Poll: Palestinian Support for Hamas in West Bank Tripled in 3 Months, Over 90% Oppose Abbas’s PA Controlling Gaza

Young supporters of Hezbollah burn a US flag during a rally in support of Palestinians in
Manu Brabo/Getty Images
Joshua Klein

Support for Hamas has more than tripled in the West Bank following the terror group’s October 7 massacre, the deadliest against Jewish people since the Nazi Holocaust, according to a new poll showing more than four-fifths of Palestinian respondents from the West Bank agreed with the terror group’s decision to execute the barbaric attacks. 

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden continues to pressure Israel to work with the significantly weakened Palestinian Authority (PA), insisting on implementing the largely failed two-state solution to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A fresh public opinion poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), in cooperation with Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, exposes sentiments among Palestinians in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel which saw the torture, rape, execution, immolation, mutilation, and abduction of hundreds of innocent civilians. 

The findings of the poll, which were conducted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, were published Wednesday and reveal a marked increase in support for armed struggle against Israel. 

Support for Hamas more than tripled in the West Bank compared to three months prior, and also increased in the Gaza Strip, though less significantly. Previously, support for the U.S.-designated terror group in the West Bank was approximately 12%. However, after the survey, conducted following the October 7 massacre, it rose to nearly 44%.

According to the poll, 70% of respondents from the West Bank expressed their belief that Hamas will emerge victorious from the current war.

The poll also revealed that 82% of respondents from the West Bank view Hamas’ decision to execute the October 7 massacre as correct, though over 90% denied that Hamas terrorists committed the atrocities against civilians depicted in the vast amounts of footage that have since gone viral.

A staggering 95% believe Israel committed war crimes, the poll showed. In contrast, only a small fraction (10%) views Hamas as culpable of similar crimes, reflecting a deep-seated narrative of victimhood and resistance.

In contrast to support for Hamas, the standing of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA) has significantly weakened.

The political ramifications of the war are evident in the projected electoral outcomes. 

Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh is favored significantly over Abbas, while Marwan Barghouti — a Palestinian terrorist leader jailed for life by Israel on multiple murder charges — remains the most popular Palestinian political figure even today during the war in Gaza.

Barghouti, a member of Abbas’ Fatah faction, was the mastermind behind many of the terror attacks committed by Fatah’s armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, during the Second Intifada. Convicted in 2004, he is serving five life sentences on five counts of murder and one count of attempted murder.

Barghouti received the highest support (36%) in terms of presidential preference, while Haniyeh (19%) followed, and Abbas’s satisfaction level stood at 14%.

Asked about post-war governance preferences in the Gaza Strip, 75% of those in the West Bank favored Hamas (38% in the Gaza Strip), with only 7% of respondents supporting the PA under Abbas.

The survey encompassed 1,231 adults across the West Bank and Gaza Strip between November 22 and December 2, 2023.

Last month, a poll by Birzeit University’s Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) showed significant Palestinian support for Hamas and its October 7 massacre, with nearly three-quarters favoring the elimination of Israel.

In the West Bank, 83.1% of Palestinian respondents supported the attack, while in Gaza, the figure was 63.6%. 

In the West Bank, just 6.9% opposed the attack, while 8.4% were neutral; and in Gaza only 20.9% opposed the attack, while 14.4% were neutral.

Overall, 75% of Palestinian respondents agreed with the attack, while 74.7% favored a single Palestinian state “from the river to the sea” in place of Israel.

The survey ultimately revealed that Palestinian society shows greater unity on this issue than the global community, even as the Biden administration seeks to “revitalize” the hostile PA.

According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinian Authority (PA), like Hamas, seeks the utter demise of the State of Israel. On Monday, he vowed to never have the “hostile” PA control a post-Hamas Gaza. 

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, President Biden made disparaging comments about Israel and the Israeli government, claiming, without evidence, that the Jewish state practices “indiscriminate bombing”; that Israel is losing support worldwide; and that Prime Minister Netanyahu will fail unless he removes democratically-elected right-wing parties from his cabinet.

Palestinian support for terrorism and terror groups has long served as a barrier to peace between the two sides. 

In October, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) asserted, “Anyone who claims to support the people of Gaza but not Hamas should remember that Gazans elected Hamas.”

“At some point, some will have to reconcile themselves to the fact that while many Palestinian civilians did not take part in the massacre, many almost certainly cheered it,” wrote Erielle Davidson, senior policy analyst with JINSA. “The savagery and rot that pervades the Hamas terrorist is not exclusive to the terrorists themselves. Same animating hatred.”

Conservative pundit Brigitte Gabriel shared what she termed the “sad truth” that the Palestinians in Gaza “mostly support what Hamas is doing,” and even those who disagree with Hamas “hate the Jews so badly — they are collectively antisemites.”

Hamas’ massacre received broad support from Palestinian factions across the board, with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad participating in it, the “moderate” Fatah expressing support, and the official Palestinian Authority (PA) pledging to pay nearly $3 million to the families of slain Hamas terrorists who executed the massacre.

Palestinian politician Major General Issam Abu Bakr, who served as governor of the Palestinian city of Tulkarem, expressed his belief in unanimous support for the attack, saying “I do not think there is a single Palestinian who does not support what happened.” 

An additional poll from March carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, found that the vast majority of Palestinians — nearly seventy percent — expressed support for the creation of armed terrorist groups to attack the Jewish state.

A previous poll conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) revealed that a whopping 93 percent of Palestinians hold antisemitic beliefs.

Numerous videos depict a supportive response of the Palestinian street to news of the massacre.

As Breitbart News reported, immediately after news of the attacks broke, Palestinians at home and abroad were seen celebrating jubilantly.

Photos and videos uploaded to social media show Palestinian crowds greeting the returning executioners as heroes and burning seized Israeli cars in the streets of Gaza.

Others show Palestinians rallying, handing out sweets, and firing guns in the air.

Ordinary Palestinian civilians were not just seen celebrating the massacre, but actively participating in it, with full mobs captured on film pouring across the breached border to take part in the killing and raping of innocents, and the looting of their property.

According to IDF spokesman Jonathan Conricus, significant numbers of Palestinians unaffiliated with terror groups entered Israel and participated in the atrocities alongside the terrorists.

In addition, Gadi Yarkoni, the mayor of the Eshkol Regional Council, told the Free Beacon that the “second wave of Arabs who came into the country were just as cruel as the terrorists of the first wave.” 

“We saw that it was not only Hamas who came to slaughter us,” he added. “It was all the residents of Gaza, including people who worked in our kibbutzim.”

The matter follows Hamas’ multi-pronged October attack that saw some 3,000 terrorists burst into Israel by land, sea, and air and gun down participants at an outdoor music festival while others went door to door hunting for Jewish men, women, and children in local towns who were then subject to torture, rape, execution, immolation, and kidnapping.

The massacre, which drew parallels to scenes from the Nazi Holocaust, resulted in more than 1,200 dead inside the Jewish state, over 5,300 more wounded, and at least 241 hostages of all ages taken — of which nearly 140 remain captive.

The vast majority of the victims are civilians and include dozens of American citizens.

Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

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