Mellman: Do Palestinians support Hamas? Polls paint a murky picture

It’s frankly not the central issue, but debate has swirled around whether Gazans, and Palestinians more broadly, support Hamas.  

Some American officials have clearly concluded that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” Are they correct or not?  

Hamas’s savage butchery and Israel’s attack on Hamas may have altered the answer. We can’t know that, as current circumstances clearly preclude polling.   

However, an election and a series of polls supply some useful guidance.   

Operating from an anemic understanding of democracy, the George W. Bush administration pressed the Palestinians to hold legislative elections in their territories in 2006.  

The result: Hamas garnered less than a majority but eked out a narrow 3-point win over Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat and (now Palestinian Authority President) Mahmoud Abbas — 44 percent-41 percent. That 44 percent of the total popular vote was sufficient to yield Hamas control of 56 percent of the legislative seats. 

Every poll inaccurately predicted a Fatah victory. Of course, that was long ago, and neither Hamas, which controls Gaza, nor Fatah, which controls the West Bank (the Palestinian Authority), have permitted elections since, so we don’t have that tool to assess support, but we do have a number of polls.  

Until the summer of 2021, Palestinian pollsters found Fatah receiving less than a majority in potential legislative elections but enjoying a consistent, if sometimes narrow, lead over Hamas.   

Since then, the picture has grown murkier, with mostly narrow leads shifting back and forth. On average, polls in 2022 and 2023 give Fatah 35 percent support and 34 percent for Hamas. Considering just this year’s polls generates a half point lead for Hamas.  

Polls in potential presidential elections paint a different picture. If new presidential elections were held with two candidates, Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, Abbas would receive 37 percent of the vote, and Haniyeh would win in a landslide with 58 percent.   

Of course, both Hamas and Fatah run dictatorships that arrest and torture political opponents, a problem more severe in Gaza than on the West Bank. So, voters’ responses may reflect fear rather than true preference.    

With that caveat in mind, Gazans give Abbas just 33 percent, while 64 percent would vote for Hamas’s Haniyeh. Haniyeh leads more narrowly on the West Bank but still has 50 percent, to 43 percent for Abbas.  

Adding a third candidate shakes up the equation. Marwan Barghouti leads with 47 percent, while Hamas’s Haniyeh is in second with 35 percent and Abbas posts just 13 percent.   

Abbas is quite unpopular — just 22 percent are satisfied with his performance; indeed, 78 percent want him to resign.   

(Barghouti is a Fatah member who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for murdering scores of civilians in terrorist attacks he led.)   

Palestinian disillusionment with their choices is evident in a question asking which party, Fatah or Hamas, “is most deserving of representing the Palestinian people.” Forty three percent said neither, with 31 percent putting Hamas forward and 21 percent preferring Fatah.   

Which brings us to perhaps the most important question: Irrespective of which party or leader Palestinians back, do they support or oppose Hamas’s polices?  

By 70 percent to 28 percent, Palestinians oppose a two-state solution — “the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.”  

An even larger number — 76 percent to 21 percent — oppose a “one state solution …in which the two sides enjoy equal rights.”  

Given a choice among three options for “ending the occupation and building an independent state,” 21 percent prefer “negotiations,” 22 percent “peaceful popular resistance” and 52 percent select “armed conflict.”   

A 58 percent majority support a “return to the armed intifada [terrorism] and confrontations,” while 41 percent oppose such a move.  

In short, Hamas’s leader receives substantially more support than Fatah’s President Abbas, but that reflects Abbas’s weakness more than Hamas’s strength. At the legislative level, with no candidates, only parties mentioned, the two large parties appear to be at parity.    

But Palestinians find great fault with both major parties.  

Their preferred leader is a convicted terrorist, and significant majorities of Palestinians support terrorism, with even larger numbers opposing both a two-state solution and one-state solution with equal rights for Jews and Arabs.  

Peace seems to require some fundamental changes in public attitudes.  

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has helped elect 30 U.S. senators, 12 governors and dozens of House members. Mellman served as pollster to Senate Democratic leaders for more than 20 years, as president of the American Association of Political Consultants, a member of the Association’s Hall of Fame, and he is president of Democratic Majority for Israel.