Palestinians prefer Abbas and Fatah to Hamas: poll

JERUSALEM — Support among Palestinians for president Mahmud Abbas and his secular Fatah party is greater than that for his Islamist Hamas rivals, according to the results of a poll released on Monday.

The survey carried out by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found that 52 percent of Palestinians would vote for Abbas to remain president, up three percentage points from three months ago.

The same poll found that just 38 percent of Palestinians would vote for Ismail Haniya, the prime minister of the Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip, down from 44 percent in the previous poll.

Support for Fatah, meanwhile, climbed to 44 percent from 41 percent, while support for Hamas dropped from 33 percent to 28 percent, the poll indicated.

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Main Findings:

Findings of the third quarter of 2009 show an increase in the popularity of Fateh and president Mahmud Abbas and a decline in the popularity of Hamas and Ismail Haniyeh, the dismissed prime minister. The rise in the popularity of Fateh and Abbas might in part be the result of Fateh’s success in holding its long awaited Sixth Congress and electing a new leadership. The decline in support for Hamas might in part be the result of its refusal to allow Fateh members in the Gaza Strip to travel to Bethlehem to participate in Fateh’s Sixth Congress. Findings show additional and perhaps deeper reasons for the change in the balance of power between Fateh and Hamas. For example, they show considerable improvement in public perception of personal and family security and safety in the West Bank and a noticeable decrease in the public perception of the existence of corruption in PA institutions under Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. In this context, findings show some optimism about the future of Fateh in the aftermath of its Sixth Congress and about the ability of its newly elected leadership to fight corruption inside the movement and to deliver reconciliation with Hamas. But the public does not believe that the new leadership will be different from the previous one in its ability to work to end the Israeli occupation.

Findings also show public confusion regarding new presidential and parliamentary elections. A majority believes that reconciliation talks between Fateh and Hamas will fail. A majority also believes that PA president and parliament will lose their legitimacy next January when their terms end. Nonetheless, a wide majority opposes postponing the elections and a majority also opposes holding elections under the current status quo, with Haniyeh’s government supervising it in the Gaza Strip and Fayyad’s government supervising it in the West Bank, even if they were organized by a single unified election commission. Moreover, an overwhelming majority opposes holding separate elections in either the Gaza Strip, organized by the Haniyeh government, or in the West Bank, organized by the Fayyad government. In any case, findings show that the public has no confidence in the ability of the legislative and presidential elections to contribute to the re-unification of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. An overwhelming majority believes that the two sides, Fateh and Hamas, or one of them, will reject the results of any new fair and free elections if those results were not in its favor.

Finally, despite the improvement in the perception of personal and family security and safety, particularly in the West Bank, a majority of those who have been attacked or robbed during the past year says they have not complained to the police either because they do not trust it or because it can do nothing useful for them. Worse yet, the overwhelming majority of those who did submit a complaint to the police says they are not satisfied with the police performance. Findings show that lack of trust with the police increases in the Gaza Strip compared to the West Bank, but dissatisfaction with the performance of the police is similar to that in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2009/p33epressrelease.html