The Critical and Ignored Lessons From the Most Important Poll in the Middle East

Posted on January 14, 2026 by First.One.Through

The near-term ramifications of Hamas’s war against Israel are being crystalized. Hamas’s leadership is decimated and Gaza is in ruins. The political-terrorist group’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen have been dealt severe blows, perhaps fatal for some. Hamas’s cheerleaders in the Global North are the only ones to have gathered momentum, particularly in Australia and the United States where hunting season for Jews has a seemingly open permit.

To gain insight for the next tactical steps, world leaders are looking at the current situation and polls since October 7, 2023 and have drafted proposals and taken initial actions: The United Kingdom and Canada recognized a Palestinian State. The U.S.’s Trump administration put forward a plan for Gaza which would include a new governing entity. The West hopes that the targeted assaults and murder of Jews will peter out along with the end of war. And the United Nations keeps playing the same tune about supporting UNRWA.

These are bad decisions and conclusions, made on faulty assumptions.

There is an organization that has been polling Palestinian Arabs for decades, called the Palestinian Center for POLICY and SURVEY RESEARCH (PCPSR). It conducted a poll of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, just before the Hamas-led war, from September 28 to October 8, 2023. Because of the war, the results did not get published until June 26, 2024, and the world was too focused on the war to pay it any attention. It is deeply unfortunate, and it is required reading to help chart a better future for the region.

To start with the poll’s conclusions:

A large percentage of Palestinian Arabs have wanted to leave Gaza and the West Bank for years, not from the current destruction
Arabs are fed up with their own government – Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – much more than Israeli “occupation”
Canada is viewed much like Qatar for Gazans, a sympathetic haven

Palestinian Arabs Wanted to Emigrate Before the War

According to PCPSR, whether in October 2023 or November 2021, roughly 33% of Gazans and 20% of West Bank Arabs wanted to leave the region.

Men below age 30 make up the vast majority of those seeking to emigrate. As opposed to Gaza where both educated and uneducated people want to leave, it is the educated West Bank population that wants to move away. Among those wishing to leave, many would not vote in Palestinian elections, or if they would, they would sooner vote for third parties over Fatah or Hamas.

Palestinian Leadership is the Curse, More than Israel

The number one reason for wanting to leave was economic conditions by a far margin. Reasons two and three were political reasons and educational opportunities. “Security reasons” came in fourth, with only 7% of Gazans focused on security; 12% overall. Corruption, religious reasons and to reunite with family rounded out the poll.

Canada as a Beacon

Turkey and Germany were the two most favorite destinations, especially for Gazans. Very few Gazans (3%) considered the United States, while West Bank Arabs put it as the number one choice (17%), likely seeking advanced degrees at left-wing universities. What is remarkable, is more of the Stateless Arabs (SAPs) would prefer going to Canada (11%) than Qatar (9%), the wealthy Muslim Arab nation that is a main sponsor of Hamas.

Honest Takeaways

These pre-war results leads to some basic and critical conclusions.

Complete Overhaul of Palestinian leadership, not just in Gaza

The desire of Arabs to leave was evident across both Gaza and the West Bank for many years. This was not a reaction to bombing or siege; it was a verdict on governance.

Hamas in Gaza rules through repression, diversion of aid, and religious militarism. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank offers corruption, authoritarianism, and political stagnation. Together they have produced a society with no credible economic horizon, no accountable leadership, and no peaceful mechanism for change.

While a new entity is needed to administer Gaza, that role should be akin to a Chief Operating Officer overseeing construction. The Palestinian Authority itself needs to be gutted and rebuilt as it is a corrupt, unpopular and ineffective entity.

The United Nations Must Withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank

In its desire to create a Palestinian state, the U.N. has stripped the titular heads of Palestine of any responsibility. The UN protects Hamas despite its savagery. It props up the Palestinian Authority despite its rampant corruption. Palestinian leadership is a bed of paper scorpions.

The UN must withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank and allow local authorities to build a functioning leadership team.

The West Should Rescind Recognition of Palestine

There is no functioning Palestinian government and therefore no basic standard to recognize a Palestinian State. The United Kingdom, Australia and others should withdraw their recognition and make it conditional on building governing institutions that can lead and make peace with the Jewish State next door.

Reeducation in the West

The massacre did not arise from a sudden spike in pressure. It emerged from long-standing internal failure. Hamas chose atrocity because it couldn’t commit a complete genocide of Jews so exploited its own population to be fodder for Israel.

Western audiences were then handed a familiar script, complete with pictures. But the data taken just before the massacre tells a different story—one far more consequential. What is being taught in western public schools is divorced from reality and feeds global and local antisemitism.

Oh No, Canada

While the fears of antisemitism are focused on the United States and Australia because of recent attacks on Jews, Canada is in the hearts and minds of Palestinian Arabs seeking a warm diaspora community. Perhaps it started a decade ago under Justin Trudeau who followed U.S.’s President Barack Obama to embrace the Palestinian cause and Iranian regime over Israel. Perhaps it is because of the welcome mat for extremists groups like Samidoun. Or perhaps it is the perception that the heckler’s veto is fair game, and can run Jewish families off Canadian streets.

Whatever the inspiration, Canada is widely perceived as permissive, ideologically indulgent, and administratively porous—an attractive environment for “political activism” untethered from civic responsibility. It is a ticking time bomb.

The poll of Palestinian Arabs on the eve of the October 7 war reveals deeper truths than surface shots of leveled homes. The PCPSR findings point to a single truth: the Palestinian problem is fundamentally internal.

Ending Israeli control over territory without dismantling corrupt and extremist institutions will not deliver prosperity or peace. Statehood layered on top of dysfunction will harden it. And exporting populations shaped by jihadist rule into permissive Western societies without serious screening and integration, risks importing instability rather than relieving it.

The New Palestinian Authority Talking Points (And Writers?)

Posted on April 25, 2025 by First.One.Through

Hamas stole the spotlight of the local Arabs in the Middle East when it launched a war against Israel on October 7, 2023. Remarkably, members of the Muslim world, western academia and others tied to the socialist-jihadi alliance rallied to the political-terrorist group, leaving its rival Fatah which holds the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, in the shadows.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas has tried for eighteen months to push himself into the center of the discussion and relevance. A few months ago he began to crack down on terrorists in Area A east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), hoping to show the West that he is capable of governing Gaza after the war.

On April 23, 2025, he gave a long speech in Ramallah, which he hoped would craft a new narrative and make the PA a political force throughout the region. Here are some highlights:

There have been FOUR Nakbas. While Arabs normally reserve the word “Nakba” for the 1948 loss of the war they initiated against Israel, Abbas added the 1917 Balfour Declaration of the Judeo-Christian western world recognizing the history of Jews in their holy land and right to reestablish their homeland as the primary “catastrophe.” He added the loss of the 1967 war to destroy Israel in which Jordan lost E49AL/”West Bank”, Egypt lost Gaza and the Sinai, and Syria lost the Golan Heights. Noteworthy, Abbas added the 2007 Hamas “treacherous coup” in Gaza in which it expelled the PA as a fourth Nakba, setting back the mission of Palestinian statehood.

Abbas did not condemn Hamas’s October 7 barbaric attack in Israel which was celebrated by the vast majority of Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). Instead, he attacked his rival group’s expulsion of the PA. It implied that there would have been no war with Israel and no destruction of Gaza had the PA been in charge of the strip. Such adept speechcraft was likely penned by western political advisors.

The “Right of Return” is a hill to die on. Literally. Abbas said that the right of millions of SAPs to live inside of Israel is non-negotiable and that Arabs would rather die than sacrifice such right. The fact that it is a non-starter for Israel is seemingly of little concern. The United Nations has blessed such principle and the PA can do no less.

Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs are Refugees. This is a curious mind-bending twist of language. In different sections of his speech, Abbas said that there are “over eight million” “Palestinian refugees… inside Palestine and in the diaspora.” UNRWA lists 6 million wards in its five areas of operation, Gaza, E49AL/West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The two million Arabs in Israel would get to Abbas’s 8 million.

Only in Palestinian mythology can people be a refugee living in the same house and town where prior generations lived. The new Palestinian narrative is that a country of Palestine always existed, and Israel’s creation made everyone a refugee by definition, even if every local Arab didn’t move an inch. How these Arabs weren’t “refugees” under British or Ottoman rule is beyond reason, but that is the beauty of mythology.

The PA may allow Jewish prayer on the Jewish Temple Mount. Or very much not. Abbas voiced a conspiracy theory that “Al-Aqsa is now facing the most horrific conspiracy from the occupation, as incitement continues to destroy it and build a Jewish temple in its place.” Jews seeking basic human rights to pray at their holiest location – which is in the spot of the Dome of the Rock, not al-Aqsa – has nothing to do with destroying the current structure.

Towards the end of his remarks, Abbas stressed the need for “religious freedoms and… unfettered access to all places of worship for all religions,” suggesting Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount. Abbas may feel he danced around this in claiming the Temple Mount is a purely Muslim site and therefore beyond any claim of Jewish rights for prayer.

Elsewhere in the speech, Abbas repeated many of his past derogatory comments about Israel and the splendor of the PA which are not noteworthy.

CONCLUSION

The long orchestrated speech was made while Egypt and Jordan craft plans for Gaza, and before a much-anticipated June summit in New York chaired by France and Saudi Arabia in which Palestinians hope to become a full member state at the United Nations. Abbas is fighting for his personal future and the Palestinian Authority, so laid out some new markers. It will be important to find out who worked with Abbas on the speech and what impact they are having behind the scenes.

The fact is that Mahmoud Abbas in April 2025 is like Joe Biden in April 2024: people who pay attention know that the leader is a cutout figurehead but willfully pretend otherwise. There are puppeteers behind the scenes controlling the performance, leaving the frontman in place as a convenience to blot the knowledge that the alternative is worse, a losing hand.

A new Palestinian narrative is being drafted before our eyes as parties vie for roles in Gaza and the region. Abbas and others are attempting to rewrite history to seize power as the vacuum nears on the horizon. Now is a particular moment to recall facts we know to be true, and watch how society will bend historic reality to accomodate a different future.

Hopefully we will also identify the scriptwriters before it’s too late.

Abbas Pays Tribute To Murderers Of Jews Before The United Nations General Assembly, To Applause (September 2023)

Mahmoud Abbas And The Rubber Room Tango (September 2022)

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial (July 2017)

Palestinians Publicly Go Full Genocidal Jihadi

Posted on August 18, 2024 by First.One.Through

For decades, Palestinians put on a dance that they had two personas: one peaceful and secular, the other militant and Islamist. In August 2024, they shed the former and fully embraced the latter.

Palestinian Arabs had two principal parties in their government: the more secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas. The Palestinian Authority has been ruled by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who the west presents as a moderate voice of reason, despite being a Holocaust denier and being deeply unpopular amongst local Palestinians. Abbas has ruled E49, the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, commonly called the “West Bank” by Palestinians and “Judea and Samaria” by Israelis.

Hamas is the more popular political party amongst local Palestinian Arabs and has ruled Gaza since 2007. It is a designated terrorist organization according to the United States, European Union, Israel and many other countries. It nominally divided the organization between its political wing and its military wing, much like Nazi Germany had different divisions of the SS, Gestapo, Waffen, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and Wehrmacht.

On July 31, 2024, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, while he was in Iran. In response to the vacated position, on August 6, Hamas announced that Yahya Sinwar who is the group’s military leader, will also assume the role of diplomatic leader. The move consolidated the diplomatic and terrorist faces of the organization.

Just over a week later on August 15, President Abbas spoke to the government of Turkey in a large address. In his remarks, he made clear that the Palestinian Authority is not a secular party but a religious one, intent on “implement[ing] Islamic sharia law: victory or martyrdom.”

*PA President Mahmoud Abbas addressing government of Turkey on August 15, 2024*

He called for Islamic prayers to mourn for the slain leader of Hamas with reciting prayers from the Quran to wide applause.

And then called the United States a “plague,” something nefarious and detrimental to humankind which must be destroyed.

Palestinian leadership has shed the polite diplomatic facade and embraced the genocidal jihadi mantra of the foundational Hamas Charter, in line with the desires of the Palestinian Arab public and radical jihadists around the world. It remains to be seen if this will expand the war against the Jewish State or initiates a global recognition that an antisemitic genocidal regime next to the only Jewish State is untenable in the extreme.