communities in the newly sovereign state of Palestine. That absurdly untenable position defeats the whole point of a peace agreement, so let’s hope these people were just confused.

This probably isn’t malice on the pollster’s part. It’s just really bad phrasing. Right now, the relevant question is: Should Israel stop construction in existing settlements to encourage negotiations leading to a peace agreement?

It would be helpful and interesting to know where Americans stand on that question. But if a pollster wants to ask that, he/she needs to, you know, ask that.