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From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”
So I want to start today with a question I’ve been getting, which is why I’ve been treating Israel as the primary agent here.
To quote one email, “All you can do is condemn the brutality of the bombing. Well, guess what? You want to stop the bombing? Release the hostages now, and maybe, maybe something will change. You want fuel and electricity in Gaza? Tell Hamas.”
Or here’s another email. Are you planning an episode called, “If not this, then what should Hamas have done?” After all, you had an episode on what should Israel do. It makes sense to take the exact perspective on Hamas.”
I get where this is coming from. I really do. There would be no invasion of Gaza right now, no massive air bombing campaign, no siege of food and water, if Hamas hadn’t butchered more than 1,400 people in Israel and taken hundreds more hostage on Oct. 7. They did this. It should be on them to end it.
Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas official, went on Lebanese television the other day, and he said, quote, “We will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.”
That is truly monstrous. Israel is right — I’ve said this before — to want to destroy Hamas, or at least destroy the threat that it poses. Every country in the world would want the same in its position.
But if you agree with what I just said — that Hamas is truly monstrous, that there is something truly chilling about an organization that will slaughter Israeli civilians and then hide among Palestinian civilians — then there is some dissonance between the desire to treat Hamas as the brutal organization that it is and also to say that every Palestinian in Gaza should be dependent upon that same immoral terrorist organization making humane, decent decisions. That Israel is seen as, at least, potentially, a moral, restrained actor here is a strength.
Israel’s weakness, or one of its weaknesses, is how much of that reputation it gave up in recent years. The Netanyahu administration has spent the last decade coexisting with and even strengthening Hamas because that weakened the more moderate Palestinian Authority. They spent that decade annexing territory in the West Bank. As Bezalel Smotrich, the current finance minister, said in 2015, “The Palestinian Authority is a liability, Hamas is an asset.” That’s one reason so many Israelis are so furious, so properly furious, at the Netanyahu government right now.
But one thing Israel and Israelis have is a benefit of complexity. Even though the Netanyahu administration won its power in elections, we understand that it is not synonymous with Israelis, and that distinction is proper. But I don’t think that the American conversation, at least, always extends that same complexity to Palestinians.
I want to go back to that interview with Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas official. After saying that Hamas wants a second, third, fourth Al-Aqsa flood, he says, “Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs,” end quote.
One wonders whether so many Gazans want to be sacrificed as martyrs by Hamas. There have not been elections in Gaza in almost 20 years. The polling we have shows that Gazans dislike and distrust Hamas, but I think Palestinians are much more often spoken of, at least in America, as an undifferentiated mass. Their support for Hamas is often assumed, which is one reason I think so many are willing to hold them collectively responsible for what Hamas does.
One intention I have for my coverage here is to hold true the humanity and the complexity of both sides. Except for in some truly lost parts of the left or the anti-Semitic parts of the right, I don’t think that’s a problem Israelis face in America. I do think it’s a problem Palestinians face. So I asked Amaney Jamal, Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, on the show. Dr. Jamal is Palestinian. She spent much of her childhood in Ramallah. And she is also one of the leaders of the Arab Barometer Project, which, among other work, has been doing deep survey work on Palestinian public opinion. As always, my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
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Dr. Amaney Jamal, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Ezra, for having me.
So we’re talking — today is Tuesday, Oct. 31. When was your last survey in Gaza conducted?
Our last survey in Gaza was conducted at the end of September through Oct. 6.
So it wrapped one day before Hamas’s attack.
Yes.
That is wild.
It’s very wild. We had a couple of responses on Oct. 7, but we had primarily wrapped up the work on Oct. 6.
So I want to go through some of the main results. And one thing you did was you polled attitudes on Hamas. What did you find in Gaza, and what did you find in the West Bank?
So, generally, in Gaza, what we found is that trust for the Hamas government was low. It seems to be on the decline. So we found about 67 percent said they had no trust or little trust in Hamas. Furthermore, when we asked people about if elections were held today — as you know, Ezra, elections have not been held in the Palestinian territories since 2006, so for almost 20 years now.
But when we asked people if elections were held today, who would you vote for? What we also found is that about a quarter said that they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, who is the leader of Hamas, in a presidential election. Mahmoud Abbas did not receive very high scores either. So the Palestinian Authority, it appears, also doesn’t have great legitimacy. And when we asked people in Gaza who is their preferred party, 27 percent said Hamas, which is lower than a third, closer to a quarter, and then 30 percent said they would favor Fatah, which is also less than a third.
So, again, it appears that both Hamas and Fatah do not enjoy great support or popularity among the citizens in Gaza. In fact, what we found is that a good percentage of citizens in Gaza have little faith in either of the political parties.
So if they don’t want the leaders of Hamas or Fatah to represent them, who was the most popular choice for leadership?
So the most popular leader, but not by a great margin, is Marwan Barghouti, who is in an Israeli prison for his terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens.
And what do they like about him?
So despite his atrocious sort of track record with Israelis, he is perceived to be a leader that lacks corruption, a leader that, if given the chance, would lead the Palestinian people honestly and favorably. We really don’t have much of a record of that. So Marwan Barghouti has never really held an official public office in the way of representing the Palestinian people. So this is, nevertheless, a perception that he would rule honestly and would have a government that wasn’t very corrupt.
This gets at something that I saw in your polls, that I saw in other polls I looked at of Palestinians both in the West Bank and Gaza, which is that I think in America, we think about the dominant, maybe even the only issue, as being the relationship and the conflict with Israel. When you look at the polling, corruption is often the top issue. And corruption is, I think, often believed to be why Hamas won in Gaza in 2006 in the elections that did happen. Now, Hamas is seen as incredibly corrupt. Corruption does seem to be at least the top domestic issue.
That is correct, Ezra, and that’s a really good point to discuss with your viewers, which is that the average Palestinian on a day to day is not only assessing the condition of their livelihood vis a vis the Israeli occupation, but they are also juxtaposing their perception vis a vis the governing authority. So in the West Bank, that is the Palestinian Authority. In Gaza, it is the Hamas-led government. And on both ends, Palestinian perceptions of corruption are very high.
And among Palestinians, especially because there’s this discourse and there’s this feeling that they’ve already been disadvantaged by the Israeli occupation and by an international community that, more or less, has been silent on the occupation, that to add insult to injury, Ezra, you then get governing authorities that are also corrupt, that are also dispossessing Palestinian people of their material well-being. And this is just, again, a deep wound for the Palestinians to have to live and contend with levels of corruption. So we see this in our polls, and we see this in our interviews and our focus groups that it’s just like yet another layer of injustice.
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One thing I was thinking about when reading the poll was the way that Palestinians are discussing their situation internally and the way that their relationship with Hamas is seen, particularly from Gaza, externally.
And I want to read you something that Israeli President Isaac Herzog said about Palestinians in Gaza right after the attacks. And he said, quote, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime.” So how do you think about that?
So I mean, that is just really, with all due respect, Ezra, as an analyst, is it’s just really inaccurate. We know that Hamas leads in a very dictatorial fashion in Gaza. We know from the poll that 40 percent said that the freedom of expression in Gaza was guaranteed to a great or moderate extent, which means about 60 percent did not believe the freedom of expression was guaranteed. And then about close to 70 percent believe that the right to participate in a peaceful protest was not protected under Hamas rule.
So increasingly, Palestinians in Gaza, at the eve of these atrocious attacks, were feeling that their freedoms and the ability to express their opinion was limited, to express their opposition to the Hamas government was limited. In Gaza and elsewhere, even on the West Bank, it’s increasingly become common to hear of stories where Palestinians oppose the leaderships, and they are arrested for criticizing the government.
So you have a population that is basically under this Israeli occupation, but then living under authoritarian rule of their own leaders. And then the world community or President Herzog basically saying, well, they’re going to be held responsible for what Hamas did.
That is just inaccurate. That does not reflect the realities on the ground.
And Hamas has not been representative of the Palestinian people. Everybody keeps basing the Hamas popularity on the 2006 election, Ezra, which you mentioned. And remember, the 2006 election, even if it brought Hamas to power, that election never was based on a landslide for Hamas. Hamas secured 44 percent of the popular vote in that election. And to your point, a lot of that vote was mobilized on ending corruption of the P.A.
One thing that is striking to me across every poll I can find is Abbas, who I think is often considered fairly moderate, at least for this conflict, is almost unfathomably unpopular. Why?
I mean, it’s not only that he’s unpopular. 52 percent of Gazans believe the P.A., the Palestinian Authority, which is led by Mahmoud Abbas, is a burden on the Palestinian people. And 67 percent in Gaza would like to see Abbas resign. So these are horrendous polls in terms of thinking about what alternate leaders are there for the Palestinian people. But here’s the issue. Yes, the Palestinian Authority is very corrupt. It’s been well documented, Ezra. I’ve written on this in my book “Barriers to Democracy.”
Having said that, if you go back to 1993 and after that, the whole creation of the Palestinian Authority was to bring Palestinian people an aura of autonomy and independence in a two-state solution that stood side by side with Israel. And year in and year out, what’s happened since Oslo is that the Palestinian Authority increasingly became a governing authority that was governing much more authoritatively while being seen as unable to bring any of the building blocks of building that Palestinian state, moving that peace process forward.
Settlements have expanded. If you go to the West Bank, if you visit the West Bank year in and year out, Ezra, you’ll see that the land of the West Bank has shrunk, and it is divided, where you can’t travel between towns. And all the while, the Palestinian Authority is governing more authoritatively in these small enclaves on the West Bank. So that has been a disastrous formula for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, is the fact that before their very eyes, Palestinians have seen even further dispossession.
The idea of a two-state solution, although, on a personal level, I have always supported and still support, I understand that it’s very difficult to talk about a two-state solution right now because the realities on the ground have changed drastically, to the extent that it’s very unclear about whether a two-state solution is even possible. And the truth is, Ezra, you can’t blame the failure of the peace talks on Mahmoud Abbas and the P.A.
So we can talk about the corruption. We can talk about authoritarian rule. But the failure of the peace process, you cannot lay that responsibility on the doorsteps of the Palestinian Authority. The truth is, Israel, for the longest time, especially under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, has chosen not to engage in a peace process, has chosen not to work.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Netanyahu has done almost everything he could to not have negotiations in a serious way with Abbas. And in fact, I mean, it has been well reported and well discussed that part of the way that he engaged with Hamas was meant to weaken the Palestinian Authority, so he didn’t have to make those kinds of concessions.
But I do want to ask here that one thing I will often hear from Israelis is that there have been opportunities. And part of the reason they have given up on the two-state solution is their sense that those opportunities were not taken, including by Abbas. And the specific one I often hear about is an offer made by Ehud Olmert, sort of towards the end of his administration. And I’m always so careful when I wade into this because the claims and counterclaims are very complicated.
But there was some kind of offer from Olmert, and the details on it differ between the two camps, that in his telling, at least, it was more land than had been offered before. And the feeling was that Abbas did not respond, although, again, that is contested by Abbas’s camp. But I’m curious what you make of that sort of moment right before Netanyahu comes in and the whole politics of this changes.
So this is a good point, Ezra, and like you, I have heard from my Israeli friends and colleagues who were involved in the track two negotiations and from the Palestinian side, and quite honestly, you will get accounts that say, yes, this was offered, but it was never put in writing. Or this was never offered, but they say it was. Or the Israelis are still talking about being afraid of the Palestinian right of return, that there was actually significant movement on that in the negotiations.
So you’re always hearing the conflicting sides.
But the truth is, this ongoing narrative around peace, which is that everybody has this one opportunity to either take it or leave it. And if people didn’t take it or they couldn’t come to that agreement, it means that we’re never going back to the negotiation table. And I’ve given this so much thought, as you can imagine. The real argument can be, should be, is that so much progress was made at Camp David. So much progress was made maybe with the Olmert plan. And then so much progress was made with what Mahmoud Abbas and the P.A. were willing to accept.
Why did we not build on those successes? Because every time, Ezra, there were political forces that did not want peace. They did not want further concessions. They did not want the negotiation and, basically, the ability to come up with a resolution of compromise. These leaders would take us back. So rather than the discourse always focusing on the fault of the peacemakers who are really doing the hard work, I think we need to start asking our questions about the leaders who came and destroyed the peace process. The leaders who came and said, we don’t want peace. We don’t want to work with the Palestinian Authority, and we’d rather work with Hamas. That’s where the focus and the scrutiny should be.
I think the peace process has been vilified because there were always groups and leaders who didn’t want peace. But the Olmert’s of the world, the Ehud Barak’s, the even Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the P.A., the concessions that the world was willing to make or these leaders were willing to make, the heroic concessions, the courageous concessions, the concessions that Yitzhak Rabin, before he was assassinated for his concessions, right, that they were willing to make to bring peace, why are these efforts vilified and always put in this very negative framework, rather than saying, oh, my God, so much progress was made.
You’ve had the recognition of the state of Israel. You had the denunciation of terrorism by the Palestinians. You had the willingness of land swaps to keep some of the settlements on the West Bank. You had security arrangements and security agreements, where there were joint security patrols patrolling a lot of the areas between Israel and the West Bank. There was a lot of cooperation, not only on security, but health and education and the economy. This was an enormous amount of work for coexistence and for mutual peace.
And it was discarded, Ezra, under the guise of, oh, they couldn’t just agree at this one meeting on something. So what? Let’s have another meeting. Let’s have another effort. Which world leaders, since the failure of Camp David, have tried to seriously bring the Palestinians and Israelis together to push this two-state solution forward?
I do think you’ve seen a couple of people try. There were some very ill-fated attempts from John Kerry under Obama when he was an envoy on this. The Trump administration, I think, moved to an idea that you could make peace between Israel and other Arab nations, and you didn’t have to do anything with the Palestinians at all. There wasn’t very much happening under Joe Biden.
But I think one reason this has begun to rot is a sense that it’s impossible, both for the reasons you lay out, that there are many more settlements now on the ground, that the two sides are further apart, but also that people don’t want it, that the polling, the public, has turned against it. And you did do polling on this in Gaza. So I wanted to ask what Gazans in your survey said about how they wanted to see the conflict resolved, what solution they were in favor of.
Yeah, so we asked people in Gaza of the three solutions — a two-state solution that recognizes Israel and is based on the 1967 borders; a second option of a confederation between Israel and a future Palestine; and the third option being a one-state solution. And that’s the one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians would all live in one state, enjoy equal opportunities. Now, Ezra, there was a fourth option that was other, that people could basically write in any other option. About 20 percent opted for that other option, and they opted for armed resistance against Israel. But that was only 20 percent. A majority supported the two-state option.
So I have some questions about this. So you did this poll in conjunction with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. And so I was looking at some of their other recent polls, and they seem to show very, very different results. So this poll, as you mentioned, done in Sept. and Oct.. They had a June 2023 poll that found, quote, “Support for the concept of the two-state solution stands at 28 percent, and opposition stands at 70 percent.” So what should I make of the difference between these two results?
So this is really good question, Ezra, and I’m glad that you asked it, because we did spend a lot of time before we wrote up our results. We looked at the Palestinian survey that you just cited. So that survey generally was sort of framed around the failure of Oslo almost 30 years later. So that’s the general tenor of that survey. So there’s a series of questions in that survey that highlight the failure of the two-state solution, the failure of the peace process, and the failure of Oslo.
So what we say, what we are sort of arguing, is that the Palestinian sample of this particular survey was basically fed different primes to put them in a very negative framework about the two-state solution. And I’m not saying that was the intention of the Palestinian Center. We work with them. Khalil Shikaki, somebody we hold in very high regard as a colleague.
He’s the head of the center.
Yes, but here’s Q33, question 33. President Abbas made a speech at the U.N. in which he described the evolving conditions in the West Bank as a one-state reality with two peoples, the Palestinian and Israeli, and describe it as a reality of apartheid. He emphasized that if the Israeli occupation is not ended, the Palestinians will demand equal rights and a one state for two people. Are you for or against a one-state solution where the two sides enjoy equal rights? That’s Q33.
Then Q35, it asks, do you support or oppose the solution based on an establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, known as the two-state solution? So after you’ve told them that they’re living in apartheid, after you’ve told Palestinians that their President Abbas says they’re living in apartheid, and more or less, a two-state solution has failed, Q35 comes after to say, do you support that?
So in other words, the survey was not necessarily about a straight up, do you support a two-state solution? The survey was more about, do you believe a two-state solution is even viable, given that your president says you live under apartheid? Does that make sense?
It does. I mean, I will say that I looked across a couple of surveys. So I take your point that that survey was about the failure of the Oslo Accords. There’s another survey from December 2022 that shows that given force options of what should happen next in the conflict, 31 percent of Palestinians choose reach a peace agreement. But 40 percent choose wage an armed struggle against Israeli occupation.
And my point is not that one is right and one is wrong. I feel like what you’re saying is, in some ways, more interesting than that, that if there is so much malleability in public opinion among Palestinians — and for that matter, among Israelis, which also changed in different surveys — if there’s so much malleability in Palestinian views on what should be done here depending on how questions are asked and questions are primed, that also implies actually quite a lot of malleability, potentially, in reality, that how people might feel about the peace process in one context, right, one way, one moment in the conflict, one administration they see in Israel, one way of being treated, and how they feel in another, could change very dramatically such that it sounds to me that the takeaway from this would be should never really see the opinion here as fixed.
I think that’s a good way to put it, Ezra. Or more importantly, let’s just put it this way — and I’m not an expert on Israeli opinion, but I have colleagues working on Israeli opinion — is that the average citizen in Palestine, Israel is a rational citizen. And in the end of the day, the average citizen in Palestine, Israel wants a life of dignity, security, and respect. And if that’s how we frame the advantages of peace, if that’s how leaders talk about peace, rather than it being a liability and it being basically something that is so horrible because we tried it 30 years ago — we’re never going to try it again — then guess what? People are not going to support it. And so it comes down to what messages and what our leaders are promoting on both sides.
Now, to be fair, again, to back the Palestine authority, they have always called for a two-state solution. Hamas has not. But Hamas has enjoyed a lot of room to grow and to consolidate its authority in Gaza. The Netanyahu government has a coalition that is calling for the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza of Arabs and Palestinians. I mean, how is that framing a conversation about the benefits of mutual recognition and coexistence?
Well, I think we can agree that the leaders in power right now are definitely not framing that conversation. I do want to bring this back, actually, to Hamas because you’ve done survey work there over long periods of time. And so you’ve seen how support for Hamas changes during periods of conflict with Israel, during periods of more armed resistance, during periods of war. What have you seen there? What happens to support for Hamas during periods of increased conflict with Israel?
So what we see typically, Ezra, is that when you have these cycles of violence and when you have basically what’s seen as the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza, this bodes well for support for Hamas, that, OK, you know what? We’re going to support this terrorist movement because the world is not listening. Even when we were not supporting Hamas, we were told we were supporting Hamas, and we were punished for not even supporting Hamas. So it does bode well in terms of support for Hamas. I mean, think about what that psychologically might do to a population.
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There is a tendency from outside to be primarily interested, I think, in what Gazans think of the peace process, or the lack of a peace process, of Hamas’s governing authority. But obviously, they, like almost all people, are concerned with their day-to-day life. And one of the things that really struck me in your polling had to do with simply the questions about material reality, and particularly, the questions about food and how that’s changed over time. Can you walk me through that?
So what we found, Ezra, is about 3/4, so about 75 percent, of Palestinians in Gaza, saying that they had run out of food and lacked the money to buy more at some point during the previous 30 days. So that’s three in every four individuals saying that they didn’t have enough food to eat. And that number is up significantly from our 2021 survey, where only 51 percent, so about half of Gaza said they couldn’t afford to eat.
I mean, Gaza has been under blockade. And so this blockade has always posed significant economic challenges. I know there are those out there who think that Gaza could have been Dubai. The truth is, under the conditions of the blockade, that’s just not feasible. Before all of this, they were relying on about 500 trucks a day of assistance and aid from the global community and from the international organizations. And we see today some of the global speakers applauding the entry of 20 or 30 trucks since the last three weeks of this devastation happening in Gaza. So there are dire, dire humanitarian conditions. And we see this in the poll even before Oct. 7, Ezra. So you can only imagine today how much worse it is.
And so, then, the question does become, how well is Hamas doing in terms of governing and providing for the people of Gaza? Clearly, from our survey, we’re not finding evidence that the average Palestinian was very content with the economic situation in Gaza before Oct. the 7th.
This was one of the most surprising findings to me in your survey, that when you asked Gazans who they blamed for food insecurity, from the outside, you might think, well, they’ll blame Israel because of the blockade. But that isn’t what most of them said. How did they think about it?
So they did mention the Israeli blockade, but the response that was cited most frequently by Palestinians was basically the Hamas government, the mismanagement of the Hamas-led government. And again, this speaks to the issue that we were talking about, which was levels of corruption. So the average Palestinian might be thinking like, yes, there’s this blockade. Yes, this blockade is horrendous. But on top of it, you have mismanagement of the food and the resources of the state that is resulting in an unequal dispersion of resources or foods or aid to people. So they are placing the blame on the Hamas-led government.
And one way of reading that might be that this will weaken the Hamas government, but I was looking back at other things you’d written, and you wrote this piece for Monkey Cage, which was a political science site at The Washington Post back in 2014, co-wrote this piece, where you found that Hamas supporters tended to be in a better position economically. And you suggested that, quote, “Instead of pressuring Hamas, a key effect of the blockade has been to make life more difficult for opponents of the movement. And those who wish to benefit economically are incentivized to remain tied to Hamas.” Tell me a bit about that dynamic.
So and we have evidence of that a little bit, Ezra, in this poll, which is that the poor folks, the really disadvantaged people in Gaza, were most critical of Hamas. So it does lead us to believe that there is this middle class group of individuals that benefits from close ties with Hamas, and they are invested in seeing that government stay in power. But we see that across the Arab world as well. Ironically, the middle class, which is often sort of seen as the champion of democratization or democratic movements, what we find is that this aspiring class of citizens who believe that, OK, there’s some aura of economic stability. Therefore, I am not going to rock the boat.
So, on the surface, they’re not staunch supporters of authoritarianism or for Hamas or for terrorism. They just find it very beneficial to support a status quo government that is OK for their economic livelihood. These are the people who sort of will turn a blind eye to the excesses of these regimes, as long as their economic conditions are met. It’s really the poor, disadvantaged citizens across these societies that end up having to bear the brunt of public mismanagement and of a government that is not representing their interests.
How much does that turn them towards more radical alternatives? I mean, something I noticed in a couple of different polls was very high levels of support for the forming of armed groups like Lion’s Den and the Jenin Battalion, that there was a poll from the Washington Institute that found high levels of support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is arguably more extreme than Hamas. How much does a frustration with the P.A. and with Hamas turn people towards more radical movements?
These are questions that we analyze all the time. Like, who is more susceptible to radicalization in general? And what we often find is that your average person who has limited upward social mobility tends to be more susceptible to the cause of radicalization. But also what we’re learning and what we’re seeing in our polls is that people want alternatives to the status quo.
If you had an alternative in Gaza today that would say, oh, we’re going to fight for the two-state solution, but yet, that movement is living under blockade, that movement does not have any partners to speak to, that movement has no world support, the average citizen is not going to find that message very appealing.
And so, unfortunately, groups like the Islamic Jihad, who are more extreme than Hamas, can basically say — and this is what they’ll say in their mobilization — look, the P.A. failed because it wanted peace. Hamas was in a cease-fire with Israel in its compromise, quote unquote. And then Islamic Jihad, well, yeah, we’re like the true terrorists. Join us, because there are no alternatives.
I want to make sure that your listeners understand and appreciate this. It is incumbent upon a global society to give people different alternatives to believe in and that track well among their people. The fact that nobody can talk about a two-state solution in Gaza, even though we saw that there’s support for it, it was before the attacks and before the Israeli attacks on citizens. So this is not out of a moment of desperation. There is some genuine support there. At least, there is some support that you can tap into. But that message of two-state solution or a peaceful resolution does not track well because leaders and the political process has failed. It’s no longer seen as a very legitimate option, Ezra.
One thing that alarmed me when I was preparing for this is that I think in America, we’re used to an age breakdown, where younger people are more liberal, a bit more dovish, a bit more idealistic. And in Israel and in Palestine, you see something different. These are much younger societies than we are. The average age of Israelis is around 30. The average age of a Palestinian is around 20.
And young Palestinians appear more open to the formation of armed groups. The anti-judicial reform movement has been older in Israel. The Israeli left skews older at this point. And in surveys I’ve seen of Gaza and the West Bank, younger respondents seem to be more militaristic, more fatalistic about the possibilities for a two-state solution than older Palestinians are. So first, is that a correct rendering of the polling in your understanding of it? And second, what do you make of it?
So I do believe it’s correct. You do see these more extreme attitudes among youth populations on both the Israeli and Palestinian side. The truth is, Ezra, at least, if I’m correct, and there wasn’t extensive polling back on the eve of Oslo, that wasn’t the case then. Then you had groups like Seeds of Peace. You had ideas about reconciliation. It was very common for the youth to talk about the advantages and the possibilities and the dreams and the hopes linked to a two-state solution.
So, again, what we see today in these polls is really a byproduct of a failed political process and failed leadership on both sides that have pushed their publics to the extreme, right? So this has a very sad effect on the youth on both sides. But also, I want to bring in the role of social media. I look at some of the things I’m seeing on TikTok and elsewhere.
And the truth is, it just pains me. It pains me as a mother. It pains me as a citizen of the world. It pains me as somebody who still fundamentally believes in a two-state solution that our children can be so ruthless to each other, on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side. It just pains me. It pains me, it pains me, it pains me. When our children are ridiculing the death and suffering of the other side, somebody has done something wrong. And I just hope that we look at this, and we say that this is what the failure of reconciliation and peace has brought. There is an active dehumanization campaign going on, on both ends, and it’s just got to stop.
When you look at Palestinian public opinion, and I can speak authoritatively on the Palestinian public opinion side of it, it also matters what world leaders say. So when world leaders come around and basically dehumanize Palestinians or legitimate the killing of women and children, or basically, do not say anything about the humanity behind these women and children being killed, that hardens their opinions about the peace process, about the state of Israel, about the global community. This is also a population that is desperate for international recognition of their humanity.
And you saw this. You saw that Queen Rania basically took to the airwaves with Christiane Amanpour on CNN. And basically, her whole message was, I want the West to remember that we are people, are human beings. They are just human beings. When any leader just simply says, you have to remember that Palestinians are also human, we see changes in public opinion that are far more favorable. So, again, Palestinians are frustrated with the lack of humanization of their own children, their own lives, their own plights in this conflict.
Does that go the other way, too? One thing I’ve heard from a lot of Israelis, particularly over the last couple of weeks, although you hear it more often, too, although I’ve heard it before also, is that, yes, Israelis are seen as human in much of the West, but they fear that any group that would elect Hamas does not see them as human, that their lives are beyond expendable. And of course, the attacks on Oct. 7 seemed like final confirmation of that. I mean, they were butchered. There’s often an anger or a fear that they are not seen as human enough by Palestinians, by others in the Arab world, to live next to, to live alongside. And as such, then they cannot feel safe enough to do so. Is there anything owed to them, too?
100 percent. 100 percent. I mean, of course, Israelis also are shaken by the core. I mean what happened to them on Oct. 7 is atrocious. And like you said, they were butchered, they were massacred. It is horrendous. But again, I want to just ask you, Ezra, I mean, the fact that immediately it was well-known that Israel was going to retaliate for this in Gaza, Palestinians were told to evacuate and go south and north and east, and we don’t know, right? Is it really for Israelis to sit there and wait for the Gazans to talk about this Israeli suffering while they are now going to be suffering as well? I mean, is that the litmus test?
So I do believe that Israeli security and the humanity and the dignity of Israeli citizens and the sanctity of Israeli and Jewish life in Israel should not be based on what’s happening in moments of war and devastation. This is not the finest moment of the Palestinian-Israeli coexistence. Why? Because for 20 years, extremists have led this conflict. There’s a lot of hatred, a lot of pain. And right now, we’re in the middle of the war.
But in general, there is a lot of outrage in terms of what happened in Israel. And so that is the common ground that peacemakers need to bring leaders together to simultaneously condemn and stand with the citizens of Israel, but also stand with the citizens of Gaza, who had nothing to do with this. I mean, if Hamas is this organization that is propped up by Iran or is a proxy of Iran, why are you holding accountable innocent children in Gaza for that? For that, you — I’m not saying, why is the world?
And so, in the end of the day, the political process has not brought our humanity together so that Palestinian can say to Israelis, we are devastated about what happened. We are shocked. We are horrified for you. We will stand with you. But what platform will allow for that exchange or for Israelis to step up? We’re seeing this. We’re seeing Israelis protesting in Tel Aviv, saying that they don’t stand by what’s happening in Gaza.
I think that’s a powerful point to end on. So then always our final question, what are three books you would recommend to the audience?
So I recommend a new book by Shibley Telhami, Michael Barnett, Marc Lynch and Nathan Brown on “The One State Reality.” I also recommend a book by my colleague — I mentioned Khalil Shikaki and Shai Feldman — that captures what I was trying to get at, Ezra, in terms of the public opinion where we see public opinion being softened towards each other and a two-state solution. It’s called “Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East.” And for a good primer and a good history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I recommend my colleague, Mark Tessler’s book, “A History of the Israeli-Palestination Conflict.”
Dr. Amaney Jamal, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Ezra. I really appreciate it.
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This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy is by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
transcript
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From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”
So I want to start today with a question I’ve been getting, which is why I’ve been treating Israel as the primary agent here.
To quote one email, “All you can do is condemn the brutality of the bombing. Well, guess what? You want to stop the bombing? Release the hostages now, and maybe, maybe something will change. You want fuel and electricity in Gaza? Tell Hamas.”
Or here’s another email. Are you planning an episode called, “If not this, then what should Hamas have done?” After all, you had an episode on what should Israel do. It makes sense to take the exact perspective on Hamas.”
I get where this is coming from. I really do. There would be no invasion of Gaza right now, no massive air bombing campaign, no siege of food and water, if Hamas hadn’t butchered more than 1,400 people in Israel and taken hundreds more hostage on Oct. 7. They did this. It should be on them to end it.
Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas official, went on Lebanese television the other day, and he said, quote, “We will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa Flood is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth.”
That is truly monstrous. Israel is right — I’ve said this before — to want to destroy Hamas, or at least destroy the threat that it poses. Every country in the world would want the same in its position.
But if you agree with what I just said — that Hamas is truly monstrous, that there is something truly chilling about an organization that will slaughter Israeli civilians and then hide among Palestinian civilians — then there is some dissonance between the desire to treat Hamas as the brutal organization that it is and also to say that every Palestinian in Gaza should be dependent upon that same immoral terrorist organization making humane, decent decisions. That Israel is seen as, at least, potentially, a moral, restrained actor here is a strength.
Israel’s weakness, or one of its weaknesses, is how much of that reputation it gave up in recent years. The Netanyahu administration has spent the last decade coexisting with and even strengthening Hamas because that weakened the more moderate Palestinian Authority. They spent that decade annexing territory in the West Bank. As Bezalel Smotrich, the current finance minister, said in 2015, “The Palestinian Authority is a liability, Hamas is an asset.” That’s one reason so many Israelis are so furious, so properly furious, at the Netanyahu government right now.
But one thing Israel and Israelis have is a benefit of complexity. Even though the Netanyahu administration won its power in elections, we understand that it is not synonymous with Israelis, and that distinction is proper. But I don’t think that the American conversation, at least, always extends that same complexity to Palestinians.
I want to go back to that interview with Ghazi Hamad, the Hamas official. After saying that Hamas wants a second, third, fourth Al-Aqsa flood, he says, “Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it. We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs,” end quote.
One wonders whether so many Gazans want to be sacrificed as martyrs by Hamas. There have not been elections in Gaza in almost 20 years. The polling we have shows that Gazans dislike and distrust Hamas, but I think Palestinians are much more often spoken of, at least in America, as an undifferentiated mass. Their support for Hamas is often assumed, which is one reason I think so many are willing to hold them collectively responsible for what Hamas does.
One intention I have for my coverage here is to hold true the humanity and the complexity of both sides. Except for in some truly lost parts of the left or the anti-Semitic parts of the right, I don’t think that’s a problem Israelis face in America. I do think it’s a problem Palestinians face. So I asked Amaney Jamal, Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, on the show. Dr. Jamal is Palestinian. She spent much of her childhood in Ramallah. And she is also one of the leaders of the Arab Barometer Project, which, among other work, has been doing deep survey work on Palestinian public opinion. As always, my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
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Dr. Amaney Jamal, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Ezra, for having me.
So we’re talking — today is Tuesday, Oct. 31. When was your last survey in Gaza conducted?
Our last survey in Gaza was conducted at the end of September through Oct. 6.
So it wrapped one day before Hamas’s attack.
Yes.
That is wild.
It’s very wild. We had a couple of responses on Oct. 7, but we had primarily wrapped up the work on Oct. 6.
So I want to go through some of the main results. And one thing you did was you polled attitudes on Hamas. What did you find in Gaza, and what did you find in the West Bank?
So, generally, in Gaza, what we found is that trust for the Hamas government was low. It seems to be on the decline. So we found about 67 percent said they had no trust or little trust in Hamas. Furthermore, when we asked people about if elections were held today — as you know, Ezra, elections have not been held in the Palestinian territories since 2006, so for almost 20 years now.
But when we asked people if elections were held today, who would you vote for? What we also found is that about a quarter said that they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh, who is the leader of Hamas, in a presidential election. Mahmoud Abbas did not receive very high scores either. So the Palestinian Authority, it appears, also doesn’t have great legitimacy. And when we asked people in Gaza who is their preferred party, 27 percent said Hamas, which is lower than a third, closer to a quarter, and then 30 percent said they would favor Fatah, which is also less than a third.
So, again, it appears that both Hamas and Fatah do not enjoy great support or popularity among the citizens in Gaza. In fact, what we found is that a good percentage of citizens in Gaza have little faith in either of the political parties.
So if they don’t want the leaders of Hamas or Fatah to represent them, who was the most popular choice for leadership?
So the most popular leader, but not by a great margin, is Marwan Barghouti, who is in an Israeli prison for his terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens.
And what do they like about him?
So despite his atrocious sort of track record with Israelis, he is perceived to be a leader that lacks corruption, a leader that, if given the chance, would lead the Palestinian people honestly and favorably. We really don’t have much of a record of that. So Marwan Barghouti has never really held an official public office in the way of representing the Palestinian people. So this is, nevertheless, a perception that he would rule honestly and would have a government that wasn’t very corrupt.
This gets at something that I saw in your polls, that I saw in other polls I looked at of Palestinians both in the West Bank and Gaza, which is that I think in America, we think about the dominant, maybe even the only issue, as being the relationship and the conflict with Israel. When you look at the polling, corruption is often the top issue. And corruption is, I think, often believed to be why Hamas won in Gaza in 2006 in the elections that did happen. Now, Hamas is seen as incredibly corrupt. Corruption does seem to be at least the top domestic issue.
That is correct, Ezra, and that’s a really good point to discuss with your viewers, which is that the average Palestinian on a day to day is not only assessing the condition of their livelihood vis a vis the Israeli occupation, but they are also juxtaposing their perception vis a vis the governing authority. So in the West Bank, that is the Palestinian Authority. In Gaza, it is the Hamas-led government. And on both ends, Palestinian perceptions of corruption are very high.
And among Palestinians, especially because there’s this discourse and there’s this feeling that they’ve already been disadvantaged by the Israeli occupation and by an international community that, more or less, has been silent on the occupation, that to add insult to injury, Ezra, you then get governing authorities that are also corrupt, that are also dispossessing Palestinian people of their material well-being. And this is just, again, a deep wound for the Palestinians to have to live and contend with levels of corruption. So we see this in our polls, and we see this in our interviews and our focus groups that it’s just like yet another layer of injustice.
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One thing I was thinking about when reading the poll was the way that Palestinians are discussing their situation internally and the way that their relationship with Hamas is seen, particularly from Gaza, externally.
And I want to read you something that Israeli President Isaac Herzog said about Palestinians in Gaza right after the attacks. And he said, quote, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime.” So how do you think about that?
So I mean, that is just really, with all due respect, Ezra, as an analyst, is it’s just really inaccurate. We know that Hamas leads in a very dictatorial fashion in Gaza. We know from the poll that 40 percent said that the freedom of expression in Gaza was guaranteed to a great or moderate extent, which means about 60 percent did not believe the freedom of expression was guaranteed. And then about close to 70 percent believe that the right to participate in a peaceful protest was not protected under Hamas rule.
So increasingly, Palestinians in Gaza, at the eve of these atrocious attacks, were feeling that their freedoms and the ability to express their opinion was limited, to express their opposition to the Hamas government was limited. In Gaza and elsewhere, even on the West Bank, it’s increasingly become common to hear of stories where Palestinians oppose the leaderships, and they are arrested for criticizing the government.
So you have a population that is basically under this Israeli occupation, but then living under authoritarian rule of their own leaders. And then the world community or President Herzog basically saying, well, they’re going to be held responsible for what Hamas did.
That is just inaccurate. That does not reflect the realities on the ground.
And Hamas has not been representative of the Palestinian people. Everybody keeps basing the Hamas popularity on the 2006 election, Ezra, which you mentioned. And remember, the 2006 election, even if it brought Hamas to power, that election never was based on a landslide for Hamas. Hamas secured 44 percent of the popular vote in that election. And to your point, a lot of that vote was mobilized on ending corruption of the P.A.
One thing that is striking to me across every poll I can find is Abbas, who I think is often considered fairly moderate, at least for this conflict, is almost unfathomably unpopular. Why?
I mean, it’s not only that he’s unpopular. 52 percent of Gazans believe the P.A., the Palestinian Authority, which is led by Mahmoud Abbas, is a burden on the Palestinian people. And 67 percent in Gaza would like to see Abbas resign. So these are horrendous polls in terms of thinking about what alternate leaders are there for the Palestinian people. But here’s the issue. Yes, the Palestinian Authority is very corrupt. It’s been well documented, Ezra. I’ve written on this in my book “Barriers to Democracy.”
Having said that, if you go back to 1993 and after that, the whole creation of the Palestinian Authority was to bring Palestinian people an aura of autonomy and independence in a two-state solution that stood side by side with Israel. And year in and year out, what’s happened since Oslo is that the Palestinian Authority increasingly became a governing authority that was governing much more authoritatively while being seen as unable to bring any of the building blocks of building that Palestinian state, moving that peace process forward.
Settlements have expanded. If you go to the West Bank, if you visit the West Bank year in and year out, Ezra, you’ll see that the land of the West Bank has shrunk, and it is divided, where you can’t travel between towns. And all the while, the Palestinian Authority is governing more authoritatively in these small enclaves on the West Bank. So that has been a disastrous formula for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, is the fact that before their very eyes, Palestinians have seen even further dispossession.
The idea of a two-state solution, although, on a personal level, I have always supported and still support, I understand that it’s very difficult to talk about a two-state solution right now because the realities on the ground have changed drastically, to the extent that it’s very unclear about whether a two-state solution is even possible. And the truth is, Ezra, you can’t blame the failure of the peace talks on Mahmoud Abbas and the P.A.
So we can talk about the corruption. We can talk about authoritarian rule. But the failure of the peace process, you cannot lay that responsibility on the doorsteps of the Palestinian Authority. The truth is, Israel, for the longest time, especially under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, has chosen not to engage in a peace process, has chosen not to work.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Netanyahu has done almost everything he could to not have negotiations in a serious way with Abbas. And in fact, I mean, it has been well reported and well discussed that part of the way that he engaged with Hamas was meant to weaken the Palestinian Authority, so he didn’t have to make those kinds of concessions.
But I do want to ask here that one thing I will often hear from Israelis is that there have been opportunities. And part of the reason they have given up on the two-state solution is their sense that those opportunities were not taken, including by Abbas. And the specific one I often hear about is an offer made by Ehud Olmert, sort of towards the end of his administration. And I’m always so careful when I wade into this because the claims and counterclaims are very complicated.
But there was some kind of offer from Olmert, and the details on it differ between the two camps, that in his telling, at least, it was more land than had been offered before. And the feeling was that Abbas did not respond, although, again, that is contested by Abbas’s camp. But I’m curious what you make of that sort of moment right before Netanyahu comes in and the whole politics of this changes.
So this is a good point, Ezra, and like you, I have heard from my Israeli friends and colleagues who were involved in the track two negotiations and from the Palestinian side, and quite honestly, you will get accounts that say, yes, this was offered, but it was never put in writing. Or this was never offered, but they say it was. Or the Israelis are still talking about being afraid of the Palestinian right of return, that there was actually significant movement on that in the negotiations.
So you’re always hearing the conflicting sides.
But the truth is, this ongoing narrative around peace, which is that everybody has this one opportunity to either take it or leave it. And if people didn’t take it or they couldn’t come to that agreement, it means that we’re never going back to the negotiation table. And I’ve given this so much thought, as you can imagine. The real argument can be, should be, is that so much progress was made at Camp David. So much progress was made maybe with the Olmert plan. And then so much progress was made with what Mahmoud Abbas and the P.A. were willing to accept.
Why did we not build on those successes? Because every time, Ezra, there were political forces that did not want peace. They did not want further concessions. They did not want the negotiation and, basically, the ability to come up with a resolution of compromise. These leaders would take us back. So rather than the discourse always focusing on the fault of the peacemakers who are really doing the hard work, I think we need to start asking our questions about the leaders who came and destroyed the peace process. The leaders who came and said, we don’t want peace. We don’t want to work with the Palestinian Authority, and we’d rather work with Hamas. That’s where the focus and the scrutiny should be.
I think the peace process has been vilified because there were always groups and leaders who didn’t want peace. But the Olmert’s of the world, the Ehud Barak’s, the even Yasir Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the P.A., the concessions that the world was willing to make or these leaders were willing to make, the heroic concessions, the courageous concessions, the concessions that Yitzhak Rabin, before he was assassinated for his concessions, right, that they were willing to make to bring peace, why are these efforts vilified and always put in this very negative framework, rather than saying, oh, my God, so much progress was made.
You’ve had the recognition of the state of Israel. You had the denunciation of terrorism by the Palestinians. You had the willingness of land swaps to keep some of the settlements on the West Bank. You had security arrangements and security agreements, where there were joint security patrols patrolling a lot of the areas between Israel and the West Bank. There was a lot of cooperation, not only on security, but health and education and the economy. This was an enormous amount of work for coexistence and for mutual peace.
And it was discarded, Ezra, under the guise of, oh, they couldn’t just agree at this one meeting on something. So what? Let’s have another meeting. Let’s have another effort. Which world leaders, since the failure of Camp David, have tried to seriously bring the Palestinians and Israelis together to push this two-state solution forward?
I do think you’ve seen a couple of people try. There were some very ill-fated attempts from John Kerry under Obama when he was an envoy on this. The Trump administration, I think, moved to an idea that you could make peace between Israel and other Arab nations, and you didn’t have to do anything with the Palestinians at all. There wasn’t very much happening under Joe Biden.
But I think one reason this has begun to rot is a sense that it’s impossible, both for the reasons you lay out, that there are many more settlements now on the ground, that the two sides are further apart, but also that people don’t want it, that the polling, the public, has turned against it. And you did do polling on this in Gaza. So I wanted to ask what Gazans in your survey said about how they wanted to see the conflict resolved, what solution they were in favor of.
Yeah, so we asked people in Gaza of the three solutions — a two-state solution that recognizes Israel and is based on the 1967 borders; a second option of a confederation between Israel and a future Palestine; and the third option being a one-state solution. And that’s the one-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians would all live in one state, enjoy equal opportunities. Now, Ezra, there was a fourth option that was other, that people could basically write in any other option. About 20 percent opted for that other option, and they opted for armed resistance against Israel. But that was only 20 percent. A majority supported the two-state option.
So I have some questions about this. So you did this poll in conjunction with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. And so I was looking at some of their other recent polls, and they seem to show very, very different results. So this poll, as you mentioned, done in Sept. and Oct.. They had a June 2023 poll that found, quote, “Support for the concept of the two-state solution stands at 28 percent, and opposition stands at 70 percent.” So what should I make of the difference between these two results?
So this is really good question, Ezra, and I’m glad that you asked it, because we did spend a lot of time before we wrote up our results. We looked at the Palestinian survey that you just cited. So that survey generally was sort of framed around the failure of Oslo almost 30 years later. So that’s the general tenor of that survey. So there’s a series of questions in that survey that highlight the failure of the two-state solution, the failure of the peace process, and the failure of Oslo.
So what we say, what we are sort of arguing, is that the Palestinian sample of this particular survey was basically fed different primes to put them in a very negative framework about the two-state solution. And I’m not saying that was the intention of the Palestinian Center. We work with them. Khalil Shikaki, somebody we hold in very high regard as a colleague.
He’s the head of the center.
Yes, but here’s Q33, question 33. President Abbas made a speech at the U.N. in which he described the evolving conditions in the West Bank as a one-state reality with two peoples, the Palestinian and Israeli, and describe it as a reality of apartheid. He emphasized that if the Israeli occupation is not ended, the Palestinians will demand equal rights and a one state for two people. Are you for or against a one-state solution where the two sides enjoy equal rights? That’s Q33.
Then Q35, it asks, do you support or oppose the solution based on an establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, known as the two-state solution? So after you’ve told them that they’re living in apartheid, after you’ve told Palestinians that their President Abbas says they’re living in apartheid, and more or less, a two-state solution has failed, Q35 comes after to say, do you support that?
So in other words, the survey was not necessarily about a straight up, do you support a two-state solution? The survey was more about, do you believe a two-state solution is even viable, given that your president says you live under apartheid? Does that make sense?
It does. I mean, I will say that I looked across a couple of surveys. So I take your point that that survey was about the failure of the Oslo Accords. There’s another survey from December 2022 that shows that given force options of what should happen next in the conflict, 31 percent of Palestinians choose reach a peace agreement. But 40 percent choose wage an armed struggle against Israeli occupation.
And my point is not that one is right and one is wrong. I feel like what you’re saying is, in some ways, more interesting than that, that if there is so much malleability in public opinion among Palestinians — and for that matter, among Israelis, which also changed in different surveys — if there’s so much malleability in Palestinian views on what should be done here depending on how questions are asked and questions are primed, that also implies actually quite a lot of malleability, potentially, in reality, that how people might feel about the peace process in one context, right, one way, one moment in the conflict, one administration they see in Israel, one way of being treated, and how they feel in another, could change very dramatically such that it sounds to me that the takeaway from this would be should never really see the opinion here as fixed.
I think that’s a good way to put it, Ezra. Or more importantly, let’s just put it this way — and I’m not an expert on Israeli opinion, but I have colleagues working on Israeli opinion — is that the average citizen in Palestine, Israel is a rational citizen. And in the end of the day, the average citizen in Palestine, Israel wants a life of dignity, security, and respect. And if that’s how we frame the advantages of peace, if that’s how leaders talk about peace, rather than it being a liability and it being basically something that is so horrible because we tried it 30 years ago — we’re never going to try it again — then guess what? People are not going to support it. And so it comes down to what messages and what our leaders are promoting on both sides.
Now, to be fair, again, to back the Palestine authority, they have always called for a two-state solution. Hamas has not. But Hamas has enjoyed a lot of room to grow and to consolidate its authority in Gaza. The Netanyahu government has a coalition that is calling for the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Gaza of Arabs and Palestinians. I mean, how is that framing a conversation about the benefits of mutual recognition and coexistence?
Well, I think we can agree that the leaders in power right now are definitely not framing that conversation. I do want to bring this back, actually, to Hamas because you’ve done survey work there over long periods of time. And so you’ve seen how support for Hamas changes during periods of conflict with Israel, during periods of more armed resistance, during periods of war. What have you seen there? What happens to support for Hamas during periods of increased conflict with Israel?
So what we see typically, Ezra, is that when you have these cycles of violence and when you have basically what’s seen as the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza, this bodes well for support for Hamas, that, OK, you know what? We’re going to support this terrorist movement because the world is not listening. Even when we were not supporting Hamas, we were told we were supporting Hamas, and we were punished for not even supporting Hamas. So it does bode well in terms of support for Hamas. I mean, think about what that psychologically might do to a population.
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There is a tendency from outside to be primarily interested, I think, in what Gazans think of the peace process, or the lack of a peace process, of Hamas’s governing authority. But obviously, they, like almost all people, are concerned with their day-to-day life. And one of the things that really struck me in your polling had to do with simply the questions about material reality, and particularly, the questions about food and how that’s changed over time. Can you walk me through that?
So what we found, Ezra, is about 3/4, so about 75 percent, of Palestinians in Gaza, saying that they had run out of food and lacked the money to buy more at some point during the previous 30 days. So that’s three in every four individuals saying that they didn’t have enough food to eat. And that number is up significantly from our 2021 survey, where only 51 percent, so about half of Gaza said they couldn’t afford to eat.
I mean, Gaza has been under blockade. And so this blockade has always posed significant economic challenges. I know there are those out there who think that Gaza could have been Dubai. The truth is, under the conditions of the blockade, that’s just not feasible. Before all of this, they were relying on about 500 trucks a day of assistance and aid from the global community and from the international organizations. And we see today some of the global speakers applauding the entry of 20 or 30 trucks since the last three weeks of this devastation happening in Gaza. So there are dire, dire humanitarian conditions. And we see this in the poll even before Oct. 7, Ezra. So you can only imagine today how much worse it is.
And so, then, the question does become, how well is Hamas doing in terms of governing and providing for the people of Gaza? Clearly, from our survey, we’re not finding evidence that the average Palestinian was very content with the economic situation in Gaza before Oct. the 7th.
This was one of the most surprising findings to me in your survey, that when you asked Gazans who they blamed for food insecurity, from the outside, you might think, well, they’ll blame Israel because of the blockade. But that isn’t what most of them said. How did they think about it?
So they did mention the Israeli blockade, but the response that was cited most frequently by Palestinians was basically the Hamas government, the mismanagement of the Hamas-led government. And again, this speaks to the issue that we were talking about, which was levels of corruption. So the average Palestinian might be thinking like, yes, there’s this blockade. Yes, this blockade is horrendous. But on top of it, you have mismanagement of the food and the resources of the state that is resulting in an unequal dispersion of resources or foods or aid to people. So they are placing the blame on the Hamas-led government.
And one way of reading that might be that this will weaken the Hamas government, but I was looking back at other things you’d written, and you wrote this piece for Monkey Cage, which was a political science site at The Washington Post back in 2014, co-wrote this piece, where you found that Hamas supporters tended to be in a better position economically. And you suggested that, quote, “Instead of pressuring Hamas, a key effect of the blockade has been to make life more difficult for opponents of the movement. And those who wish to benefit economically are incentivized to remain tied to Hamas.” Tell me a bit about that dynamic.
So and we have evidence of that a little bit, Ezra, in this poll, which is that the poor folks, the really disadvantaged people in Gaza, were most critical of Hamas. So it does lead us to believe that there is this middle class group of individuals that benefits from close ties with Hamas, and they are invested in seeing that government stay in power. But we see that across the Arab world as well. Ironically, the middle class, which is often sort of seen as the champion of democratization or democratic movements, what we find is that this aspiring class of citizens who believe that, OK, there’s some aura of economic stability. Therefore, I am not going to rock the boat.
So, on the surface, they’re not staunch supporters of authoritarianism or for Hamas or for terrorism. They just find it very beneficial to support a status quo government that is OK for their economic livelihood. These are the people who sort of will turn a blind eye to the excesses of these regimes, as long as their economic conditions are met. It’s really the poor, disadvantaged citizens across these societies that end up having to bear the brunt of public mismanagement and of a government that is not representing their interests.
How much does that turn them towards more radical alternatives? I mean, something I noticed in a couple of different polls was very high levels of support for the forming of armed groups like Lion’s Den and the Jenin Battalion, that there was a poll from the Washington Institute that found high levels of support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is arguably more extreme than Hamas. How much does a frustration with the P.A. and with Hamas turn people towards more radical movements?
These are questions that we analyze all the time. Like, who is more susceptible to radicalization in general? And what we often find is that your average person who has limited upward social mobility tends to be more susceptible to the cause of radicalization. But also what we’re learning and what we’re seeing in our polls is that people want alternatives to the status quo.
If you had an alternative in Gaza today that would say, oh, we’re going to fight for the two-state solution, but yet, that movement is living under blockade, that movement does not have any partners to speak to, that movement has no world support, the average citizen is not going to find that message very appealing.
And so, unfortunately, groups like the Islamic Jihad, who are more extreme than Hamas, can basically say — and this is what they’ll say in their mobilization — look, the P.A. failed because it wanted peace. Hamas was in a cease-fire with Israel in its compromise, quote unquote. And then Islamic Jihad, well, yeah, we’re like the true terrorists. Join us, because there are no alternatives.
I want to make sure that your listeners understand and appreciate this. It is incumbent upon a global society to give people different alternatives to believe in and that track well among their people. The fact that nobody can talk about a two-state solution in Gaza, even though we saw that there’s support for it, it was before the attacks and before the Israeli attacks on citizens. So this is not out of a moment of desperation. There is some genuine support there. At least, there is some support that you can tap into. But that message of two-state solution or a peaceful resolution does not track well because leaders and the political process has failed. It’s no longer seen as a very legitimate option, Ezra.
One thing that alarmed me when I was preparing for this is that I think in America, we’re used to an age breakdown, where younger people are more liberal, a bit more dovish, a bit more idealistic. And in Israel and in Palestine, you see something different. These are much younger societies than we are. The average age of Israelis is around 30. The average age of a Palestinian is around 20.
And young Palestinians appear more open to the formation of armed groups. The anti-judicial reform movement has been older in Israel. The Israeli left skews older at this point. And in surveys I’ve seen of Gaza and the West Bank, younger respondents seem to be more militaristic, more fatalistic about the possibilities for a two-state solution than older Palestinians are. So first, is that a correct rendering of the polling in your understanding of it? And second, what do you make of it?
So I do believe it’s correct. You do see these more extreme attitudes among youth populations on both the Israeli and Palestinian side. The truth is, Ezra, at least, if I’m correct, and there wasn’t extensive polling back on the eve of Oslo, that wasn’t the case then. Then you had groups like Seeds of Peace. You had ideas about reconciliation. It was very common for the youth to talk about the advantages and the possibilities and the dreams and the hopes linked to a two-state solution.
So, again, what we see today in these polls is really a byproduct of a failed political process and failed leadership on both sides that have pushed their publics to the extreme, right? So this has a very sad effect on the youth on both sides. But also, I want to bring in the role of social media. I look at some of the things I’m seeing on TikTok and elsewhere.
And the truth is, it just pains me. It pains me as a mother. It pains me as a citizen of the world. It pains me as somebody who still fundamentally believes in a two-state solution that our children can be so ruthless to each other, on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side. It just pains me. It pains me, it pains me, it pains me. When our children are ridiculing the death and suffering of the other side, somebody has done something wrong. And I just hope that we look at this, and we say that this is what the failure of reconciliation and peace has brought. There is an active dehumanization campaign going on, on both ends, and it’s just got to stop.
When you look at Palestinian public opinion, and I can speak authoritatively on the Palestinian public opinion side of it, it also matters what world leaders say. So when world leaders come around and basically dehumanize Palestinians or legitimate the killing of women and children, or basically, do not say anything about the humanity behind these women and children being killed, that hardens their opinions about the peace process, about the state of Israel, about the global community. This is also a population that is desperate for international recognition of their humanity.
And you saw this. You saw that Queen Rania basically took to the airwaves with Christiane Amanpour on CNN. And basically, her whole message was, I want the West to remember that we are people, are human beings. They are just human beings. When any leader just simply says, you have to remember that Palestinians are also human, we see changes in public opinion that are far more favorable. So, again, Palestinians are frustrated with the lack of humanization of their own children, their own lives, their own plights in this conflict.
Does that go the other way, too? One thing I’ve heard from a lot of Israelis, particularly over the last couple of weeks, although you hear it more often, too, although I’ve heard it before also, is that, yes, Israelis are seen as human in much of the West, but they fear that any group that would elect Hamas does not see them as human, that their lives are beyond expendable. And of course, the attacks on Oct. 7 seemed like final confirmation of that. I mean, they were butchered. There’s often an anger or a fear that they are not seen as human enough by Palestinians, by others in the Arab world, to live next to, to live alongside. And as such, then they cannot feel safe enough to do so. Is there anything owed to them, too?
100 percent. 100 percent. I mean, of course, Israelis also are shaken by the core. I mean what happened to them on Oct. 7 is atrocious. And like you said, they were butchered, they were massacred. It is horrendous. But again, I want to just ask you, Ezra, I mean, the fact that immediately it was well-known that Israel was going to retaliate for this in Gaza, Palestinians were told to evacuate and go south and north and east, and we don’t know, right? Is it really for Israelis to sit there and wait for the Gazans to talk about this Israeli suffering while they are now going to be suffering as well? I mean, is that the litmus test?
So I do believe that Israeli security and the humanity and the dignity of Israeli citizens and the sanctity of Israeli and Jewish life in Israel should not be based on what’s happening in moments of war and devastation. This is not the finest moment of the Palestinian-Israeli coexistence. Why? Because for 20 years, extremists have led this conflict. There’s a lot of hatred, a lot of pain. And right now, we’re in the middle of the war.
But in general, there is a lot of outrage in terms of what happened in Israel. And so that is the common ground that peacemakers need to bring leaders together to simultaneously condemn and stand with the citizens of Israel, but also stand with the citizens of Gaza, who had nothing to do with this. I mean, if Hamas is this organization that is propped up by Iran or is a proxy of Iran, why are you holding accountable innocent children in Gaza for that? For that, you — I’m not saying, why is the world?
And so, in the end of the day, the political process has not brought our humanity together so that Palestinian can say to Israelis, we are devastated about what happened. We are shocked. We are horrified for you. We will stand with you. But what platform will allow for that exchange or for Israelis to step up? We’re seeing this. We’re seeing Israelis protesting in Tel Aviv, saying that they don’t stand by what’s happening in Gaza.
I think that’s a powerful point to end on. So then always our final question, what are three books you would recommend to the audience?
So I recommend a new book by Shibley Telhami, Michael Barnett, Marc Lynch and Nathan Brown on “The One State Reality.” I also recommend a book by my colleague — I mentioned Khalil Shikaki and Shai Feldman — that captures what I was trying to get at, Ezra, in terms of the public opinion where we see public opinion being softened towards each other and a two-state solution. It’s called “Arabs and Israelis: Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East.” And for a good primer and a good history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, I recommend my colleague, Mark Tessler’s book, “A History of the Israeli-Palestination Conflict.”
Dr. Amaney Jamal, thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Ezra. I really appreciate it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy is by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’
The day before Hamas’s horrific attacks in Israel, the Arab Barometer, one of the leading polling operations in the Arab world, was finishing up a survey of public opinion in Gaza.
The result is a remarkable snapshot of how Gazans felt about Hamas and hoped the conflict with Israel would end. And what Gazans were thinking on Oct. 6 matters, now that they’re all living with the brutal consequences of what Hamas did on Oct. 7.
[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]
So I invited on the show Amaney Jamal, the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and a co-founder and co-principal investigator of Arab Barometer, so she could walk me through the results.
And, it’s a complicated picture. The people of Gaza, like any other population, have diverse beliefs. But one thing is clear: Hamas was not very popular.
As Jamal and her co-author write: “The Hamas-led government may be uninterested in peace, but it is empirically wrong for Israeli political leaders to accuse all Gazans of the same.”
You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.
(A full transcript of the episode is available here.)
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Emefa Agawu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.
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