According to the results of a survey carried out by the Palestinian Policy Research and Survey Center, most of the Palestinian respondents said they believe resistance movements in the besieged Gaza Strip, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have outperformed the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its President Mahmoud Abbas, in thriving for a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian Policy Research and Survey Center is based in Ramallah, the occupied West Bank city that houses the headquarters of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority.

The results of the survey show that 80% of Palestinians want Mahmoud Abbas to step down from presidency of the Palestinian Authority, in sign of how little hope the Palestinians have in their President’s vision toward resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Only 27% of the respondents said they support the PA’s push for a so-called “two-state” solution, while 70% are against this failed idea.

Furthermore, as little as 18% percent said that the establishment of the PLO in the early 1960s was the best thing that happened to the Palestinians. This is while just 14% said that the establishment of the PA after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 was the most positive thing that has happened to the Palestinians since Israel was created in 1948.

The survey doesn’t come as a surprise as Israel has been ethnically cleansing many more Palestinians lately by either killing them, vastly expanding illegal settlements, or demolishing more Palestinian homes in the West Bank.

This has all been going on while the PA remains engaged in talks with the United States and Israel to try and bring some kind of peace to the occupied West Bank that many experts believe will never be achieved through negotiations with Israel or the U.S., as the past decades have shown.

Analysts say the Palestinians, especially the youth, have recognized this more than the PA: the fact that if no form of resistance is carried out, the occupying entity will swiftly expand and wipe out all the Palestinians from the West Bank along with the PA itself.

Israeli settlers are now being encouraged by the regime's soldiers to go on the rampage and attack Palestinian villages, whilst the villagers who step outside to defend their livelihoods are being prevented from confronting the settlers by Israeli soldiers. 

This is why Palestinian youth have taken matters into their own hands and taken up arms against the regime’s forces in the occupied West Bank. It also explains the record rising death toll among Palestinian youth in the West Bank this year as they are resisting daily Israeli military raids into cities, towns and villages.

Over the past decades, the PA has been pushing with the United States and Israel for a two-state solution, that is a Palestinian state that would see the regime withdrawing from the territories it occupied in 1967 with occupied east al-Quds as its capital. This idea would envisage Israel remaining on land it stole in 1948. It's a venture that has failed miserably. 

On the other hand, the resistance is seeking a state that comprises all of the Palestinian land before the creation of the Israeli entity in 1948, with all Palestinian Arab Muslims, Christians and Jews living side by side in peace from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Palestinians don't even mind the idea of a referendum among everyone living on Palestinian land, it's refugee camps in the region and the Palestinian diaspora, including those with the right of return to vote on who governs the land.

This is a fair option to settle the conflict.  Israel refuses to entertain the idea because it is fully aware that the Palestinians under its occupation, as well as the Palestinian diaspora and those with the right of return outnumber the Israeli settlers and would emerge victorious in such a referendum. 

This would, in essence, mean many Israeli settlers returning back to Europe, the United States and all other countries that they had lived before immigrating to the state of Palestine in 1948 and later years and taking over the land of the indigenous inhabitants.

When asked in the survey what has been the best thing to happen to them since the Nakba, (the Arab word for catastrophe that marks the creation of Israel by the British in 1948), the resistance factions came first.

The survey, showing support for the resistance over the PA, also doesn’t come as a surprise as the armed resistance has inflicted heavy losses on Israel in the wars that the regime had triggered on the besieged Gaza Strip.

The results of the poll also show that Ismail Haniyeh, a senior leader of the Hamas organization, which has a resistance wing and has fought multiple wars against Israel, is more popular than Mahmoud Abbas. 

In response to a question about their preferred candidate to replace 87-year-old Abbas, the leader of Fatah, Marwan Barghouti, who has been imprisoned by Israel for 22 years, came first.

According to the survey, if elections were to be held today in the Palestinian territories, Haniyeh would win with 56% of the votes against Abbas with just 33%.

Over the past two years alone, Islamic Jihad, a single Palestinian resistance faction in the besieged Gaza Strip, has emerged victorious on two occasions after it was attacked by Israel.

The growing show of strength by the Palestinian resistance in managing to strike deep into the occupied Palestinian territories, targeting critical Israeli infrastructure, has taken the world, let alone the Palestinians, by surprise.

This is not just limited to the Gaza Strip. In the occupied West Bank, more and more Palestinian youth are lining up to join newly formed armed resistance factions.

The vast majority, equivalent to 71% of the Palestinian people, expressed support for the formation of newly armed groups in the West Bank, such as the Jenin Battalion. More than 85% of the respondents said that the PA does not have the right to arrest members of armed groups to prevent retaliatory operations against the Israeli military or settlers.

These Palestinian youths have reestablished their national identity, which the prior generation appears to have left behind after the 2001 Intifada. They are also witnessing the brutal Israeli attacks against the al-Aqsa mosque in occupied al-Quds (Jerusalem).

This year, like last, the Israeli regime’s troops have stormed the holy site’s compound and Mosque itself, mercilessly beating up men and women, while settlers have enjoyed more rights to sacrilegiously violate Islam’s third holiest site.

According to the results of the survey, 66% of Palestinians believe that Israel will not celebrate its 100th anniversary. Experts believe the rising power of the resistance facing Israel means the apartheid regime, which has committed countless crimes, will not be celebrating its acts of barbarity for that long.