Only 21% objected to murdering Jews.

This poll came after the slaughter of two Jewish brothers, Hallel and Yagel Yaniv, who were gunned to death as they drove their car though the Arab town of Huwara.

This murderous attack was carried out by a Hamas supporter who lived near Nablus, yet most of the participants in this poll still support the notion that killing Jews is legitimate.

This begs the question, where do most Palestinian stand politically?  Where do their sympathies and support lie? Surely Arabs living under the Palestinian Authority and gaining a living in and by Israelis are more moderate in their political views?

Get ready to be disillusioned.

The PCPSR poll showed that 77% of Palestinians are dissatisfied with the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and his PLO cadre, and the same number want him to resign.

More troubling still was the poll that indicated, given the choice between Mahmoud Abbas and a Hamas leader, a majority of 54% would vote Hamas and only 36% would vote for Abbas.

This indicates that nothing has changed in Palestinian society in seventeen years.

Back in 2006, the last time the Palestinians held a national legislative election, Hamas won a majority of 74 of the 132 seats with Fatah only winning 45 seats.

Despite the Western world calling for democracy, the Palestinian Authority has refused to hold full legislative elections in the certain knowledge that such a democratic process would result in another Hamas victory.

This proves that democratic nations, like the United States and Europe, demanding visible displays of democracy by democratic Israel make no similar demands of the totally undemocratic and divided Palestinian society.

This is why the West have such a myopic perspective of Israel and any Palestinian entity.

They know that, if they forced Mahmoud Abbas into holding democratic elections, Hamas would win, their half-century delusional two-state non-solution would be dead in the water, and they would have democratically cornered Israel into an invidious position with huge topographic security risks.

The Israeli left have always been delusional when it came to raw Palestinian intentions against Jews and Israel.

They were delusional toward Yasser Arafat who used the Oslo Accords as a step in his staged destruction of Israel.

Subsequently, all sides of the fractured Palestinian political divide have pursued the Haj Amin al-Husseini-Arafat ambition to see end to the Jewish State and have maintained this goal relentlessly, no matter how many in the West and in Israeli leftist circles have been in denial.

The previous leftist Lapid-Ganz coalition, illegally released land in Area C to the Palestinians ignoring the possibility that it could ever be controlled by Hamas, effectively putting a geographic chokehold over Jerusalem, and having Hamas control the high ground over the slim exposed Israeli coastal plain.

This PCPSR poll should remove the blinkers from their eyes, but it probably won’t.

Clearly, for Israel and for the West, Palestinian democracy is the last thing we want right now.

Because the Palestinians want Hamas.

Barry Shaw, International Public Diplomacy Director, Israel Institute for Strategic Studies