A wartime opinion poll among Palestinians shows a rise in support for Hamas, which appears to have ticked up even in the devastated Gaza Strip.

The findings by a Palestinian pollster signal more difficulties ahead for the Biden administration’s postwar vision for Gaza and raise questions about Israel’s stated goal of ending Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.

Washington has called for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, currently led by Abbas, to eventually assume control of Gaza and run both territories as a precursor to statehood. U.S. officials have said the PA must be revitalized, without letting on whether this would mean leadership changes.

The PA administers pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and has governed Gaza until a takeover by Hamas militants in 2007. The Palestinians have not held elections since 2006 when Hamas won a parliamentary majority.

  • PugJesus
    4•11 months ago

    Basically one of the core issues with a competent government trying to ‘win hearts and minds’ is reaching people. Rural and isolated areas are the absolute hardest to deal with, because it’s hard to secure the area, hard to reliably communicate, and hard to construct infrastructure in the area. Without those three tools - security, propaganda, and material improvement of conditions - securing hearts and minds is a very difficult task. Infrastructure is more difficult to construct in isolated areas, but essentially infrastructure in all cases benefits from economies of scale - it’s much cheaper to build one major project for 100,000 people than 100 small projects for 1,000 people each, or worse, 1000 small projects for 100 people each.

    You see this in the (successful) attempts of the British in Malaysia and the (unsuccessful) attempts of the Americans in Vietnam - the ‘strategic hamlet’ program sought to centralize populations so that they could be secured, means of communication could be supplied, and then the population could be won over with material improvements to their lives. You also see this to a lesser degree in Iraq and Afghanistan - Coalition forces had their strongest support in cities which could be secured and improved at a reasonable cost of investment (and amongst areas that would suffer from sectarian conflict if the national government fell, such as the Kurds and Tajiks).