Poll: Hamas Would Trounce Abbas in Elections

Hamas would sweep Palestinian elections if they were held today after its support rose during recent fighting with Israel in Gaza, an opinion poll published on Tuesday found.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research said the poll showed Islamists clearly leading presidential and parliamentary polls for the first time since Palestinans last voted eight years ago, when Hamas won power in Gaza.

Most Palestinians surveyed said they preferred Hamas’s strategy of violence against Israel rather than peace negotiations, which are favored by Fatah, once the dominant Palestinian political movement and one backed by the West.

The views, collected among over 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza and Yehudah and Shomron, show an unprecedented popular shift towards Hamas as tensions with Fatah boil.

Hamas’s former premier Ismail Haniyeh would win 61 percent of votes in a two-way race against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, with the Fatah chief taking just 32 percent of the vote, the survey found.

More than half (53 percent) of respondents said an armed approach would help gain a Palestinian state, as opposed to 20 percent who said they supported non-violent means.

Fatah accuses Hamas of putting hundreds of its supporters in Gaza under house arrest during the war and shooting at those who tried to flee Israeli bombings.

The two parties fought street battles in Gaza in 2007, a year after Hamas won parliamentary polls. The fighting left hundreds dead and hardened animosity between the parties.

This article appeared in print on page 18 of the September 3rd, 2014 edition of Hamodia.