A new poll of Palestinians has some interesting results. It shows that 55% support a two-state solution that involves creating a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.Fatah and Abbas are now significantly more popular than Hamas and Ismail Haniyah today, another improvement.
As Rachel Abrams writes:
Only seven percent of all Palestinians polled—and a mere four percent of those living in the place where there actually are settlements, Judea and Samaria—care at all about settlement growth, one of the two great bugbears of the Middle East peace fantasy harbored by U.S. policymakers (the other being putative Israeli war crimes allegedly committed during operation Cast Lead, about which see this from Jen Rubin).
Noteworthy, too, is that even with respect to the expulsion of Israelis from established settlements and the evacuation of outpost dwellers, those “much more interested” number an impressively small 28 percent.
What do Palestinians want? It appears they want to get rid of Hamas, and apparently in high numbers (”Palestinian Authority President Abbas has a 55% job approval rating, while his likely challenger, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, languishes at 32%”.)
The only issue I’d take with Abrams’ analysis is the emphasis on how stopping the expansion of current settlements isn’t a top issue for Palestinians.
If we look at the other results in the poll, the greater goal of dismantling Jewish settlements is the top issue for 28% (as she states), but another 13% put further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank as the top issue, which encompasses the other two issues of settlement freezing and settlement dismantlement.
That means that the top issue for 41% of Palestinians is, in some way, these settlements.
Source: World Threats
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