By Micah Halpern
I've Been Thinking:
Surveys and polls work one of two ways - either they surprise us or they confirm what we thought.
A new poll surveying Palestinians shows that Palestinian youth today are radicalized and think that violence is justified and that through that violence they will achieve their goals. This is a marked change.
The survey also showed that the motivation for these actions is not religious, it is political. Those surveyed say that their reason for supporting violence and the reason for violence is to achieve a political objective.
Finally, and this is the most telling of all the results of the new survey, is that if an election were held in the West Bank today, Mahmoud Abbas, the current leader of Fatah and president of the Palestinian Authority, would overwhelmingly lose by at least 10 percentage points to Ismail Haniyeh the leader of Hamas in Gaza.
This is a damning blow to the establishment.
The West Bank is becoming more and more radicalized. This new study confirms our sense that young people are disenchanted with Abbas and the Fatah establishment and that West Bank youth are embracing violence as a tool to achieve their objectives.
That thinking poses a serious threat to a peaceful resolution to the situation between the Palestinians and Israel.
Micah@MicahHalpern.com
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