Gazans increasingly back a two-state solution, as support for Hamas drops

A poll of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank found waning support for Hamas and armed struggle and an increase in support for a two state solution as the war drags on.

Support for Hamas as a political party has fallen to 34% among Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, a 12-point drop from December 2023, according to a poll released Wednesday by a leading Palestinian research institute.  

While the war is eroding Palestinians’ view of Hamas as the governing body in Gaza, relative support remains high for the militant group’s role in the war. Seventy percent of Palestinians said they were “satisfied” with Hamas’ war performance, as compared to that of other Palestinian entities, like its political rival Fatah, whose deeply unpopular leader, Mahmoud Abbas, governs the West Bank. Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war with Israel, which has so far killed more than 31,000 people in Gaza, according to the enclave’s health ministry. 

The poll was conducted in-person, from March 5 to March 10, at the start of the fifth month of the war, with a sample size of 1580 — 830 of those polled lived in the West Bank and 750 in the Gaza Strip — by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), an independent survey organization based in Ramallah that has surveyors across Gaza. The center has measured public opinion in the Palestinian territories quarterly since the 1990s.

In the period leading up to the poll, Israeli forces had advanced into central Gaza, fears were high of a military incursion into Rafah, the southern city where some 1.5 million people are sheltering, the humanitarian crisis had hit new lows as the most vulnerable began dying of starvation, and negotiations for a cease-fire before Ramadan were sputtering but still offered a fading glimmer of hope. 

Opinions in the West Bank and Gaza diverged significantly on the issue of support for Hamas as a political party. Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007, while Abbas of Fatah runs the West Bank. Unlike Gazans, Palestinians in the West Bank are not subject to the extreme hostilities of the war. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gazans-back-two-state-solution-rcna144183

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