Half of Gaza’s residents, or some 1.1 million Palestinians, believe that Hamas’s decision to carry out the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border massacre in Israel was “correct,” according to an opinion poll published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) this week.

The center, based in the Palestinian Authority city of Ramallah in Samaria, surveyed a representative sample of 1,270 people across Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip on May 1-4. (The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, the organization said.)

The poll came as the Israeli government approved “Operation Gideon’s Chariot” to defeat Hamas and bring about the release of the remaining 59 hostages, held by the terrorist organization for more than 570 days.

The entire population of the Gaza will be evacuated to the southern part of the enclave during the fighting, and the Israel Defense Force will stay in every area taken, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday.

An overwhelming majority of the respondents—85% in Judea and Samaria and 64% in Gaza—said they opposed the disarmament of Hamas as a precondition to end Israel’s war on the terrorist group, which led the savage killing of some 1,200 people, primarily civilians, on Oct. 7.

The attacks also saw thousands more wounded and 251 innocent Israelis and foreign nationals taken as hostages to the Strip.

Asked whether they supported or opposed the eviction of some terrorist leaders as condition for putting an end to the Israel Defense Forces operation, 65% said they opposed it and 31% supported it.

Almost three in four Palestinians told the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research that they disagreed with the statement that if Hamas releases the hostages, the conflict would end and the IDF would fully withdraw from the war-torn territory.

The largest share of respondents, almost one-third, said they supported Hamas as a “political party,” followed by P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah (21%), which rules nearly all Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

Forty percent said the Iranian-backed terrorist group that had ruled Gaza since 2007 was “the most deserving” of leading the Palestinian people.

Accordingly, if the Palestinian Authority would call its first legislative elections in 20 years, 43% of those who would participate said they would vote for Hamas, followed by 28% that would choose Fatah.

In a P.A. “presidential” runoff vote between Abbas and Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal, the latter terrorist would receive 68% of the vote, with a quarter saying they would back the incumbent Palestinian Authority leader.

A previous Arab opinion poll published in December found that close to two-thirds of Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria prefer Hamas terrorists to be part of, or even lead, a Palestinian governing body that would control the Strip after the current war with Israel concludes.

According to the poll, 47% of Palestinians said they would put their trust in a “national unity” government that would include Hamas and Fatah. Meanwhile, 17% of the surveyed Palestinians said that they favored a return to the situation in which the Strip is ruled solely by Hamas.

In Judea and Samaria, respondents showed significantly more support for Hamas than for the P.A., with 25% expressing support for the Gaza terrorist group, compared to 10% for the Western-backed P.A.

In June, the Palestinians’ satisfaction with Hamas’s performance in the war against Israel reached its highest point since the Oct. 7 massacre, while support for the Palestinian Authority and Fatah plummeted.

When asked by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research to rate the performance of various actors during the war, Hamas took the lead with 75% satisfaction, up five percentage points since March.

Image - Graves of Israelis who were murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, in Kibbutz Be'eri, Nov. 15, 2023. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90