Israel

Poll: Majority of Palestinians Back Stabbings

Monday, March 21, 2016 10:55 am | < 1 Minute Read

Israeli security personnel at the scene where two Palestinian stabbed three Israelis at the Old City’s Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem on December 23, 2015. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90 — Israeli security personnel at the scene where two Palestinians stabbed three Israelis at the Old City’s Jaffa Gate in Yerushalayim, Dec. 23, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

A new poll indicates that a majority of Palestinians back near-daily stabbing attacks on Israelis, but that support dropped by nine points to 58 percent over the past three months.

Monday’s survey also shows that a candidate from the Islamic terror group Hamas would handily win the leadership elections if competing against the incumbent, Mahmoud Abbas, but would lose to a jailed leader of Abbas’s Fatah party.

Abbas’s popularity remains low. Two-thirds of 1,270 respondents in the Palestinian areas of Yehudah, Shomron and Gaza said they want him to resign.

Two-thirds also say that if current tensions escalate into an armed uprising, it would serve Palestinian interests better than negotiations.

The poll by the independent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey was conducted last week, with an error margin of 3 percentage points.