Israel Matzav

Hamas more popular than Abu Mazen, some await Arafat's resurrection

A new survey of 'Palestinians' reports that Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh is now more popular in Judea and Samaria than 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen. And a dead man is still the most popular leader among some 'Palestinians': Yasser Arafat.

“Now support for Hamas is higher in the West Bank than it is in Gaza,” said Wafa Amr, a Palestinian analyst in Ramallah. “The Hamas rhetoric of dignity and resistance resonates in the West Bank, where they don’t have to live under Hamas but they see only weakness on the part of Abbas’s authority.”

The reason Abu Mazen's popularity has plummeted is that the 'Palestinians' are unhappy with his handling of the Goldstone Report.

Abbas’s inept handling of the issue — he managed to anger not only the United States and Israel but also many of his own voters — could result in defeat in the forthcoming elections, sources said yesterday.

Here are the details.

The survey released on Sunday by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre (JMCC) indicates that if an election were held today, Abbas would receive just 16.8 percent of the vote, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh 16 percent. A similar percentage said they would vote for Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is currently in prison in Israel.

Public confidence in Abbas dropped to 12.1% from 17.8% in another JMCC poll in June. Confidence in Haniyeh held steady at 14.2%.

The level of confidence in caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad increased to 4.5% compared with 2.1% last October.

But here's the best part of all: Some 'Palestinians' still trust Yasser Arafat, who died five years ago, and who stole all of their international aid money and deposited it in Swiss bank accounts.

Yasser Arafat, who led hundreds of terrorist attacks against Jews, is the most trusted personality among [some] Palestinian Authority Arabs even though he died nearly five years ago, according to a new poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media & Communications Center.

Answers to the open-ended question, “Which Palestinian personality do you trust the most?” also revealed that de facto Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is more popular than PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. In third place is Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison for involvement in several terrorist attacks that killed dozens of Israelis.

Arafat was more trusted than Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas minister and trailed behind Khaled Mashaal, the Syrian-based leader of the Hamas terrorist movement, by less than one percent.

Here are the poll results on that question:

Q19. Which Palestinian personality do you trust the most?* [The three numbers are total, 'West Bank' and Gaza. CiJ]

Total West Bank Gaza
n= 1200 n= 760 n=440
Ismaeel Haniyeh 14.2 10.0 21.4
Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) 12.1 12.9 10.7
Marwan Barghouthi 11.9 12.8 10.5
Salam Fayyad 4.5 5.7 2.5
Mustafa Barghouthi 3.4 4.2 2.0
Mohamad Dahlan 3.1 0.7 7.3
Khaled Mish’al 2.5 2.1 3.2
Ahmad Sa’adat 2.0 2.6 0.9
Yasser Arafat 1.9 1.4 2.7
Mahmoud Al Zahhar 1.1 0.9 1.4
Others 3.9 3.7 4.3
Don’t trust anyone 31.3 34.7 25.5
No answer 8.1 8.3 7.6

Elections are now scheduled for January 2010. What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:59 PM