Many years ago a Palestinian friend at the BBC said this to me. And he was right.

I think this extract from an article in Foreign Affairs offers some useful insights. My highlight at the end.

Martin

Arab Barometer’s survey of the West Bank and Gaza, conducted in partnership with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and with the support of the National Endowment for Democracy, provides a snapshot of the views of ordinary citizens on the eve of the latest conflict. The longest-running and most comprehensive public opinion project in the region, Arab Barometer has run eight waves of surveys covering 16 countries in the Middle East and North Africa since 2006. All surveys are designed to be nationally representative, most of them (including the latest survey in the West Bank and Gaza) are conducted in face-to-face interviews in the respondents’ places of residence, and the collected data is made publicly available. In each country, survey questions aim to measure respondents’ attitudes and values about a variety of economic, political, and international issues.    

Our most recent interviews were carried out between September 28 and October 8, surveying 790 respondents in the West Bank and 399 in Gaza. (Interviews in Gaza were completed on October 6.) The survey’s findings reveal that Gazans had very little confidence in their Hamas-led government. Asked to identify the amount of trust they had in the Hamas authorities, a plurality of respondents (44 percent) said they had no trust at all; “not a lot of trust” was the second most common response, at 23 percent. Only 29 percent of Gazans expressed either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in their government. Furthermore, 72 percent said there was a large (34 percent) or medium (38 percent) amount of corruption in government institutions, and a minority thought the government was taking meaningful steps to address the problem….

When asked how they would vote if presidential elections were held in Gaza and the ballot featured Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned member of the central committee of Fatah, the party led by Abbas, only 24 percent of respondents said they would vote for Haniyeh. Barghouti received the largest share of support at 32 percent and Abbas received 12 percent. Thirty percent of respondents said they would not participate. Gazans’ opinions of the PA, which governs the West Bank, are not much better. A slight majority (52 percent) believe the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people, and 67 percent would like to see Abbas resign. The people of Gaza are disillusioned not only with Hamas but with the entire Palestinian leadership.

Our research has shown that Israeli crackdowns in Gaza most often lead to increasing support and sympathy for Hamas among ordinary Gazans. Hamas won 44.5 percent of the Palestinian vote in parliamentary elections in 2006, but support for the group plummeted after a military conflict between Hamas and Fatah in June 2007 ended in Hamas’s takeover of Gaza. In a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in December 2007, just 24 percent of Gazans expressed favorable attitudes toward Hamas. Over the next few years, as Israel tightened its blockade of Gaza and ordinary Gazans felt the effects, approval of Hamas increased, reaching about 40 percent in 2010. Israel partially eased the blockade the same year, and Hamas’s support in Gaza leveled off before declining to 35 percent in 2014. In periods when Israel cracks down on Gaza, Hamas’s hardline ideology seems to hold greater appeal for Gazans. Thus, rather than moving the Israelis and Palestinians toward a peaceful solution, Israeli policies that inflict pain on Gaza in the name of rooting out Hamas are likely to perpetuate the cycle of violence.

To break the cycle, the Israeli government must now exercise restraint. The Hamas-led government may be uninterested in peace, but it is empirically wrong for Israeli political leaders to accuse all Gazans of the same. In fact, most Gazans are open to a permanent, peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet the views of the people who live in Gaza are still often misrepresented in public discourse, even as surveys such as Arab Barometer consistently show how different these narratives are from reality.

In the immediate term, Israeli and especially U.S. leaders need to secure the safety of Gazan civilians, 1.4 million of whom have already been displaced. The United States should partner with the United Nations to create clear humanitarian corridors and protected zones, and Washington should contribute to the UN’s appeal for $300 million in aid to protect Palestinian civilians—a step dozens of U.S. senators have said they will support.

Finally, Israel and the United States must recognize that the Palestinian people are essential partners in finding a lasting political settlement, not an obstacle in the way of that worthy goal. If the two countries seek only military solutions, they will likely drive Gazans into the arms of Hamas, guaranteeing renewed violence in the years ahead.