President Mahmoud Abbas lost significant public support over his role in delaying international action on a United Nations report that accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, a new opinion poll shows.
The survey released on Sunday by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre (JMCC) indicates that if an election were held today, Abbas would receive just 16.8 percent of the vote, and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh 16 percent. A similar percentage said they would vote for Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi, who is currently in prison in Israel.
Public confidence in Abbas dropped to 12.1% from 17.8% in another JMCC poll in June. Confidence in Haniyeh held steady at 14.2%.
The level of confidence in caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad increased to 4.5% compared with 2.1% last October.
The UN Human Rights Council endorsed the report of a fact-finding mission led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone last Friday. An initial vote on the report was delayed when Abbas’ government dropped its endorsement of the document, which accuses both Israel and Palestinian armed groups of committing war crimes during Israel’s three-week assault on the Gaza Strip last winter.
JMCC also reports that while Abbas’ popularity took a hit, “it seems that the approach of Fatah Leadership to distance itself from the PNA with regards to the Goldstone report helped Fatah in keeping its popularity ahead and more than Hamas’ popularity among the Palestinian public.”
The current poll shows that a 34.6% of the public still trusts Fatah compared with a 17.9% who said they trust Hamas, followed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which received 3.7%, while Islamic Jihad received 2.3%.
JMCC said it interviewed 1,200 people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between 7 and 11 October, a few days after the Palestinian Authority agreed to defer UN vote on the report. The organization said the poll had a margin of error of three percent.
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