Polls show growing support among Palestinians for armed struggle as the best way to end Israel's occupation and achieve statehood, and support for the militant group Hamas has also increased slightly over the past three months.
A poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research (PSR) found that support for armed struggle rose eight percentage points to 54 percent among those surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza.
Support for Hamas rose six points to 40 percent, while Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, received 20 percent of the support.
The poll was conducted about eight months after the start of the Gaza war, which began when Hamas fighters attacked Israeli communities, killing about 1,200 people and abducting another 250, according to Israeli tallies.
Gaza health officials say more than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed since then as a result of devastating Israeli attacks on Hamas-controlled Gaza.
The poll found that two-thirds of people think the Oct. 7 attacks were the right decision, a four-point drop from the last poll. The drop was in Gaza, where 57% of respondents said the attacks were right, up from 71% in March.
Surveys have shown that around 80 percent of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have lost or injured relatives in the war.
Walid Radadweh, PSR's director of surveys and research, said the increase in support for Hamas and militant activity was not significant compared to previous polls, but was a response to Israel's destruction and killings in the Gaza Strip.
He also said the poll reflected dissatisfaction with the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, which has long sought to negotiate a Palestinian state alongside Israel and rejected armed struggle.
The Palestinians want a state with East Jerusalem as its capital in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war, but the peace process has been stalled for years while Israel has expanded settlements in the West Bank and opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Abbas and the Islamist group Hamas have long been at odds over strategy, with Hamas viewing Abbas's approach of negotiating a Palestinian state alongside Israel and instead advocating armed struggle as a failure.
“This war, like previous ones, is having a radicalising effect on both sides,” said Ghassan Khatib, a lecturer at Birzeit University in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The poll showed more than 60 percent supported dissolving the Palestinian Authority and 89 percent wanted Abbas to resign, up from 84 percent three months ago.
Hamas, long shunned by many Western governments as a terrorist organisation and whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, defeated Fatah in parliamentary elections the previous year and seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas's Palestinian Authority in 2007.
While the poll shows Hamas enjoying more support than Fatah, the most popular candidate to succeed Abbas is jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, with 39 percent backing him, followed by Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh with 23 percent.
Asked about the Palestinian poll, Israeli government spokesman David Mensah said: “I have no way of knowing if it's correct or not. Unfortunately, it sounds correct. What kind of leadership leads the Palestinian people into this endless war?”
“Once Hamas is defeated, I want Gaza to be run by its own people, but not by its own people who are trying to kill Jews.”
