Showing posts with label Poll. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poll. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

16-Jun-21: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?

Image Source: Red Cross
There's unique value to Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab public opinion. 

They often come with internal contradictions and unanswered ambiguities. But at least they don't suffer from, or impose on their readers, the wishful thinking and projection that make some outside analyses, especially from far-away reporters and columnists with axes to grind, misleading and worse.

We have reported here for years about the results of periodic polling done by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), headed by a respected professional, Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We know Shikaki only by his work and reputation; there is no personal connection between us.

Before getting into the details and the data, it's worth repeating what we wrote in one of our previous posts about Palestinian Arab opinion polls ["04-Apr-18: Here's (one view of) what the Palestinian Arabs want"]:
Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion can be valuable tools for understanding what they think at any given time. And no less importantly, how accurate the assessments of what they want for the future are. And to be blunt about this, they're invariably more valuable by far than media guesses about what the Palestinian Arabs think and want. Claims are made freely and often about Palestinian Arab aspirations. Very often, though, the data tell a story that's at total variance from what's being claimed about them. That's why we have chosen from time to time to publicize here the results of opinion polls conducted by relatively respected organizations within Palestinian Arab society.
PSR Public Opinion Poll Number 80 was released yesterday. It reports on polling conducted on a sample of 1,200 adults interviewed face to face in 120 randomly selected locations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between June 9 and 12, 2021. The margin of error is plus/minus 3%.

The press release summarizing its findings starts with uncommonly strong language, speaking of "a paradigm shift in public attitudes against the PA and its leadership and in favor of Hamas and armed struggle". 

In these current fraught times, you would think this would get significant headline treatment. But the PSR polls almost never do. Here are some of the key findings.

Political leadership

  • PSR found widespread public discontent with how President Mahmoud Abbas, now 85 years old, leads them. Abbas was elected on January 9, 2005 to serve as President of the Palestinian National Authority (usually called the PA) until January 15, 2009. More than sixteen years after taking charge, he gives no indication that he's ready to relinquish control. Quite the opposite.
  • Abbas announced on January 15, 2021 that elections would take place for the no-longer-functional Palestinian Legislative Council on May 22, 2021. These were going to be followed by presidential elections on July 31, 2021. Based on reports we saw, there were few observers who believed they were actually going to happen.
  • And on April 30, 2021 ["Palestinian leader delays parliamentary and presidential elections, blaming Israel" via Reuters] the skeptics were proven right. It was all Israel's fault, naturally - because everything bad in their world is the fault of the Jews..
  • Now notice that, as the poll shows, two-thirds of Palestinian Arabs reject Abbas’ decision to postpone the elections. To us, this is a big deal. While the Western media are busy swallowing Abbas' chronic blame-all-problems-on-the Zionists, Abbas' subjects understand the games that are being played and don't like them. 
  • The same proportion, two-thirds, say the reason the elections were postponed is not because of Zionist dirty doings but rather (which is obviously the case) that Abbas "was afraid of their outcome, not because Israel has prevented the holding of elections in East Jerusalem." His placing the blame on Israel is the subject of an April 27, 2021 Associated Press report ["Egyptian officials: Palestinians plan to call off elections"] in which the obvious is pointed out: that the Israeli role is nothing more than "a pretext for Abbas to cancel a parliamentary election that his Fatah movement is expected to lose badly. Fatah has split into three rival lists, paving the way for Hamas to emerge as the biggest party in parliament."
  • The latest PSR data bear this out. A clear majority prefer Hamas leadership over Fatah under Abbas. More concretely, if presidential elections were held today on a head-to-head basis between two candidates, Mahmoud Abbas would get 27% and lose massively to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh who gets 59%. Three months ago, a PSR poll predicted Haniyeh at 46% and Abbas at 47%. This is not what Abbas wants to hear.
  • Nor is this: In a hypothetical two-horse race between Haniyeh and convicted and imprisoned-for-life terrorist Marwan Barghouti who personally paid for the guitar bomb that murdered our daughter (among a long list of additional crimes for which he is in prison), Barghouti would win 51% to 42%. But note, which PSR does not, that in a previous poll three years ago, the malodorous Mr Barghouti did considerably better than this month. 
  • Abbas does worse in the West Bank than he does in Gaza. In Gaza, Abbas would get 30% of votes (44% three months ago); Haniyeh gets 60% (56% three months ago). In the West Bank which Fatah/PA/Abbas nominally control, Abbas gets just 25% (52% three months ago) and Haniyeh gets 59% (38% three months ago).
  • What's more, there is "widespread public discontent with the performance of the PA government and leadership as well as Fatah during the [recent] confrontations and the war."
  • Overall, support for Hamas electorally and in general has increased dramatically at the expense of Fatah: "A majority of the Palestinians think that Hamas is more deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people" than Fatah under Abbas’ leadership.
  • Asked about the ability of the current PA government headed by Prime Minister (since April 2019) Mohammad Shtayyeh, to improve economic conditions, 62% expect failure.

Palestinian Arab Gazans with no work - 2017 [Image Source]
Peace

  • What are Palestinian Arab society's preferred courses for getting out of what their report calls the current status quo. 27% of them say “reaching a peace agreement with Israel” (down from 36% three months ago) - not much of an answer without some explanation of how this gets done but it's the answer the pollsters chose to offer. But then a major larger group amounting to 39% say waging “an armed struggle against the Israeli occupation” (sharply up from 26% three months ago). 11% prefer waging "non-violent resistance”. 18% say the status quo isn't actually that bad and prefer to keep it.
  • Asked about the desirability of re-engaging with the United States now that Trump has gone and the Democrats under Biden are in charge, 54% don't want it to happen. 
  • The US and Europe speak often and enthusiastically about a two-state solution. But support for the concept (which was not defined in the poll for reasons not explained in the PSR report) was a mere 39%., almost identical to what it was three months ago. A whopping 58% of Palestinian Arabs say they oppose it.
War
  • Support for a return to armed confrontation and intifada rose sharply to 60%. Support for a resumption of negotiations with Israel and the belief that negotiation are the best way to end "occupation" fell.
  • Which side "won" the May 2021 battle between Hamas forces in Gaza and the IDF? The Palestinian Arab public has a breathtakingly clear view on this: "An overwhelming majority... (77%) believes that Hamas has come out a winner in its last war with Israel while only 1% think Israel came out a winner."
  • 72% think those 4,300+ Hamas rockets were launched at Israeli towns and homes "in defense of Jerusalem and al Aqsa Mosque". 
  • Of the various groups "most willing to defend Jerusalem and its holy places", Hamas gets a 29%, rating and Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah/PA a dismissive 3%.
  • 60% of those polled believe the participation (presumably the civil disobedience, riots, armed and unarmed attacks on Israelis) of "the Palestinian citizens of Israel in the recent confrontation was driven, first and foremost, by their desire to defend the holy sites." 
  • 94% "are proud of the performance of the Gaza Strip during the May confrontation with Israel while 6% say they are not."
  • Asked whether they have a positive view of life ("positive evaluation of conditions"), only 8% of people in the Gaza Strip say yes. In the West Bank, it's a whopping 24%.
  • 26% of all Palestinian Arabs "want to emigrate due to political, security, and economic conditions". Breakdown: in the Gaza Strip it's 42% (slightly up on three months ago when it was 40%). In the West Bank, it's 15% (sharply down on 23% of three months ago). 
  • Based on viewing habits of the past three months, by far the most watched TV channel for Palestinian Arabs is Aljazeera TV (Arabic of course) with 36% of respondents. Next came Al-Aqsa TV with a mere 13% and six others with far smaller audiences.
Corruption in Palestinian Arab institutions
  • Is there corruption in PA institutions? 84% say yes.
  • Is there corruption in Hamas institutions? 57% say yes.
  • Can you criticize PA institutions without fear? 46% of West Bankers say yes. 
  • Can you criticize Hamas institutions without fear? 50% of Gazans say yes.
Rewards for Terror
  • This being a Palestinian Arab survey of Palestinian Arab views, no one should be surprised that the poll avoids asking whether the Palestinian Authority's notorious incentive payments program for imprisoned or dead terrorists ("Pay to Slay" or less colorfully Rewards for Terror) ought to continue. Of course (we say) they want it to continue. 
  • Instead, based on the responses, the PSR poll question is apparently this: Should those payments "to the families of martyrs and prisoners [be] based on need assessment and number of family members rather than on the act committed by the martyr or the number of years in jail"? 
  • Payments according to how sickening the act of terror was and how long the prison sentence, assuming the terrorists were caught, tried and convicted, is how it works today. Adjusting it to take account of the terrorist family's actual needs is the far-fetched proposal offered by the poll question. 
  • The result is absolutely (and disturbingly) clear: 70% are opposed to the suggested change. They're happy with how things are today - more dead and injured Israelis means more cash from the chronically insolvent PA budget and they see nothing wrong with that.  Abbas and his cronies, unable to build or run their own education system, their own decent health-care system, their own industrial infrastructure to create employment and entrepreneurship opportunities for a society with a staggering unemployment rate of 38% among the crucial youth cohort aged between 18 and 29 (2019 data) - instead simply spend the foreign cash the PA gets from foolish government officials in Europe and elsewhere. It's an easy decision.
  • A significant footnote: The 2019 unemployment rate (official Palestinian Authority figures) among that same youth cohort in Gaza stood at an unbelievable 63%. It's a piece of information to keep in mind when we see coverage of masses of Gazans being herded to protest rallies and wildly violent "protests" in the vicinity of the border with Israel.  
There's much to ponder in these findings, perhaps the most significant part of it being that Palestinian Arab leadership is neither building a credible alternative to peace with Israel nor doing anything to moderate their society's passion for war, confrontation and self-delusion.

It's a depressing picture for anyone who gives a damn.

Click here for the full list.

[For Polish-speaking readers, a version translated into the Polish language is online at the Listy z naszego sadu site - dziękuję ci bardzo, Małgorzata.]
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Wednesday, February 05, 2020

05-Feb-20: What do Palestinian Arabs think?

Abbas in better times [Image Source]
The opinions of Palestinian Arabs are, to a great extent, a puzzle.

By that, we don't mean what their elites say they think. Or what outside reporters guess are their opinions. It's not a free or open society. It doesn't have unrestricted media - quite the opposite. And it hasn't had elections for well over a decade.

So, as we keep saying in this blog, what Palestinian Arabs tell trusted fellow Palestinian Arabs who are professional opinion pollsters about the things they actually believe is a subject always worth revisiting. (The last time we did that was here: "04-Jun-19: What do Palestinian Arabs think?")

Our previous poll-centered posts have centered on the published data of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) headed by Dr. Khalil Shikaki. Click here to go to those previous posts - we started analyzing and reporting on  them in 2011. 

We're doing that again now based on PSR's most recent Public Opinion Poll, number 74, which was published [here] on December 26, 2019. 

The polling was done both in the Fatah/PLO-controlled West Bank and in the Hamas-occupied Gaza Strip in the period December 11 to 14. Total size of sample: 1,200 adults interviewed face to face in 120 randomly selected locations. Margin of error +/-3%.

‣ President Abbas?

Mahmoud Abbas became president of the Palestinian Authority in the January 2005 elections. That was a four-year term that has famously just 'celebrated' its fifteenth birthday. Hard to avoid the conclusion that elections are not so popular among the mostly-elderly, mostly-wealthy Palestinian Arab insiders who control the operation.

Abbas' power is broad. Beyond the PA role, he holds these additional titles in parallel:
The data show that the people he rules don't seem to like him much. 

As of this past December, 61% of the Palestinian Arab public wanted Abbas to resign, exactly the same percentage as three months earlier. This is split between the 52% of West Bank Arabs who hold that view (higher than the percentage 90 days earlier) and the no-less-than-73% of Gazans who want to see Abbas leave office immediately.

‣ A Two-State Solution?

How much support is there among Palestinian Arabs for the concept of a two-state solution? Just 42%. Now ponder this: Fully two-thirds of all Palestinian Arabs say it's the US "declaration of the legality of Israeli settlements according to international law" that blocks the two-state solution.

It evidently doesn't occur to them that their own pretty strong opposition is, let's say, part of the problem. Not for the first time, we get the sense that in Palestinian Arab society, the population don't see themselves as causing things to happen. Rather, they're a people to whom things are done by others.

‣ War or peace?

What's their "most preferred way out of the current status quo":
  • "Armed struggle": 39% (which is slightly up on the number of three months earlier)
  • "Reaching a peace agreement with Israel": 29%
  • "Waging a non-violent resistance" (what they mean by this is unspecified): 14%
  • "Keep the status quo": 15%. 
Identify "the most effective means of ending the Israeli occupation":
  • "Armed struggle": 47% (three points higher than three months ago)
  • "Popular resistance": 20%
  • "Negotiations": 26%
In view of how "the peace negotiations are suspended", which alternative directions (more than one is acceptable) do they support?: 
  • "Popular non-violent resistance": 60%
  • "A return to an armed intifada": 52%
  • "Dissolving the PA": 42%
  • "Abandoning the two-state solution and demanding the establishment of one state for Palestinians and Israelis": 28%
‣ Their society's most vital goals?
  • Option 1: "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": 44%
  • Option 2: "To obtain the right of return of refugees to their 1948 towns and villages": 33%
  • Option 3: "To build a pious or moral individual and a religious society, one that applies all Islamic teachings": 13%
  • Option 4: "To establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights of Palestinians": 9%
‣ The most serious problem confronting Palestinian society today?
  • "The continuation of occupation and settlement activities": 28%
  • Poverty and unemployment: 26%
  • "The spread of corruption in public institutions": 26%
  • "The siege of the Gaza Strip": 17%
A final note. In polling to see how they view the future of Palestinian Arab society, the words "child" and "children" don't appear in either the questions or the responses. That's sad.

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Co myślą palestyńscy Arabowie?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]
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Tuesday, June 04, 2019

04-Jun-19: What do Palestinian Arabs think?

The PA Cabinet, presided over by prime minister Rami Hamdallah in 2017
Knowing what the Palestinian Arabs think - not what their elites say they think or what outside reporters guess their opinions are but what they tell trusted fellow Palestinian Arabs who happen to be professional pollsters about the things they actually believe - is a subject always worth revisiting.

Most of our previous poll-centered posts have been based on the published data of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), headed by Dr. Khalil Shikaki. Click here to go to those previous posts - we started analyzing them in 2011. We do that again below.

But first, stop and note an Associated Press report issued this afternoon that drives home something every Palestinian Arab knows but that gets poorly reported for reasons obvious to anyone who pays attention to how the Palestinian Arab conflict with Israel is covered in the news. (That's not meant as a compliment to reporters or editors.)

Key quote:
“I think this is just the tip of the iceberg of corruption in the Palestinian Authority, considering that we couldn’t have access to more important information,” said Majdi Abu Zeid, a researcher at the anti-corruption watchdog group Aman. The leaks coincide with a report by Aman finding that the government has improperly filled senior government jobs without advertising them, appointed officials’ relatives to senior posts and refused to disclose budgets of the presidential office and security forces.
The AP headline almost buries what the story really stands for: "A secret pay raise by Cabinet angers Palestinian public":
  • The pay raise was awarded to themselves by the members of the shadowy cabal around Mahmoud Abbas in 2017, and made retrospective all the way back to 2014. A real killing for the fat cats and only the thinnest of camouflage to explain themselves now that  they have been caught.
  • This happened when Abbas' prime minister was Rami Hamdallah. Described in June 2013 as "a British-educated academic and political independent" as well as a moderate and pragmatic when he took office, he was said to be an interim appointee. But he filled the role for six years, being replaced in April 2019. Evidently he's possessed of the sort of pragmatism that appeals to the PA's president-for-life.
  • An angry "Palestine public" is a phenomenon worth understanding. Our sense, looking at polling data, has long been that the Palestinian Arabs are consistently a great deal angrier with their corrupt and self-serving political elites than the news industry wants to report. And for perfectly sound reasons.
Now to the most recent published data from Dr Shikaki's authoritative PSR.

It's derived from interviews conducted in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and in the region controlled by the Palestinian Authority (Judea and Samaria are our preferred terms) between March 13 and 16, 2019. The data are summarized in a report called Public Opinion Poll 71, published online on April 9, 2019. Total sample size was 1,270 adults interviewed face to face in 127 randomly selected locations. Margin of error: +/-3%.

Produce vendor, Palestinian Authority [Image Source]
Some findings that got our attention:
  • Elections: The Palestinian Arabs are starved for opportunities to vote for their rulers. Little wonder that more than seventy percent of them say they want elections for both parliament and president. But life and reality have made them realistic: 46% believe no elections of either kind will take place in the foreseeable future. It helps to know that Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian National Authority on January 9, 2005 for a four-year term that doesn't look like ending in his lifetime. The last time Palestinian Arabs got to vote for a parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council, was a year after that, on January 25, 2006. But they haven't lost their interest: if they could vote for a parliament and all Palestinian factions were able to run, 70% say they would go vote. Fatah would lead with 39%; Hamas would get 32%; the other parties would share 8%; 18% can't decide right now. (Yes, this doesn't add up to 100% but the prospects of it happening are tiny anyway.) 
  • Leaders: Satisfaction with the performance of Abbas as president is 40% among residents of the "West Bank" and 24% in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. In the extremely unlikely event of a two-horse race election for president, Abbas gets 51% of the vote and wins, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas gets 41%. Convicted murderer and loathsome prisoner Marwan Barghouti ["18-Apr-17: So what, in reality, is Marwan Barghouti?"] would be a stronger theoretical candidate for president than Abbas, scoring 64% to Haniyeh's 33%. 
  • Prime Minister: Without consulting Hamas, Abbas appointed Mohammad Shtayyeh as prime minister, replacing Hamdaleh, in mid-April 2019. Asked by the pollsters and although he's barely managed to do anything yet, about the same number of Palestinian Arabs (38%) were satisfied with the new guy as dissatisfied (40%). What do they base their opinions on? That's beyond our capabilities.
  • PA prosperity: The Palestinian Authority has been an economic basket case since its inception, and has done almost nothing since then to show it can do better. Quite the opposite. Abbas underscored this when he declared  a year ago during a meeting with families and relatives of Palestinian “martyrs” and former security prisoners (meaning terrorists): "Even if we have only a penny left, we will give it to the martyrs, the prisoners and their families,.. We view the prisoners and the martyrs as planets and stars in the skies of the Palestinian struggle, and they have priority in everything." Palestinian Arabs understand him: asked in March, 69% worried that the PA will not be able to keep paying salaries; the PA itself is by far the largest employer in the PA. More than half (54%) of all Palestinian Arabs worry that it will entirely collapse. There's no sign at all that this worries Abbas. Meanwhile, as the International Labor Organization noted here, "The unemployment rate in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) has risen to the world’s highest level, at 27.4 per cent in 2017."
  • Whose fault? Asked who should be blamed for the awful state of the Gaza Strip (it's axiomatic that someone has to be), more than a third of all Palestinian Arabs (37%) voted for Israel. 25% blamed the PA and its president. The smallest vote, 21%, was expressed by those who somehow imagine it's the fault of Hamas who after all have only controlled Gaza since 2007 after winning the 2006 elections there and then violently overturning Fatah's control.
    • Image Source: Reuters
  • Corruption and fear: Two-thirds of all West Bankers say the PA cannot be criticized - meaning you don't do it if you know what's good for you. Asked "Do you think that there is corruption in PA institutions of the Palestinian Authority?" (probably sounds less clumsy in Arabic), 85% of West Bankers said yes. In Gaza, 76% said yes to the same question. Far as we can tell from the report, the Gazans were not asked about corruption in Hamas. Or if they were, the results were not published. Why? It's the Middle East.
  • Peace - and will there be a Palestinian state? A serious number, 39% which is higher than the last poll by 5 percentage points, say their preferred way of moving past today's reality is “reaching a peace agreement with Israel”. 30% say "armed struggle against the Israeli occupation” and 11% say “waging non-violent resistance”. Armed struggle gets relatively more support among those polled in the Gaza Strip (38%) compared with the West Bank (25%). 
  • Peace plans: 83%, an astronomical number, say the Trump Administration is not serious about its peace plan. 64% even oppose resuming dialogue between the Palestinian Arab leadership and the US. Opposition to such talks is stronger in the West Bank (70%) than in the Gaza Strip (54%). It's worth recalling that the Trump plan and all its details are still unannounced which obviously makes it easier to reject.
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Thursday, September 13, 2018

13-Sep-18: What do the Palestinian Arabs think?

The Oslo Accords are signed at the White House exactly 25 years ago today, on September 13, 1993 | Shimon Peres, Israel's foreign minister, signs  as Israel's prime minister Yitzhak Rabin; President Bill Clinton and the PLO's Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas look on. [Image Credit: J David AKE/AFP]
One of the most interesting things we do here is look at what the Palestinian Arabs think. As we explained in our most recent attempt to do this ["16-Jul-18: What do the Palestinian Arabs want? What do they believe? What do they think?"], looking at accurate, well-collected and intelligently analyzed opinion poll data is
invariably more valuable by far than media guesses about what the Palestinian Arabs think and want. Claims are made freely and often about Palestinian Arab aspirations. Very often, though, the data tell a story that's at total variance from what's being claimed about them... [source] 
Bluntly, much of what the mainstream media claim about Palestinian Arab public opinion is just plain wrong. We make that statement on the basis of carefully reviewing the work of a Palestinian Arab organization called The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). It's headed by a respected professional, Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We have no personal connection with him or his work. His reputation for objectivity is why we pay attention. Here are some of our previous analyses:
Here are some insights we found PSR Public Opinion Poll Number 69, published yesterday (Wednesday September 12, 2018). It's based on survey data collected face-to-face in the previous week from a total sample size of 1,270 Palestinian Arab adults.

Political leaders?

From our perspective and with Arab-on-Israeli terrorism very much on our minds, the most clear-cut insights have to do with Mahmoud Abbas, the fading president-for-life of the Palestinian Authority:
  • More than six out of ten Palestinian Arabs want him to resign. This is very slightly higher than the last poll showed. Broken down, the rejection stands at 52% in the West Bank; 78% in the Gaza Strip.
  • An overwhelming majority disagree with his most important domestic policies. Overall about half of the Palestinian Arabs now see Abbas' PA as a burden rather than an asset.
  • So where do they want power to reside? Well, fully two-thirds are against his decision (incapable at this stage of being implemented) to disarm the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.
  • Furthermore, most reject his demand that Hamas hand control over the Gaza Strip to the so-called reconciliation government controlled by his PA. 
  • Related to this, most Palestinian Arabs say they support Hamas’ efforts to reach a long-term Tahdia agreement with Israel even if the reconciliation government cannot be created. (Tahdia or Tahdiya is an Arabic word that is usually translated cease-fire or calming-down. It does not mean truce or peace.)
  • These data points show that Hamas gets more overall trust and backing now than Abbas and his Fatah/PA/PLO factions. But both get less support than they had when the last survey was published three months ago.
  • In party-political terms, if elections (which were last held since 2006) took place for the Palestinian Legislative Council and its 132 seats, 27% say they would support Hamas (down on the summer poll results); 36% would vote for Fatah (also down on the summer results); all the other parties combined would get 10%. The 28% who say they are undecided would be more numerous than Hamas' voters. By comparison, Hamas defeated the long-dominant Fatah in those 2006 elections, ending up with 76 seats out of the 132. Chaos ensued, followed, in June 2007, by the eruption of open fighting between the armed forces of Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The winners of the blood-bath (the physical one, not the electoral one) were Hamas who have held on tightly to control until today. No parliamentary elections have happened in the ensuing 12 years, and none are realistically in prospect.
  • But leaving aside the factions and focusing on the personalities, the picture gets confusing. If a two-horse election race had been held last week: 
    • If it were Mahmoud Abbas up against Ismail Haniyeh (of Hamas), Abbas wins 47% to 45%. 
    • If instead of Abbas, the Fatah candidate were the imprisoned murderer Marwan Barghouti, he would steamroller Haniyeh by the substantial margin of 58% against 37%.
The role of the United States?

It's no secret that the Palestinian Arab leadership is having a hard time with the Trump Administration. How have such moves by the US as ending most of its cash aid to the PA, cancelling its contributions to UNRWA, moving its Tel Aviv embassy to Jerusalem affected Palestinian Arab opinion?
  • An overwhelming 90% now view the US as biased towards Israel.
  • Half want their leaders to absolutely reject what the pollsters call the US “Deal of the Century” - the terms of which no one has actually seen yet - because "it will certainly be bad for Palestinians"
  • Moreover, most oppose the resumption of any dialogue with the US.
  • Most also are against going back to negotiations with Israel. 
How bad are things?

The poll looks at how ordinary people feell about the overall condition of where they live. The results are bleak. What proportion think their conditions are "positive"?
  • In the Gaza Strip, a whopping 5%
  • In the West Bank, just 19%.
  • Overall, 77% worry that reductions in foreign aid from the US and others will generate more unemployment growth, more poverty and still further deterioration in daily living conditions.
  • Who's to blame for all this awfulness? 43% say it's the PA and its head, Mahmoud Abbas - and note that Gazans are twice as likely to say this as West Bankers. 24% blame Hamas. 8% say it's Egypt that caused the problems. 17% say it's "others". 
  • Presumably making matters even worse, 59% of Palestinian Arabs - not surprisingly, given the nature of the two regimes in question - say they cannot criticize the Palestinian Authority (except to the pollsters) without fear. And 77% say there is corruption in the PA's organs 
  • A third of all Palestinian Arabs say they want to emigrate if they can. This trend is much stronger in Gaza (about 50%) than in the West Bank (22%). 
Violence?
  • Two-thirds - and this holds equally true in Gaza and in the West Bank - favour allowing the "armed battalions", meaning terrorist factions and their weapons, where they currently are.
  • 68% support (and 25% oppose) the PA decision to cease security coordination with Israel. At the same time, 69% think the Palestinian Arab leadership will never actually implement that decision.
Peace?

Has life gotten better or worse since the Oslo Accords were signed between Arafat's PA and the government of Israel in 1993? And how will peace look when it arrives?
  • 73% say "conditions today are worse" than before Oslo.
  • 36% blame this on Israel for "refusing to end its occupation"
  • 35% say its the failure of the "international community" to press Israel harder
  • 65% believe the Oslo Accords "damaged the national interest".
  • Support for the two-state solution has risen slightly compared with three months ago: 47%.
  • When asked to choose among (a) the two-state solution, (b) the one-state solution and (c) any other third solution, the two-state solution wins with 53%.
  • At the same time, 56% say the two-state solution is no longer practical because of Israeli settlement. 
  • Do they agree that the chances for the creation of a Palestinian Arab state side-by-side with the State of Israel in the next five years are slim or nonexistent? Yes, say 72% of Palestinian Arabs.
  • And for 30%, the preferred next stage entails waging armed struggle against "the Israeli occupation”. 39% say "negotiation is the most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel".
  • Don't expect or look for coherence or consistency.
  • 80% think the Arab world doesn't see Palestine as "its primary cause", which sounds right to us.
  • Depressingly, 57% "believe that Israel’s long-term aspiration is to expand the state of Israel to stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and to expel the Palestinian population". 
The biggest challenge?

What do Palestinian Arabs see as the most serious problem facing their society today? They're facing in numerous different directions.
  • 27% say poverty and unemployment 
  • 25% say the "occupation" and "settlement" activities (they mean by Israel)
  • 22% say corruption in Palestinian Arab public institutions
  • 20% say the "siege" (they mean by Israel) of the Gaza Strip
  • 3% say the absence of national unity.
All in all, it's hard not to feel a sense of despair when confronted with views like those on which the PSR reports each 90 days. So much effort, so much news-reporting, so much foreign aid, so much waste... so little of anything constructive to show for it - except that a plurality of them now agrees that it's poverty that tops their list of challenges. 

But they're hopelessly divided on that too. 

And catastrophically ill-served by venal political operatives and self-serving insiders who have never shown the smallest interest or ability in addressing that vital issue among the many on their people's agenda.

This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Co myślą palestyńscy Arabowie?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.
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Monday, July 16, 2018

16-Jul-18: What do the Palestinian Arabs want? What do they believe? What do they think?

The last time we addressed the important matter of Palestinian Arab opinion polls ["04-Apr-18: Here's (one view of) what the Palestinian Arabs want"] we started this way:
Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion can be valuable tools for understanding what they think at any given time. And no less importantly, how accurate the assessments of what they want for the future are. And to be blunt about this, they're invariably more valuable by far than media guesses about what the Palestinian Arabs think and want. Claims are made freely and often about Palestinian Arab aspirations. Very often, though, the data tell a story that's at total variance from what's being claimed about them. That's why we have chosen from time to time to publicize here the results of opinion polls conducted by relatively respected organizations within Palestinian Arab society.
We stand by every word of that.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) has just posted the findings of its latest opinion poll conducted in "the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 25 June and 1 July 2018". PSR is headed by a respected professional, Dr. Khalil Shikaki. We know him only by his work and reputation; we have no personal connection. We have reported on his organization's past findings at intervals over the past four years - here are some of the posts we wrote:

The latest PSR Public Opinion Poll is Number 68 and was released yesterday. It's based on a survey sample of 2,150 adults interviewed face to face in 127 randomly selected locations. Margin of error is 2.5%. Some of the findings that caught our attention:

How rotten are their lives? Palestinian Arab society is highly dysfunctional on multiple plains, and strongly marked by very wide citizen fear of its own institutions. How strongly? 60% of them (maybe read that again - sixty percent!) say people cannot criticize the PA "without fear". This may be connected to the next finding - that "perception of corruption" is 80%. We interpret this to mean that eight out ten of them believe the people with whom they are forced to deal in the PA and Hamas regime offices are on the take or applying wrong and subjective criteria and will put personal benefit or other irrelevant interests ahead of doing an honest job. That's a nightmare world.

The downward spiraling of Gaza: The pollsters asked what they call an open-ended question: which party or which side is causing the worsening of conditions in the Gaza Strip? 34% say it's Israel - no great surprise given the full-blast hate messaging emanating from Hamas. But what of the other two thirds? So 26% blame Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority; and despite the thuggish grip they and their Islamist insiders have over Gaza, no fewer than 20% believe it's Hamas' fault. Conclusion: most of the anger about Gaza that Palestinian Arabs are willing to express is directed at two of the Palestinian Arab regimes. (They were not given the option of blaming the third Palestinian Arab entity, Jordan.)

Leadership: If Palestinian Arab elections were held now, and they took the form of a two-horse race, Fatah/PA/PLO president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas terrorist-in-chief Ismail Haniyeh would produce a near-dead-heat: 47% versus 46%. If the convicted, imprisoned and unrepentant ex-leader of the Fatah/Tanzim terrorist gunmen Marwan Barghouti were to run against the Hamas guy, Barghouti would walk it in: 58% versus 37%. This is not the only indication that Palestinian Arab public opinion respects men who know how to kill (meaning they know how to tell their underlings how to kill).

Abbas go home: From his standpoint, it's good that president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas doesn't have to actually face up to elections, but there is a tiny silver lining to the cloud of rejection that his leadership evokes among ordinary Palestinian Arabs. The latest measure of "satisfaction" with Abbas' leadership is a pathetic 37%; active dissatisfaction stands at 59%. Sounds bad, right? (According to the Gallup Polls website, satisfaction with how President Trump is doing his job is just a bit higher: 41% as of a week ago.) The silver part of this for Abbas is he was doing worse three months ago. Back then, PSR found a dismal 33% were satisfied with his leadership and 68% wanted him out of office immediately. Today 61% of all Palestinian Arabs want to see him leave office immediately. Which isn't entirely bad since 90 days ago it was 62%. (He's doing great by his own standards.)

Jerusalem: The recent relocation of part of the US embassy's functions from its beachside Tel Aviv location to the long-established US consulate in Jerusalem is seen as weakening the Palestinian Arab "position" (we're frankly not certain what that word means in this context - probably the "position" that Jerusalem which has never been the capital city of any Arab entity in history should become "Palestine"'s capital) by most Palestinian Arabs: 55% of them. We're frankly puzzled at the strength of this concern which, in practical terms, has not changed anything on the ground. But being a Palestinian Arab is nothing if not a matter of perceptions and watching over your own shoulder.

Israeli municipal elections: When eligible voters vote on October 30, 2018, most East Jerusalem Arab residents who can vote (holders of so-called Blue Israeli IDs - the vast bulk of the Arabs we see everyday commuting into downtown Jerusalem by car, bus or light rail) say they won't. A mere 22% say they will. We guess going to the election centers comes at a certain price in a community where most people see most officials as dishonest and dangerous. A pity for all of us. But especially for them - especially since other data show they demonstrate a solid, practical and growing connection to living under Israeli sovereignty compared with the past ["Jerusalem Palestinians still seek Israeli citizenship despite Trump declaration", USAtoday, December 18, 2017]

The "peace" process: Here's where it gets especially painful - if you believe the widespread and irresponsible media narrative of a desperate Palestinian Arab search for more and better peace with their Israeli neighbors. The most effective means of establishing a Palestinian state next to the state of Israel is, according to respondents to the poll:
Negotiation: 39% (West Bankers 41%; Gazans 35%)
Armed "resistance": 34%
"Non-violent resistance": 22%. We could write an essay about the gulf that separates that simple-seeming term and what the highly immoderate "moderate" Abbas and his cohort mean when they use it. In fact, we have written several - click for some. We especially recommend "18-Aug-17: On vehicle rammings, Mahmoud Abbas, moderate advocate for terror, is open-minded, sees both sides".
What do the Israelis want? A large majority of Palestinian Arabs, 58% of them, say Israel’s "long-term aspiration" (undefined) is to expand Israel to stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and to expel the Palestinian Arabs. A more moderate view, held by 21% of Palestinian Arabs, is that Israel plans to annexe "the occupied territories" (undefined) and then "deny the Palestinian citizens their rights" (undefined). Fewer than one in five Palestinian Arabs think Israel’s intention is to withdraw from all or parts of those occupied territories after ensuring its security.
AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed
If there's a single take-away that we wish the Western media would absorb from this and all the previous poll results we have posted here, it's that among Palestinian Arabs there's far less belief in their own leaders than a difficult process like making peace needs. This trumps all the better-publicized problems like the endless rivalry between the Fatah people and the overtly-Islamist people, and the sense among the Arabs that the Israelis want to kill them all, expel them all or absorb them all while stealing their rights. 
There is literally no possibility of a deeply split society (which is what the Palestinian Arabs surely have) even starting the process of adjusting their expectations towards the compromise that peace necessarily demands. That will remain true so long as the leadership is steeped in personal and institutional corruption, a total unwilling to surrender power or even submit to elections and obsessively focused on the need for outsiders - the UN agencies in general and UNRWA in particular - to solve Palestinian Arabs' economic and development problems.

Though they never seem to be asked about this by pollsters, what will it take for ordinary Palestinian Arabs to see that their collective destiny depends on them and their own initiatives?

This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Czego chcą Arabowie? W co wierzą? Co myślą?") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.
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Wednesday, April 04, 2018

04-Apr-18: Here's (one view of) what the Palestinian Arabs want

From the survey result's home page
Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion can be valuable tools for understanding what they think at any given time. And no less importantly, how accurate the assessments of what they want for the future are.

And to be blunt about this, they're invariably more valuable by far than media guesses about what the Palestinian Arabs think and want.

Claims are made freely and often about Palestinian Arab aspirations. Very often, though, the data tell a story that's at total variance from what's being claimed about them.

That's why we have chosen from time to time to publicize here the results of opinion polls conducted by relatively respected organizations within Palestinian Arab society.

Most of our previous poll-centered posts have been based on the published data of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), whose head is Dr. Khalil Shikaki. They include:
In the wake of the first in a series of violent clashes on Israel's Gaza border this past Friday and in the days that followed, now seems a good time to revisit what they think (though we don't have Shikaki data to base ourselves on) and how closely it approximates what those who claim to speak for them are saying.

To set the stage, here's one view - a robustly Palestinian Arab view - of what the brazenly-mislabeled "March of Return" is:
Palestinians have geared up to mobilize en masse in what has been dubbed as Great March of Return.... a remarkably fresh approach in resistance to Israel’s seven decades of colonialism... Starting Friday 30th March 2018, thousands upon thousands head towards homes and lands from which they were forcibly expelled. Victims of evictions and ethnic cleansing whose losses have never been admitted by Israel despite being acknowledged by the United Nations, have every right under International Law to reclaim the theft of their land. Though month of March each year since 1976 has been commemorated as Land Day, this year sees it expanded in a very creative way. The popular sentiment shared amongst Palestinians in the diaspora as indeed within the suffocating occupied territories is “Returning to our stolen lands and homes is legal under International Law and UN resolutions”. The Great March of Return is thus an affirmation of this inalienable right guaranteed by a substantial number of international conventions... The Great March of Return has the support of all the Palestinian factions – Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP and Islamic Jihad. Expected to continue until 15 May to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, it’s demands will hopefully resonate across all corners of the world: Right of Return to their pre-1948 homes! ["Great March of Return: A New Defiance Campaign", Iqbal Jassat in Palestine Chronicle, March 31, 2018]
How much support do the so-called "Palestinian factions" have among Palestinian Arabs? A fresh study from An-Najah National University Center for Opinion Polls and Survey Studies (Poll No. 56) published on March 27, 2018 gives some indications.

(Some technical background: Based on a sample of 1,361 people aged 18 and up and with the right to vote. 861 live in the West Bank, 500 in the Gaza Strip. The sample was drawn randomly. Margin of error about ±3%.)

And a word about elections:
  • Palestinian Arab presidential elections are not frequent occurrences. The first were in 1996; Arafat won and died in 2004. The second presidential elections took place on January 9, 2005. Mahmoud Abbas won and was elected to a four year term that has continued ever since. 
  • Palestinian Arab parliamentary elections were held a year later, in January 2006. Hamas surprisingly defeated the long-dominant Fatah, ending up with 76 seats out of 132. Chaos ensued, followed, in June 2007, by the eruption of open fighting between the armed forces of Fatah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The winners of the blood-bath were Hamas who remain in control there until today. No parliamentary elections have happened in the past 12 years.
In terms of party alignments, the An-Najah poll ("Which of the following political affiliations do you support?") produces this breakdown (all the tables below are ours but the data on which they are based are those of the An-Najah report we are quoting):


Fatah has three times the support that Hamas has, even in Gaza. In the West Bank where the Mahmoud Abbas Fatah government is part of the day-to-day reality, it's considerably less popular than the "none of the above" alternative.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip with an iron fist, attracts a mere 10% support - worth keeping in mind whenever its commissars make belligerent policy speeches using the word "we". 

It would have been good if this poll had examined where, in party political terms, there is greater and lesser support for compromise, peace, a two-state solution. It doesn't offer data on that. In response to this question: "Do you support or reject the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders as a final solution for the Palestinian cause?", the results are


Clearly a strong vote of rejection for the two-state concept - meaning a Palestinian Arab state living beside an Israel that is confined to its 1967 borders. A related question asks how they feel about a Palestinian Arab state on those 1967 lines but with "some land exchange". The 1967 lines are in reality the 1949 armistice lines and not an agreed border at all. That hasn't stopped some peace-makers suggesting that those 1949 lines be modestly adjusted to reflect demographic and other changes in the seven decades since the armistice. On that version of the question, the Palestinian Arab rejection is even stronger in both the West Bank and Gaza - about 71% reject it.

Another version of a peace solution that keeps on being discussed in some especially optimistic quarters is the so-called binational state - both Israelis and Arabs living together in a single political entity in the midst of sharing, co-operation and just getting along together. Palestinian Arab opinion doesn't like that very much either. In answer to the question ("Do you support or reject the creation of a binational state for both Arabs and Jews as a final solution for the Palestinian cause?") they practically shout their rejection:


So given the lack of appeal of the major peace concepts that have dominated discussions for many years, how do the Palestinian Arabs now feel about violence as a way forward?

In answer to the question "Do you support or reject the rise of an armed intifada in the Palestinian territories?", they said last month


There's much more opposition in the West Bank, it seems, to an armed intifada against the Israelis than there is among Gazans. But even in Gaza, the rejection number is larger than the support - though not by much.

Asked whether the current circumstances - political, security and economic - make them feel compelled (their word) to "emigrate abroad" (with no indication of to where), they responded


Gazans are more than twice as inclined as West Bankers to feel compelled to emigrate. Coupled with how low their support for the Islamists who rule every element of their lives is, a picture of a deeply disconnected population emerges.

Two additional data points worth noting from Poll Number 56: 
  • There was an assassination attempt on the life of the PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah on March 13, 2018 as his motorcade crossed from Israel into the Gaza Strip. He escaped unhurt but the PA made clear it held Hamas responsible. It stopped short of directly accusing the Islamist rivals. The An-Najah poll asked respondents who they believed was behind the attack. 17.2% said it was Hamas. 8.7% said Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas' party faction. 24.9% thought it was one of the smaller Palestinian Arab factions, but by far the largest vote was (not so surprisingly) that the Israelis did it: 32.2%. Outside the echo chamber of the Palestinian Arab world, there doesn't seem to be much support for blaming Israel.
  • There is massive Palestinian Arab support for the view that the Americans can no longer be trusted as "an impartial peace broker between Israel and the Palestinians" in the wake of Trump's stated recognition that Jerusalem, after 70 years of being the modern state of Israel's capital, is indeed its capital. The rejection rate of the Americans, among Palestinian Arab respondents, is no less than 93.5% - practically a unanimous verdict.
Do these data provide a basis for optimism about anything? Not really. But that's not really the question. As we noted in our report on one of the previous (December 2016) Shikaki polls:
There's not much here that's uplifting or forward-looking. But that's how it is with public opinion polls. You can ignore them, you can be angered by them, you can adopt them for the purpose of crafting new strategies. What you can't do is deny their meaning just because you find the conclusions unpalatable.
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Tuesday, September 26, 2017

26-Sep-17: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?

[Image Source: PCR]
It's been about nine months since we last addressed the core question of what Palestinian Arab opinion polls tell us about their hopes, fears, ambitions and values. That last review is here: "15-Dec-16: What do the Palestinian Arabs think now?"

As it happens, this morning has gotten off to a really rotten start with another Arab-on-Israeli terror attack at the entrance to the bucolic northern Jerusalem suburb of Har Adar. As we write this, reports say three Israelis were shot to death and a fourth is fighting for his life in a Jerusalem hospital. The gunman is dead. We will report on what we know about this later.

With the fresh extreme violence in mind, what do the data tell us? What do Palestinian Arab polls of Palestinian Arab opinion, reveal about support for murder of this kind and about the other issues that are on the minds of the people who play such an influential/complicated role on the lives lived by us Israelis?

As we have said here before, what the Palestinian Arabs think is something we're very interested in knowing. Relying on newspapers or electronic media coverage of their views, a person is likely to get someone's wishful projections or politically-skewed understandings rather than data-based analysis. The difference between the two is vast and unbridgeable.

There are some serious polling organizations that are themselves Palestinian Arab. We tend to focus on the findings of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research or PSR [website] headed by the respected Prof. Khalil Shikaki. We're doing that again now.

In PSR's Poll Number 65 (there have been three on which we did not manage to report since our last related post), which was published on September 19, 2017, we think these are the key findings (italicized texts are taken verbatim from the source)
A syndicated AFP photo shows the supporters of Fatah and of Abbas in the
Gaza Strip last week. There may be more out of camera range. [Image Source]
  • Violence: 35% of those polled "think that the most effective means of creating a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel is armed action". Negotiation gets 33% and "popular non-violent resistance" 26%. In the December  2016 poll, armed action got slightly more: 37%. A year ago, it got 34%. Those slight rises and falls are less significant than the reality that a third of the Arabs living closest to us see the best solution to the differences between as being achieved by murder and terror. A third. But it gets worse...
  • Non-violence? Now bear in mind that "popular non-violent resistance" is an expression that means something quite different for the Palestinian Arabs and their advocates - including their president - than for most other people. Abbas and people around him use it to refer to lethal measures like hurling rocks at Israelis and their vehicles: non-violent resistance in  their lexicon includes rock hurling, knifings and vehicle-rammings. That's plainly terrorist violence, whatever advocates for the Palestinian Arabs claim, and it means that nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian Arabs are for it. 
  • An "overwhelming majority" are "worried about the future of liberties in Palestine". Contributing factors, over and above the decades of heavy-handed, thuggish rule by a self-preserving clique of aging Abbas/Arafat regime kleptocrats (our observation, not PSR's) include a marked rise in PA arrests of reporters and "activists"; a new presidential decree enacting an oppressive piece of regulation that they call a "cybercrime law"; and upcoming changes to the PA's Law of the Judiciary. 
  • Related to the first point: A large majority of Palestinian Arabs (85% of West Bank Arabs) now say they are afraid to criticize their PA masters. Fully half of them believe Abbas' PA has become "a burden on the Palestinian people". 
  • This is evidently affecting their political outlooks. If presidential elections were held today, the Hamas candidate "Haniyeh would win against Abbas. Findings also indicate a decline in support for Fatah, particularly in the Gaza Strip where Hamas is more popular. In the West Bank however, Fatah remains more popular than Hamas." Just 3 months ago, PSR found that each candidate had the same level of support if this were a two-horse race. No longer. 
  • But even before they get to elections, there's no doubting the appetite for immediate political change: "67% of the public want president Abbas to resign... Three months ago, 62% said [this]... Demand for Abbas’ resignation stands at 60% in the West Bank and 80% in the Gaza Strip."
  • Gaza is one big set of problems for Fatah and its leader: "It is certain that [Mahmoud Abbas, president-for-life of the PA] would lose any presidential elections in the Gaza Strip to Hamas’ Ismael Haniyeh". 
  • Worth recalling that the last time Palestinian Arabs were given the chance to vote for a president was in January 2005 when Abbas won; he has held tenaciously on to power ever since. The only previous presidential election, dominated by Yasser Arafat, was in 1996.
  • For the rather touchy Abbas and his hangers-on, there's more bad news and it involves Abbas' fiercest rival: "Fatah is fast losing its popularity in the Gaza Strip, standing at 28% today compared to 40% only nine months ago. Those who still support Fatah in the Gaza Strip are shifting loyalty to Mohammad Dahlan whose popularity among Gazans has more than doubled during the past nine months, from 9% to 23% today, while his popularity among West Bankers did not change, remaining hardly at 1%."
  • In a three-way race, the convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti who lives in an Israeli prison cell, would easily beat both Abbas and Haniyah.
  • Support for violence against Israelis has risen over the previous poll, "despite the fact that a majority remains opposed to it", partly because of "the lack of trust in diplomacy. Findings show that about three quarters believe that the Trump Administration is not serious about Palestinian-Israeli peace making and an even higher percentage believes that the Administration is not an honest broker and that it is biased in favor of Israel".
  • When they watch television, here's where they tune in: Al Jazeera (Qatar-owned, Qatar-based) 20%; Ma'an TV 14%; Hamas' Al Aqsa TV 13%; Palestine TV (controlled by the PA) 12%; Filasteen al Youm/Palestine Today 11%; Al Arabiya (Saudi-owned, Dubai-based) 6; Hamas' Al Quds TV 4%; al Mayadeen (satellite-news station based in Beirut) 3%.
  • The popular perception of corruption in the PA and its institutions is now at 77%. This is actually something of an improvement; in a 2014 PCR poll, it stood at 81%.
  • On the list of "Most vital Palestinian goals and problems", the top item with 40% support is the need "to end Israeli occupation". A mere 12% think the "first and most vital goal should be to establish a democratic political system that respects freedoms and rights". The most serious problem confronting their society today is poverty and unemployment (26%) with "the spread of corruption in public institutions" second at 25%.
  • The violent confrontations that took place on Jerusalem's Temple Mount in July 2017 in the wake of the brazen and cold-blooded killing of two Israeli Druze security men [see our post] occupied much of the thinking of the Palestinian Arab public. In PSR's words and despite those other concerns we just listed, the "the installment of metal detectors at the entrance to al Haram al Sharif gates were the most important event during the period in question". 
  • As for Israel's decision to quickly remove them, a minuscule 7% of Palestinian Arabs attribute this to King Abdullah II of Jordan despite Jordan's not-so-subtle PR efforts to grab the limelight, as in this Arab media quote: “Without the Hashemite custodi­anship and the steadfastness of the Jerusalemites, the holy sites would have been lost many years ago.” (Those of us old enough to remember life in Jerusalem pre-1967 recall how the Old City of Jerusalem was under illegal Jordanian military occupation from 1949 until freed in the Six Day War.)
There's not much here to feel good about. As their own societies - both Fatah and Hamas - explore new kinds of tyranny, between one-third and two-thirds of them hold tight to a vision of more violence as a solution to their problems. The future of their children, meanwhile, along with their health, their schools, their environment and their economy remain mired in self-inflicted gloom, failure and inertia.

PSR 65 was based on a sample size of 1,270 adults interviewed face-to-face (not by phone) in 127 locations selected randomly. The statistical margin of error is 3%. 
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