The fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has offered the first real opening to end the two-year war in Gaza. The outlines of a peace process have broad buy-in, with the UN Security Council approving U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed plan on November 17, but many political questions remain unresolved. And the thorniest among them—who will govern Gaza, whether and how Hamas will be disarmed and involved in politics thereafter, and what to do about Israel’s ongoing occupation—cannot be answered by international decree. In no small part, the outcome of any peace process will be shaped by what Palestinians themselves think.
Immediately after the October 7, 2023, attacks, Palestinians rallied behind Hamas and broadly supported its armed resistance as a means to end Israeli occupation. Since then, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed and more than 90 percent of residential buildings in Gaza have been destroyed. Through the shock and attrition of Israel’s invasion, Palestinians’ opinions have shifted. Attitudes toward Hamas, and armed struggle in general, began to sour, although many Palestinians remained ambivalent about the alternatives. In the war’s later stages, however, the share of Palestinians who favored a negotiated settlement with Israel grew larger. Increasingly, Palestinians have seemed more open to governance by some sort of non-Hamas, Palestinian-led body to run Gaza after the war.
If these trends continue, the Palestinian public could get behind a new governing committee of Palestinian experts and specialists—independent of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority—backed by international partners. But this endorsement is far from guaranteed, and it is now incumbent on Israel, the United States, and Hamas to implement the cease-fire in a way that builds additional support for negotiations and for Palestinian political leadership. Over the past several weeks, UN-coordinated aid corridors have opened and closed, hostage exchanges have been intermittent, no international stabilization force has been established, and Israeli strikes have resumed, killing Palestinians. This will all need to change. Before the cease-fire, concerns about day-to-day governance helped turn many Palestinians away from Hamas. Maintaining that momentum depends on the effective delivery of security, aid, and reconstruction, showing Palestinians that a credible civilian authority, by and for Palestinians and backed by international partners, is worthy of their support.
HIGHS AND LOWS
The best gauge of Palestinian public opinion comes from surveys conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent polling organization established in 1991. Between March 2023 and October 2025, the center fielded nine waves of face-to-face surveys in Gaza and the West Bank that show the arc of Palestinian opinion before, during, and after the war in Gaza.
In one poll question, respondents were asked to choose the group “most deserving to represent and lead the Palestinian people”: Hamas, Fatah (the party that dominates West Bank politics), or neither. Before the October 7 attacks, Palestinians appeared to be at a stalemate: 27 percent of respondents favored Hamas, whereas Fatah’s support hovered at 24 percent. The most popular response by far was that neither group ought to lead. The war upended this equilibrium. In a December 2023 poll, the first conducted after October 7, more than half of Palestinians said Hamas was most deserving of leadership, and the number of respondents selecting Fatah or neither fell dramatically.
The boost Hamas enjoyed can be explained in a few ways. Many Palestinians saw the October 7 attacks as a valid response to occupation and repeated Israeli provocations, as well as a potential means to win the release of Palestinian prisoners. This interpretation conferred on Hamas a degree of moral and strategic legitimacy among Palestinians. Previously undecided respondents were attracted to a group that seemed to take initiative and act with authority—a classic rally effect.
The majority of Palestinians continued to rally around Hamas throughout the spring and summer of 2024. But as casualties, destruction, and displacement mounted—most intensely in Gaza—retrospective approval of Hamas’s attack on Israel declined, and the share who believed it was the “incorrect” decision grew. Consequently, the share of Palestinians who considered Hamas most deserving of leadership slid to 41 percent by the fall of 2025. Support for Hamas remained higher than it had been before the start of the war, but the grinding costs of conflict and the increasing recognition of the need for capable governance after the fighting ends kept the group from consolidating a stable majority.
A similar arc emerged when Palestinians were asked which party and presidential candidate they would choose in a hypothetical future election. Respondents’ support for Hamas candidates jumped after October 7, then began to fade. Hamas and its leaders retained the lead across most potential head-to-head matchups, but their advantage narrowed over time. Support for Fatah’s current leader, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, sank after the October 7 attacks and remained low. But races that substituted Abbas for a different PA standard-bearer were more competitive. Palestinian respondents favored Marwan Barghouti, a prominent Fatah leader currently imprisoned in Israel for his role in the second intifada, over any Hamas nominee by as many as 16 percentage points.
When asked about governance in the “day after” the war, Palestinians’ preferences again seem to have grown more flexible with time. In September 2024, 27 percent of Palestinians said they would support the return of an Abbas-led PA to govern Gaza, with 70 percent opposed. But by May 2025, 40 percent approved and 56 percent opposed prospective PA governance. In October 2025, when respondents were asked what they thought of the PA coordinating the work of a professional committee to administer Gaza, 54 percent of Gazans and 40 percent of West Bank residents supported such an arrangement. Similarly, in June 2024, 23 percent of Palestinians supported and 75 percent opposed an Arab or international security force alongside civilian rule; in May 2025, approval had risen to 31 percent and disapproval had dropped to 65 percent. By October 2025, approval rates were even higher: 53 percent of Palestinians in Gaza and 43 percent in the West Bank.
Palestinians are also becoming more open to negotiations with Israel. Since before the war began, a majority of Palestinians have judged the two-state solution to be infeasible. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that when Palestinians are questioned which option among armed struggle, nonviolent resistance, and negotiations would be the best means to end the Israeli occupation, the most popular response is armed struggle. But support for armed struggle has fallen since a post–October 7 peak of 63 percent; 40 percent of Palestinians in October 2025 identified it as the best course. This means a majority now favors a nonviolent solution. The percentage of those who think negotiations are the best way forward climbed from 20 percent before the war began to 36 percent in October, while 19 percent now opt for nonviolent resistance. Even the share of Palestinians who think a two-state solution is workable has increased from 33 percent in May to 41 percent in October. Thus, although many Palestinians may still doubt that the two-state framework can deliver, negotiations can retain legitimacy because a growing number of Palestinians see them as a practical option.
Notably, across the surveys, Palestinian attitudes in Gaza and the West Bank diverged. The post–October 7 rally behind Hamas was sharper in the West Bank, where encounters with the military and settler violence are routine, and preferences there hardened over the course of the war. Gaza moved on a different track: under the weight of human casualties, mass displacement, and physical destruction, Gazans shifted earlier and further in favor of negotiations and showed greater openness to hybrid or transitional governing arrangements that did not involve Hamas in the “day after” period. This is not to say Gazans turned against Hamas, but they did become more tolerant of alternatives that could bring relief and reconstruction: in October 2025, for example, 51 percent of Gazans, compared with 41 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank, supported the formation of a Palestinian authority not affiliated with the PA or Hamas to manage the Gaza Strip.
BIG CHOICES
Two years of polling tell a clear story. At first, facing heavy wartime pressure, a majority of Palestinians defaulted to seeing Hamas as the actor most capable of managing the crisis. But this boost did not translate into a postwar mandate. As the war lengthened and conversations about leadership and governance became less about symbolic resistance against Israeli occupation and more about the concrete administration of a Palestinian state, a wider array of preferences resurfaced—especially in Gaza, where humanitarian aid, security for civilians, and visible reconstruction are now what people most want to see. The Palestinian public seeks a credible administration that can deliver safety, services, and a path out of emergency. They want Palestinian leadership at the center, and many are willing to accept Arab and international support, too, as long as foreign forces are not explicitly tasked with disarmament and their role is limited in scope and duration.
Key lessons for policymakers emerge from the survey findings. First, making early, visible gains—calmer streets, predictable aid delivered by UN-coordinated convoys, the return of the remaining deceased Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and a detailed reconstruction plan, all of which require a halt to Israeli airstrikes and military operations—can reinforce current trends, encouraging favorable attitudes toward negotiations and an openness to political alternatives to Hamas. Fail to deliver such results, and support for armed resistance and violence will likely return. Next, transitional governance must be Palestinian-led to be legitimate. Hamas’s post–October 7 mandate has narrowed, and an Abbas-led Fatah cannot claim a mandate of its own. But there is evidence of growing support for a reformed Palestinian Authority or another Palestinian alternative, backed by a limited regional or international force. Finally, the West Bank and Gaza have different political climates. Measures that build legitimacy for a new governing authority in Gaza, including relief corridors, reconstruction, and civilian policing, will not automatically win the hearts of Palestinians in the West Bank who are more concerned about daily Israeli raids, settler violence (which in October reached levels not seen since 2006), and economic restrictions. A successful plan is one that meets both populations’ needs.
What happens during the cease-fire will determine whether Palestinian support consolidates behind a civilian government or reverts to more extreme alternatives. In the best-case scenario, the UN Security Council–backed cease-fire holds and enables a steady political transition. In the early stages, violence remains paused, aid is regular, reconstruction and compensation begin to happen, and the prisoner-hostage exchanges conclude. Then, ideally, comes a technocratic cabinet with a time-bound mandate, clear budgeting, and third-party monitoring of aid flows. Elections would follow after minimum conditions have been established, including freedom of movement, media access, and policing guarantees. As long as the steps of such a transition proceed, the data suggest, support for a negotiated end to the conflict would continue to climb.
If implementation of the transition plan is stalled in any way, however, support from the Palestinian population could be in jeopardy. This scenario looks most likely, given that Israel has resumed airstrikes, settler violence has escalated, aid delivery is inconsistent, and the mandate and makeup of a UN-endorsed stabilization force remain unresolved. Aid slowing to a trickle, minimal progress on reconstruction, continued raids in the West Bank, and a premature end to hostage-prisoner exchanges could all result in plateauing Palestinian backing of negotiations and increased preferences for armed struggle and Hamas leadership. These shifting attitudes would likely look different in Gaza, where people would grow more impatient for administrative competence, than they do in the West Bank, where opinion would harden against political solutions. In this unstable environment, transitional authorities are at odds with the people, and potential spoilers have an opportunity to gather public support.
Transitional governance must be Palestinian-led to be legitimate.
If the cease-fire breaks down completely or violence in the West Bank spikes dramatically, then the rallying effect that occurred in late 2023 would likely repeat itself. Hamas’s support would snap back, Fatah’s already limited recovery would collapse, and the share of Palestinians planning to withdraw from political participation would grow. These shifts in opinion would make it extremely unwise to try to stand up a new governing authority.
One possibility could transform the Palestinian opinion landscape: the emergence of Barghouti, or another Fatah figure with real reform commitments, as a credible leadership candidate. Such a candidacy would introduce a powerful rival to Hamas. Although many Palestinians may still favor Hamas—if legislative elections were held today, Hamas would win more than 40 percent of the vote—a real alternative could increase participation and decrease Hamas’s lead, making for a more competitive contest. A credible reformist ticket might even help shift public opinion away from armed conflict and toward negotiations.
There are some clear actions policymakers and mediators should take to keep Palestinians on board with the transition plan. The arrival of aid convoys should be publicized as much as a peace summit would be, in order to demonstrate competence and progress being made. Once a Palestinian governing entity is established, it should publish a reconstruction ledger, audited by international observers. This ledger could take the form of a searchable web portal, an interactive map, or a weekly bulletin, giving Palestinians the opportunity to see contractor awards, timelines, and site progress by neighborhood, as well as a means to file and resolve grievances. Making progress on reconstruction transparent and measurable can boost support for the broader peace plan.
When Arab and other international partners come in to help with policing, oversight, and dispute resolution, those roles must be clearly defined and time-bound to ensure that governance is anchored in Palestinian leadership. In the West Bank, measures that reduce Israeli raids, limit settler violence, and provide channels for Palestinians to submit complaints and see those complaints addressed will need to accompany any steps toward assembling new political leadership. Finally, any new administrative body should resist the impulse to rush into elections. The polls indicate that a large share of Palestinians will not participate until conditions improve on the ground, so a premature vote would likely skew the outcome toward extreme candidates, yield a winner without a real mandate, and deepen the West Bank–Gaza divide.
Over the course of the war in Gaza, the curve of Palestinian opinion is clear. Although Hamas won support initially, as the costs of conflict rose and the realities of what future governance would require grew clearer, that support diminished, and the public’s appetite for a negotiated settlement by a Palestinian-led, internationally backed administration grew. A cease-fire that delivers on its promises—together with an Israeli willingness to publicly accept the goal of the two-state solution and to curb settlement growth and settler violence—can push Palestinian public opinion further toward a moderate political center that supports negotiations and the two-state solution, especially in Gaza. A cease-fire that exists mostly on paper, however, would push opinion back the other way. Where popular attitudes go next depends on whether Palestinians are given a real chance to imagine a future that is not just war by other means.
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