A majority of Palestinians support Hamas and view the terror group’s horrific Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel as justified, according to a new poll—complicating President Donald Trump’s push to “deradicalize” Gaza and reform the Palestinian Authority.
Fifty-three percent of Palestinians believe Hamas was correct to carry out the October 7 massacre, up from 50 percent in May, and 60 percent say they are satisfied with the terror group’s overall performance so far, according to the poll released Tuesday by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Support for Hamas is strongest in the West Bank, where 66 percent expressed approval, compared with 51 percent in Gaza.
If the Palestinian Authority held elections today, Hamas would dominate both the presidential and parliamentary races, the poll found. Hamas senior leader Khaled Mashal would defeat Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas by a margin of 63 to 27 percent, while in legislative elections Hamas would capture 44 percent of the vote compared with 30 percent for Abbas’s party, Fatah, Hamas’s main political rival.
Palestinian support for Hamas has also risen over the past two years, with 19 percent saying their backing for the terror group has grown “a lot,” according to the poll.
The findings come as Trump works to make Gaza “a deradicalized terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbors” while pressing for reforms to the Palestinian Authority. Trump’s peace deal this month has resulted in a ceasefire and the release of all 20 living Israeli hostages.
Reports have long shown that Hamas has radicalized Gaza’s civilian population. Former Israeli hostage Tal Shoham revealed this month that his Hamas captors were “not soldiers” but Palestinian civilians. “One of the guards was a first-grade teacher, another was a lecturer at a university, and another was a doctor,” Shoham said. “These are normal people becoming terrorists.”
Palestinian civilians also helped Hamas carry out its October 7 terrorist attack, the Washington Free Beacon reported shortly after the massacre. Whereas Hamas members wore uniforms and carried military-grade weapons, Gazan sympathizers who followed them into the Jewish state were dressed as civilians and mostly unarmed. They created a “second wave of carnage that rivaled the barbarism of the professional terrorists,” the Free Beacon reported.
Other former Israeli hostages have also confirmed that ordinary Gazans were “deeply complicit” in Hamas’s hostage-taking on October 7, the Free Beacon reported in January 2024. “Unarmed teens helped to abduct Jews from their homes on Oct. 7, while Gazan women and children held some of the Israelis captive,” according to the Free Beacon‘s report.
