The survey reveals Palestinian support for the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, which left 1,400 dead and 240 kidnapped.
The findings of a Palestinian pollster raise questions about Israel’s stated goal of ending Hamas’ warfighting capacity and its government, and highlight the challenges to the US government’s vision for Gaza once the war ends.
Washington has asked that the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, currently led by Abbas, finally assume control of Gaza and govern both territories as a preliminary step to the creation of a state. US officials have said the Palestinian Authority must be revitalized, without clarifying whether that would involve changes in its leadership.
The Palestinian Authority administers portions of the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, and ruled Gaza until the Hamas terrorist movement took power in 2007. Palestinians have not held elections since 2006, when Hamas won a parliamentary majority.
Two States
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has flatly rejected any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and insists that Israel must maintain security control there indefinitely to prevent Hamas’ terrorist actions against the Jewish nation.
During Barack Obama’s administration, Netanyahu backed the vision of “two states for two peoples” but called for Palestinians to recognize Israel as a state, a condition that is not accepted.
America’s Arab allies have said they will engage in postwar reconstruction only if there is strong momentum toward a two-state solution, which is unlikely under Netanyahu’s government, which is dominated by opponents of statehood. Palestinian.
Support erodes
As the survey results indicate a further erosion of the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, at a time when there appears to be no path to resuming credible negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state, the situation in Gaza in the The postwar period will be characterized by an indefinite Israeli occupation, says pollster Khalil Shikaki.
“Israel is stuck in Gaza,” Shikaki declared before the release of poll results from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, or PSR. “Maybe the next (Israeli) government will decide that Netanyahu is not right to put all these conditions and decide to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. But the default for the future, for Israel and Gaza, is that Israel completely reoccupies Gaza.”
The survey was conducted from Nov. 22 to Dec. 2 among 1,231 people in the West Bank and Gaza, and has a margin of error of 4 percentage points. In Gaza, enumerators conducted 481 in-person interviews during a week-long ceasefire that ended Dec. 1.
Palestinians support Hamas terrorist attack on Israel
The survey allows us to know the opinion of Palestinians about the attack carried out on October 7 by Hamas and other Gaza militants in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians.
Shikaki noted that Gazans are more critical of Hamas than those in the West Bank, that support for Hamas typically spikes in periods of armed conflict before stabilizing, and that even now most Palestinians do not support it.
Despite the devastation, 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank think Hamas did the right thing by launching the October attack, according to what the survey indicates. A large majority said they believed Hamas’ claims that it acted to “defend” a major Islamic shrine in Jerusalem against Jewish extremists and to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Only 10% said they believe Hamas has committed war crimes, and a large majority said they had not seen videos showing Hamas terrorists committing atrocities.
While Israeli media coverage has focused on the October 7 attack, Palestinian media has focused on the war in Gaza and the suffering of its civilian population.
88% want Abbas to resign
Shikaki said the most popular politician remains Marwan Barghouti, a prominent member of Abbas’s Fatah movement who is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli prison for his alleged involvement in separate deadly attacks during the second Palestinian uprising 20 years ago. In a presidential race between two candidates, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader in exile, would surpass Abbas, while in a three-way race, Barghouti would be slightly ahead, according to the pollster.
Overall, 88% want Abbas to resign, 10 percentage points more than three months ago. In the West Bank, 92% call for the resignation of the octogenarian who has presided over a government considered corrupt, autocratic and ineffective.
At the same time, 44% of West Bank residents expressed support for Hamas, up from 12% in September. In Gaza, Hamas enjoyed 42% support, slightly up from 38% three months ago.
According to Shikaki, support for the Palestinian Authority has declined further, with almost 60% now saying it should be dissolved. In the West Bank, Abbas’s continued security coordination with the Israeli military against Hamas, his bitter political rival, is deeply unpopular.
The survey also highlighted widespread frustration with the international community, especially the United States, European countries and even the United Nations, which have pushed for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Source: With information from AP
