Hamas Not Popular in Muslim Countries Pre-War - Pew

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Draw your own conclusions, but I find this an indication of just how bad Israel screwed up a positive trend.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1075/before-israels-invasion-hamas-popularity-was-waning-among-its-neighbors-even-in-gaza-itself



Palestinian Views of Hamas

Hamas has, of course, enjoyed a degree of popularity among Palestinians in recent years. It won a majority of seats in the January 2006 parliamentary elections, and in Pew's 2007 survey most Palestinians (62%) had a positive view of the group, while just one-third (33%) gave it a negative rating.1 However, more recent polling, conducted in the weeks prior to the Israeli incursion, showed Hamas receiving less favorable marks than its rival Fatah, the organization headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

A Nov. 20-23, 2008 poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center found that 37% of Palestinians would vote for Fatah in legislative elections, compared with just 20% for Hamas. In the Fatah-controlled West Bank, Fatah led Hamas by a 35-18% margin. More interestingly, Fatah also led by a 40-22% margin in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, conduced December 3-5, 2008, also found that Fatah was more popular than Hamas in both the West Bank and Gaza.

[McCamy Taylor]

1. Palestinians are not popular with Muslims. They treat them like unwelcome orphans.

The way people in the US might treat poor white trash. They call them dirty and uneducated. No one wants them. And yet they will blow up buildings for them. Such hypocrisy.

[roguevalley]

2. I believe that they use them for their own political purposes. Keeping

them in ghettoized camps keeps fomenting anger and they can use it and getting away with giving minimal aid. I wish someone would get the money that Arafat took. I hear it was a number of billions in foreign accounts. It belongs to the people of Palestine. They will never have good leadership I am afraid.