A recent poll in Arab countries regarding the war in Gaza found broad support for Hamas as well as unanimous support for the Oct. 7 massacre into Israel, according to The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies.
The research center, housed at the Doha Institute in Qatar sampled 8,000 individuals from 16 Arab-majority countries, marking the first poll conducted assessing regional opinion on the current military conflict.
When participants were asked about the permissibility of the Oct. 7 attack that included invasion, murder, rape and abduction by members of the Hamas terrorist organization, 89 percent of respondents stated that there was some level of legitimacy to the violence, and only 5 percent categorized the massacre as “an illegitimate operation.”
In the West Bank none of the respondents, 0 percent, called the action illegitimate.
Palestinian subjects also refused to acknowledge any congruency between Hamas and the Islamic State. A question was asked about differences between the two factions, and although only 3 percent of the residents of Arab countries thought that the Gaza-based group was “no different from ISIS,” in the West Bank, 0 percent of those polled thought this.
With 80 percent of individuals in the inquiry reporting that they regularly follow media reports on events in the coastal enclave, West Bank residents had the highest daily attention rate at 87 percent and the least interested were the Sudanese, where only 27 percent of the population showed an inclination for daily news consumption on the subject.
Satellite television and social media were stated to be the most common ways people got their information on the hostilities.
Other results showed that 92 percent of respondents express solidarity with the residents of Gaza, with 75 percent having a favorable opinion of Hamas.
