A NEW opinion poll shows that public support for the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and armed confrontation, as the best means to end Israeli occupation, has increased among Palestinians.
The results of the poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) come as Israel’s brutal onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip continues for the eighth month.
The poll found that support for armed struggle rose by eight percentage points to 54 per cent among those surveyed in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
The opinion poll showed support for Hamas also climbed by six percentage points to 40 per cent and that the Gaza-based group enjoyed more support than the Palestinian movement Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, with 20 per cent backing.
Walid Ladadweh, head of the Survey Research Unit at PSR, said the rise in support for Hamas and armed action is a reaction to Israel’s months-long destruction and killing in Gaza.
Ladadweh said the poll reflected dissatisfaction with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), chaired by Abbas, who has long sought to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and rejects armed struggle, which is viewed by Hamas as a failed approach.
The poll found that more than 60 per cent supported the PA’s dissolution and 89 per cent favoured the resignation of Abbas.
Moreover, the survey found that two-thirds of voters praised as a ‘correct decision’ the retaliatory attacks by Palestinian resistance groups against the occupied territories in October last year.
The poll showed that about 80 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza had lost a relative or had a relative that had been injured in the war.
Meanwhile, the UN Palestinian refugee agency has warned of catastrophic environmental and health risks in the Gaza Strip amid the Israeli regime’s months-long war against the besieged territory.
Israel unleashed its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after Hamas-led resistance groups carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 37,232 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 85,037 others in the Gaza Strip.
The Tel Aviv regime has imposed a ‘complete siege’ on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to more than two million Palestinians living there.
Meanwhile Iran’s interim Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani has cautioned Israel against waging a war on Lebanon, saying any such aggression will be like going to ‘hell with no return ticket’.
He made the remarks during a press conference, alongside Iraqi National Security Adviser, Qasim al-Araji in Baghdad on Thursday, as fighting on Lebanon’s border with the occupied territories is threatening to erupt into a full-scale war.
‘Lebanon will be hell with no return for the Zionists, and if they are wise, they will not try Lebanon again,’ Bagheri Kani said.
Israel’s ‘unbelievable defeats’ began in Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, he added, referring to the two wars in which fighters of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement defeated the Israeli military.
The top Iranian diplomat said the balance of power has changed since October 7, when the Gaza-based Hamas resistance group carried out a surprise operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against Palestinians.
‘The Zionists have tried to return conditions to those before October 7 by killing the people of Gaza, but to no avail,’ he said.
Meanwhile, a member of the Knesset, Benny Gantz, said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 News on Thursday, that ‘Lebanon should burn’, if Hezbollah does not stop attacking Israel.
Now is the time for US, UK and EU workers to step up their support for the victory of Palestine and the establishment of the Palestinian State by calling general strikes to bring down their bourgeois regimes and bringing in workers governments.
There is no doubt that this is the only way forward!
