All occupation, 12 percent of the time

By Noah Pollak
At the end of a “news story”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/world/middleeast/22mideast.html in today’s NY Times about the efforts of Egypt, Jordan, and Israel to shore up the Abbas presidency, Steven Erlanger cites the results of a just-released poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research:

The poll, taken between June 14 and 20, indicated a further loss of confidence in Palestinian leadership and anger with the infighting. The poll of 1,270 adults, done in face-to-face interviews in both the West Bank and Gaza, has a margin of sampling error of three percentage points.

Palestinian satisfaction with Mr. Abbas dropped to 36 percent from 48 percent in March. Some 75 percent of those surveyed want early presidential and parliamentary elections. About 58 percent support the new emergency government, while 38 percent oppose it. In Gaza, opposition is at 47 percent.

The polls show little change from March in support for each of the groups. In new legislative elections, among those polled, Fatah would get 43 percent of the vote, unchanged from March; Hamas would get 33 percent.

Most Palestinians polled — 59 percent — said they saw Fatah and Hamas as equally responsible for the infighting, and 71 percent said that both sides were losers. About 70 percent believe that the chances for an independent Palestinian state are low or nonexistent.

And 56 percent said that infighting and the lack of law and order were the greatest threats to Palestinians, followed by poverty (21 percent), the Israeli occupation (12 percent) and international sanctions and boycotts (10 percent).

Polling data like these is particularly useful and interesting when it comes to the views of Palestinians, whose western spokesmen are legion. It has always struck me that there is a profound disconnect between what Palestinians themselves believe and what their western champions claim they believe — which makes me wonder about the extent to which their champions actually care about them, or rather are fixated on promoting a Palestinian narrative that suits their own purposes.