Two weeks ago the leading Palestinian polling organization released surprising data on attitudes in the wake of tje 11-day conflict between Israel and Gaza militants in May. I haven’t seen the findings covered in the U.S., so I wanted to highlight them:
Palestinians overwhelmingly saw Hamas as the victor of the war; they overwhelmingly saw the rockets as a defense of Jerusalem neighborhoods and Al-Aqsa mosque; they overwhelmingly approve of the Palestinian uprisings in Israeli cities in solidarity with Palestinians under occupation; and by a large majority they support armed resistance and intifada as a response to Israeli rule.
In fact, the support for armed resistance has soared in the wake of the Hamas actions.
These views– of 1200 Palestinians surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza– should be widely shared in the United States because they reveal the actual crisis: the response of the victims of apartheid. These people are not happy to wait around as American policymakers figure out how to continue to put the conflict on the back burner. They want their rights, and a majority is willing to take up arms to get them. As any people suffering this persecution would.
In my humble opinion, the responses stress the urgency for American organizations to come out for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. That is a nonviolent way of taking action for Palestinian rights; and of forcing Israel to dismantle apartheid. The alternatives are oppression and bloodshed.
Here are some of the findings of the Palestinian Center for Survey and Policy Research in a survey released June 15.
Hamas won. And it got Israel to stop evicting Palestinians in Jerusalem.
“An overwhelming majority of Palestinians (77%) believes that Hamas has come out a winner in its last war with Israel while only 1% think Israel came out a winner… Moreover, 65% think that Hamas has achieved its declared goal behind firing rockets at Israel: to force Israel to stop the expulsion of the families in al Shaikh Jarrah and to bring to an end Israeli restriction on Muslim access to al Aqsa…”
Palestinians have the most admiration for the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and of Israel who rose up, followed by admiration for Hamas.
In an evaluation of the performance of 10 local and regional actors during the Jerusalem confrontations and the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas, the overwhelming majority describes as excellent that of the residents of Jerusalem and its youth (89%) followed by that of Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel (86%), followed by that of Hamas (75%).
Iran has more prestige than the Palestinian Authority.
About one fifth describes as excellent the performance of each of the following governments: Egypt’s (22%), Turkey’s (21%), Jordan’s (21%), and Iran’s (18%). Finally, only 13% describe as excellent the performance of Fatah, 11% the PA government, and 8% Abbas’.
Hamas would win an election hands-down to judge from these results.
In light of the recent confrontations with Israel, a majority of 53% think Hamas is most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people while 14% think Fatah under president Abbas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinians.
The Israeli government should understand that further efforts to ethnically cleanse Jerusalem will be met by violence, the surveyed say.
If Israel expels the families of al Shaikh Jarrah or reimposes restrictions on access to al Aqsa Mosque, 68% believe the response in this case should be the launching of rockets at Israeli cities, while 18% think it should be the waging of non-violent resistance, and 9% believe Palestinians should respond by submitting a complaint to the UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Look at the overwhelming pride in the actions of Gazans, civilians and militants.
94% say they are proud of the performance of the Gaza Strip during the May confrontation with Israel while 6% say they are not. When asked about the main reason for being proud, 39% said they are proud because Gaza has delivered a military and rocket strike in defense of Jerusalem that demonstrated the weakness of the Israeli army; another 39% said they were proud because Gaza has brought the Palestinian cause back to forefront of Arab and international politics; and 13% said the reason they are proud is because Gaza has sacrificed and endured all the death and destruction while expressing patience and dignity in defense of Jerusalem.
Now let’s go to the late great peace process. Palestinians have little faith in the two-state solution. But they still see it as a preferable end.
Support for the concept of the two-state solution stands at 39% and opposition stands at 58%. No description or details were provided for the concept.
When the public is asked to pick a choice from among three, 46% pick the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines, 10% pick a Palestinian-Israeli confederation, and only 6% pick a one-state for Jews and Arabs.
They don’t think it’s going to happen:
A majority of 61% believes that the two-state solution is no longer practical or feasible due to the expansion of Israeli settlements while 33% believe that the solution remains practical. Moreover, 67% believe that the chances for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel in the next five years are slim or nonexistence while 29% believe the chances to be medium or high.
Now we come to the armed resistance. Notice the absolute shift in the numbers supporting negotiation to those preferring armed struggle.
The most preferred way out of the current status quo is “reaching a peace agreement with Israel” according to 27% of the public while 39% prefer waging “an armed struggle against the Israeli occupation.” 11% prefer “waging a non-violent resistance” and 18% prefer to keep the status quo.
Three months ago, 36% said that they prefer reaching a peace agreement with Israel and 26% said they prefer waging an armed struggle.
This would obviously seem to reflect the view of Hamas’s victory. Half of Palestinians now regard armed struggle as the most effective means of ending occupation.
When asked about the most effective means of ending the Israeli occupation, the public split into three groups: 49% chose armed struggle, 27% negotiations, and 18% popular resistance. Three months ago, 37% chose armed struggle and 36% chose negotiations.
Notice the high numbers for armed resistance, but also nonviolent methods and international solidarity:
When asked about support for specific policy choices, 66% supported joining more international organizations; 58% supported resort to non-violent resistance; 60% supported return to armed confrontations and intifada; 47% supported dissolving the PA; and 20% supported abandoning the two-state solution and embracing a one state solution for Palestinians and Israelis. Three months ago, 43% supported a return to confrontations and armed intifada, 42% supported dissolving the PA, and 33% supported the abandonment of the two-state solution in favor of a one-state solution.
So the support for intifada went from 43 to 60 percent in two months.
Some other data points. Palestinians don’t like the U.S. as a broker.
54% are opposed, and 39% are supportive, of a return to dialogue with the new US administration under president Joe Biden. Moreover, 63% are opposed, and 29% are supportive of a return to Palestinian-Israeli negotiations under the US leadership…. Moreover, 52% do not believe, and 38% believe, that the election of Biden and the resumption of American aid to the PA opens the door for a return to Palestinian-Israeli negotiations within the framework of the two-state solution.
A quarter of Palestinians support the decision by Mansour Abbas to enter the Israeli government with two other members of the Ra’am Party. But the plurality — 45 percent — are opposed to Palestinian parties taking part in Israeli government coalitions, 21 percent neither for or against.
Not much belief in Naftali Bennett: “About one fifth (19%) thinks that an Israeli government led by Naftali Bennett will be better for Israeli-Palestinian relations than a government led by Netanyahu; a large majority of 69% disagree with that.”
Finally, Palestinian goals.
47% believe that the first most vital Palestinian goal should be to end Israeli occupation in the areas occupied in 1967 and build a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital. By contrast, 34% believe the first most vital goal should be to obtain the right of return of refugees to their 1948 towns and villages, 10% believe that the first and most vital goal should be to build a pious or moral individual and a religious society, one that applies all Islamic teachings and 8% believes it should be to establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights of Palestinians.
Israel supported Hamas and they came into power, and now it is making Hamas the heroes among the Palestinians. No one can blame the Palestinian people for thinking this way, they were heavily bombarded, entire families were wiped out, children were being killed, and they ONLY had Hamas to fight back.
Israel must want to keep the occupation going desperately to keep supporting Hamas this way, and have reasons to justify the damn occupation, the shameless land theft, and the killing of unarmed civilians. Israel needs Hamas and Abbas to commit its endless crimes, and they want the status quo to keep whining about being victims.
The Palestinians’ Inalienable Right to Resist
We remembered all the miseries, all the injustices, our people and the conditions they lived, the coldness with which world opinion looks at our cause, and so we felt that we will not permit them to crush us. We will defend ourselves and our revolution by every way and every means.
George Habash (1926-2008)
A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle, and the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor.
Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
In December 1982, following Israel’s devastating invasion of Lebanon six months earlier, the United Nations General Assembly passed resolution A/RES/37/43 concerning the ‘[i]mportance of the universal realization of the right of peoples to self-determination’. It endorsed, without qualification, ‘the inalienable right’ of the Palestinian people to ‘self-determination, national independence, territorial integrity, national unity and sovereignty without outside interference’, and reaffirmed the legitimacy of their struggle for those rights ‘by all available means, including armed struggle’. It also strongly condemned Israel’s ‘expansionist activities in the Middle East’ and ‘continual bombing of Palestinian civilians’, both said to ‘constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of the self-determination and independence of the Palestinian people’. In the four decades since then, Israel’s violence against the Palestinian people and its colonisation of their land has not ceased.
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/the-palestinians-inalienable-right-to-resist
Yes, but using the exact same measure (proportion of respondents rating the performance of a government as “excellent”), Iran, which makes some contribution to arming people in the Gaza Strip, has less prestige than Egypt, which blockades the Gaza Strip.
Quoting from the press release:
The only results they report on this question are the proportion of respondents who rate each of those actors’ performance as “excellent.” What about good, fair, poor, etc.? Why do we need to contact PSR directly to get more details on their poll results? They have done a commendable job of reporting full results of their previous polls, here:
http://pcpsr.org/en/node/839
These numbers contain more than one contradiction. But they do point to this: the Palestinians are not asking for the right to vote in Israeli elections. Either 6% or 20% are in favor of a one state solution. And the 33% who have a top priority of the right of return are imagining the disappearance of Zionism by some magic wand, it seems. The goals are all over the place without any coherence or plan. It would require leadership to distill these sentiments into a program that would not involve the miraculous submission of Israel to maximalist demands. Steadfastness is a great attribute, but politics is the art of the possible and currently from these numbers we have the measurement of discontent, but no straight line from sentiment to politics.