The world needs good polls of Palestinian public opinion

It seems these days as if much of the world is against us.

According to the latest March Gallup poll that surveyed 1,016 American adults, a majority disapprove of our continuing war against Hamas. Support for the war has dropped from 50% in November 2023 to 36% now, while the number of those who disapprove has increased from 45% in November 2023 to 55% now. Approximately 9% of respondents had no opinion on the matter.

On the other hand, a recent American Harvard-Harris Poll among 2,000 registered voters was more comforting. Seventy-nine percent of Americans support Israel over Hamas, while 20% support Hamas. Were these polls carried out in many countries in Europe, however, they would certainly be far less supportive of Israel.

The reality is that many people outside of Israel have lost track of why we are fighting this war. To many it seems punitive. To progressives, it is part of the continuing pattern of Jewish oppression of the Palestinians and suppression of their rights. 

Despite its distortions and falsehoods, the Palestinian narrative has captured the imagination of much of the world. Hamas has also succeeded in increasing radicalization among a significant proportion of Muslims in the Western world.

Many of the world’s political leaders have also convinced themselves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a political struggle, and therefore one that is amenable to a political solution. I have argued in articles in The Jerusalem Post and other publications that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is primarily a religious one and has been so since its inception. We now have the awesome task of changing world opinion about the justice of our cause, and the religious aspects of this struggle should be foremost in our arguments.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and a Sunni fundamentalist, messianic movement with an apocalyptic vision of destroying the State of Israel, killing its Jewish population by jihad, and replacing the Jewish state with a religious Islamic one. Accomplishing this will demonstrate the superiority of Islam over Judaism and foreshadow the Day of Judgment and the End of Days.

Moreover, Yahya Sinwar, the present head of Hamas in Gaza, has promised there will be no letup in Hamas pursuing its aims. Hamas’s allies, the Shi’ite Twelvers of Iran, have a similar vision of destroying Israel and creating a global caliphate prior to an immanent End of Days. This is also the aim of other Sunni fundamentalist groups, such as ISIS. [Imamiyya or Twelver Shi’ism, the state religion in Iran – shared by 150 million Muslims worldwide – believes that there will be 12 imams who are spiritual successors of Mohammed and that the 12th imam will be al-Mahdi and appear at the End of Days. He is not mentioned in the Quran.]

The crucial question for us Israelis is how much support these religious beliefs have among the average Palestinian in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Could it be that they are confined to the leadership of Hamas and those most involved in this organization, or do they have wide support among the Palestinian people? 

The latest polling survey by the Palestinian Policy and Survey Research (PSR) from March 2024 shows that satisfaction with the role of Hamas among Palestinians is at 70% (75% in the West Bank and 62% in the Gaza Strip). Support for Hamas dropped in the West Bank by 10 points from three months previously, when it was 85%, but it is the exact opposite in Gaza. Satisfaction with Hamas increased by 10 points from 52% to 62%.

Are people motivated by their nation, or their faith?

When asked about their preferences for the party that should be in control in the Gaza Strip after the war, an average of 59% selected Hamas (64% in the West Bank and 52% in Gaza. One percent chose the IDF. Only 7% of Palestinians place the blame for their suffering on Hamas, while 64% blame Israel. 

Nevertheless, despite all their figures and graphs, the PSR data is insufficient, since it tells us nothing about the religious dimensions of this struggle. All the questions asked were of a political nature, which could lead to the impression that the war in Gaza is solely about the wish of the Palestinians for more political freedom. Hence, the analysts of PSR speculate that the increase in Palestinian support for Hamas is because the people in Gaza believe they are winning this war and the world is now paying more attention to their demands for a Palestinian state. 

What is urgently needed is polling data that would enable us to distinguish between a Palestinian struggle for independence and freedom vs a religious struggle between Islam and Judaism. If only a very small minority of Palestinians support the religious aims of Hamas, then Joe Biden and European and Saudi leaders may be correct.

With adequate guarantees for Israel’s security, agreement to establishing a Palestinian state could perhaps be considered over the long term (even though historically Israeli concessions have never led to peace). 

If, on the other hand, it can be shown that the religious aims voiced by Hamas are supported by a significant percentage of Palestinians, then this is vital information for us and for Americans and Europeans. It means that our support for a Palestinian state would be suicidal. It also means that by supporting the Palestinian cause, many in the Christian world are supporting the Islamic world in its attempt to weaken Judaism and its state.

As the sole, effective bastion of resistance to Fundamental Islam in the Middle East, they are also weakening a crucial ally of the Western world in its fight against Iran, Hezbollah, and other radical organizations. At the very least, the results of a survey such as this could help us persuade the world that Hamas needs to be totally displaced from Gaza. 

The sample size of the most recent PSR poll was 1,580 adults, of whom 830 were interviewed face-to-face in the West Bank and 750 in Gaza. This number of subjects may be sufficient for a preliminary test survey but would be insufficient for a final survey. This is because, unlike the March survey, many, if not most, of the questions that would be asked are matters of belief and will therefore need to be graded i.e., strongly believe, moderately believe, etc.

There also needs to be a sufficient number of subjects to be able to make definitive statistical correlations. The results would not only be released to the world press, but published as an academic work and would therefore need to be organized from within an academic department that has the availability of statistical services.

Many of the questions to be asked would be based on statements raised in Hamas’s 1988 Charter and its revised Principles and Policies of May 2017. We need to know what percentage of Palestinians in Gaza and Judea and Samaria believe that there is no place at all in the Middle East for a Jewish state; what percentage supports the notion that it is an Islamic imperative to kill Jews. What percentage of males are ready to support their opinion with jihad? And what percentage believes that the goal of Islam should be to set up a religious Islamic state in Palestine based on Sharia. 

Islam is very much focused on the World to Come, and additional questions would include: What percentage of Palestinians believe that the Day of Judgment is imminent? Also, how many agree with the vision of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Twelvers of Iran that a caliphate will eventually be set up in the Middle East, and will finally rule the world? 

We are way behind in trying to influence world opinion as to the justice of our cause. However, the results of a survey such as this could be the linchpin for a future information campaign. It will also provide a vital resource as to how we should proceed with the Palestinians on a tactical level, rather than guessing on the basis of preconceived political views. 

A study of the Palestinians in which potential biases are eliminated as much as possible will cost a fair amount of money. However, it could be worth its weight in gold.

The writer is the author of a newly-released book, The Struggle for Utopia. A History of Jewish, Christian and Islamic Messianism and other books. He can be reached at arnoldslyper@gmail.com.