Palestinian public opinion is blowing new wind into Hamas’s sails, shredded by two years of brutal warfare in Gaza.
The most recent public opinion poll, conducted in late October after a fragile ceasefire took hold, suggests that Hamas may have reversed its consistent rock bottom performance in repeated surveys during the war.
Thirty-two per cent of those surveyed expressed support for Hamas as opposed to 20 per cent for Al-Fatah, the backbone of the West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority. Forty-three per cent supported neither or said they did not know.
Sixty per cent endorsed Hamas’s conduct of the Gaza war.
Credit: PCPSR
Forty-three per cent favoured armed struggle to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict compared to 37 per cent opting for negotiations. Fifty-nine per cent described Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war as “correct.”
Similarly, 55 per cent of Gazans surveyed and 78 per cent of West Bankers opposed disarmament of Hamas as envisioned by US President Donald Trump’s proposal, even “if this is a condition for the war to not to return the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas has so far insisted it would only disarm once an independent Palestinian state has been established. Mediators have suggested a face-saving solution in which it decommissions what is left of its depleted missile and rocket arsenal but keeps sidearms, including automatic guns.
Fifty per cent of Gazans and 39 per cent of West Bankers supported the Trump proposal. Sixty-two per cent backed Hamas’s response to the plan. Fifty-one per cent of Gazans favoured the creation of a non-partisan, post-war Palestinian administration of Gaza.
Sixty-eight per cent of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank opposed the creation of an Arab and Muslim force if it were tasked with disarming Hamas, while 53 per cent of Gazans would support it if disarmament were not part of its mandate.
All of this is not to say that Hamas would win elections, but it suggests that it may be one reason the group has shown itself to be more assertive since Mr. Trump launched his 20-point Gaza proposal and coerced Israel and Hamas into accepting the plan’s first phase.