PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: Rethinking Palestinian public opinion
This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and lightly edited for readability. Please consult the corresponding audio before quoting.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
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Welcome to The +972 Podcast, your direct line to the journalists, thinkers, and activists struggling for justice in Israel-Palestine. I’m your host, Ghousoon Bisharat, editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine. Our podcast grounds the discussion in lived realities to bring you closer to the issues that matter most between the river and the sea. Before we dive in, a quick reminder that what we do would not be possible without you, our readers and listeners. If you believe in our mission and would like to support our work, head over to 972mag.com/members and find out how to become a member of 972 or make a one off contribution.
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Ghousoon Bisharat:
Zayne, I would like to start with the issue of the recognition of a Palestinian state and this new wave of recognition. According to your latest polls and your personal conversations with people here in Ramallah, can you tell us how Palestinians feel about the world recognizing their right to statehood?
Zayne Abudaka:
Thanks for hosting me, first of all. We’ve just conducted recent polling in the West Bank and Gaza to ask exactly about this question. The short answer is these recognitions are favorable in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem—people think positively of them. According to the most recent poll, around two thirds of people, at least, think that these are desirable. But then when you talk about effectiveness, people are a bit divided. Around 35% of people think that these are very useful, impactful things. Then maybe 31, 32% say that it is desirable, but not enough. And then the rest say it is pointless.
Generally speaking, I would say that overall, people think positively about this. For many people, they feel like they’ve not been heard, they’ve not existed on the international arena, that they’ve somehow been neglected. So to hear that they are recognized, it’s mostly met with a positive attitude.
Shatha Yaish:
Does it have any real, tangible impact on Palestinian lives today in the West Bank and Gaza?
Zayne Abudaka:
It’s really hard to tell. From my personal conversations, this is not from polling, but just from personal conversations where I try to understand from people what they think the benefit of this is, often I get a cloudy answer. I think that people don’t really understand the significance of these things. There is a long standing argument that international diplomacy and work on the international arena, which the PA has been engaging in for decades, would actually lead to change. And that is still a hypothesis. Nothing has happened as a result, significantly. On the contrary, when you look at the situation, things in many ways got worse: violence is increasing, the economy has been going downhill since 2013 and keeps having shocks due to the war, and America cut aid as well. So everything’s getting worse. However, people, despite all of this, still have some faith in international mechanisms, and they think that recognition is a positive thing.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
And when Palestinians do speak about statehood, what do they mean? What state do they want?
Zayne Abudaka:
We’ve been polling for a while now, before even the war, just slightly before. And before, people were skeptical of the two-state solution. I think there’s an important nuance or distinction here to make between people who are favorable to the two-state solution and people who are willing to accept the two-state solution, because these are not exactly the same thing. Some people are ideologically bought into the idea of Palestinian statehood on 1967 borders, East Jerusalem as a capital, all of the kind of long-standing historical push of the last three decades. But some people are thinking about this more to move on, to save what they have left for their children. They’re thinking of it from necessity, not that they really like it. The gap between the two was bigger before.
Now when the war started, support for solutions in general, two-state and one-state, started going up. Willingness to accept, specifically, increased. Much of this is desperation, because people saw massacres on TV, they saw dead children on TV, and they’re afraid. They want anything that will stop the bloodshed. Support for both solutions has increased and continues to increase—in the latest polls, it’s almost a 50-50 split on the one-state acceptability. This is a change, a very different thing. I think that, in a way, the current situation has increased people’s commitment to ending the conflict from the Palestinian side, definitely not from the Israeli side, but from Palestinian side, at least.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
But when we speak about two states, what state do the Palestinians want? What kind of state?
Zayne Abudaka:
I’m not going to talk about territory. In terms of the nature of the state, there’s two main things that stand out: first of all, democracy. When we ask people, “what type of governance system should there be in Palestine,” maybe 70% say democracy. This is a very popular point of view.
In terms of religion and state, it’s very close, but it’s leaning to secular. We’ve asked this question in many ways. Most of the time, people are more leaning to a secular, civic state. The word secular in Arabic has a different connotation, maybe because of the context. So we’ve also asked it as civic states where the laws are not Sharia law, versus a religious state where the law is Sharia law, and people predominantly support secularism.
Where they don’t it is sometimes because they don’t see the contradiction, as weird as it sounds, between civic law and religion. That’s something we also tested because we were confused—when we asked these questions separately, we got a lot of people who gave support for both. So what does that mean? We found that they don’t necessarily see a contradiction between the two.
Shatha Yaish:
So when we talk about the state, how do Palestinians envision it? Who’s going to rule it right now?
Zayne Abudaka:
I think in terms of the current factions and groups, even before the war, none of them were popular. There wasn’t a single movement or political party that had any strong popularity. There was a bit of the “grass is greener on the other side,” where you find in the West Bank there’s more support for Hamas and Islamists, and in Gaza there’s more support for Fatah and the PA leadership. With war, usually resistance movements or any movement that’s engaged in fighting usually gains some favorability, definitely more in the West Bank, not in Gaza. The biggest segment of people say “we would vote for independence” in an upcoming election or for “new voices.” What that means—it’s not super clear.
I think there’s a gap now—will independents be more centrist? Will they be more on the Islamist side? Will they be more on the secular Fatah side? It’s not so clear. But we found that even before the war 38.5% of people, when asked about their view of political parties, gave zero to every single one. They’re just exhausted because the enemy, in many cases, is the division itself. It doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong. If you’re participating in a situation with division, it ends up being a very negative thing for Palestinians. Even today, when you ask people, “who do you want to rule you,” to your question, they say a “unity government.” Unity. And that’s what people want. It’s so obvious, so clear, that that’s what most people would support.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
But it’s important to pause a bit on the long-standing dispute between Fatah and Hamas. This is not new—it’s been almost 20 years that there is no unified Palestinian leadership. It has been going on for too long. There is no mobilization to force both factions into a unity government, even two years into a genocide.
Zayne Abudaka:
I would argue that this is actually part of a more regional and global equilibrium, that there were not enough forces pushing either side either way. It was like a stalemate.
To this day, for mobilization in Gaza, there’s a genocide. So really, mobilization is off the table now, even though a lot of people are trying to mobilize gangs, but that’s not mobilization, that’s more security services playing games. But in the West Bank, mobilization is very difficult, because what people most need right now is security and safety. In a way, the protector is also the entity that they criticize. So they criticize the PA, but the PA is the police. So they look at the situation and they’re afraid.
A lot of it is fear—people don’t want a break of security. People have seen what unleashed Israeli aggression looks like and that actually made them more afraid. As a result this makes it even harder to mobilize, because it is not so easy to tell who you are fighting. There’s no clear path to liberation. If there was a unified leadership, the possibility of a pan-Palestinian approach would become reality. Now it’s not like that. People feel like if they organized in X government it’s like they’re breaking the unity even further. It’s almost like Palestinians have been pitted against themselves through this division, this fragmentation, and getting out of this chicken and egg situation is going to be complicated.
Shatha Yaish:
I’m going to ask about the fear you mentioned. At your institute, you measure fear and helplessness, which is something that’s not very done. What do the Palestinians fear most today in the West Bank?
Zayne Abudaka:
There have been two forces that have pushed and pulled depending on the situation. On the one side, there’s the fear of violence, mainly from settlers, but also from the IDF, the Israeli army, because it’s not really defense. On the other hand, you have fear of economic downturn, because a lot of people used to work in Israel, and they lost their jobs.
The Palestinian Authority is not able to pay salaries, so a lot of people are also terrified about their ability to find a meal in the next week. People are really afraid for the future. When there’s violent events, settler violence, aggression on the roads—most people have heard of it, living here—they worry about it every day. When it’s heightened, fears are more focused on that. But then if there’s a few months of relative calm on that front, then you will find people are more concerned with the economy. These are the two main forces in terms of fear.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
I want to use the opportunity, since you’re an economist and entrepreneur, and you understand the economy much better than…
Zayne Abudaka:
I try to understand it, don’t claim to understand it.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
Much better than me, at least. Can you help me understand what is happening with the Palestinian economy in the West Bank? I keep reading and hearing from people that it’s on the verge of collapse. Is it on the verge of collapse?
Zayne Abudaka:
Let’s start by thinking about what the Palestinian economy is. Before the PA, there was a Palestinian economy, obviously. The Palestinians worked, had businesses, lived and paid, had income, etc. There was an economy there. A lot of it was services inside the towns, but also a lot of it was industry, agriculture, and other productive stuff. Now, when the PA happened, there was a potential to improve that situation, to add industry, create a more diverse industrial base, improve the economy and so on. However, the Second Intifada also happened not too long after that, and the Second Intifada famously destroyed a good chunk, maybe a third of the GDP within one year. Especially the productive sectors, for example, industry, agriculture, all of that stuff.
The other part of this is that the market openness was a major part of this problem. For example, in Nablus they used to make textiles and clothes. But now there’s Chinese and Turkish clothes, they’re very cheap, very affordable, and good quality. People no longer find local industry affordable.
Another dynamic is the bubble of jobs within the Palestinian Authority and service jobs to serve people, which get money through international community jobs, non-profit, civil society, all these kinds of better paying jobs. There’s a service economy shadow for that. A lot of people left the land and went to that, to desk jobs, that are easier to get, have more steady income. You have the Palestinian Authority, and a lot of people used to favor Palestinian Authority jobs because they have pensions. That’s another thing, right? Slowly, you have an economy that’s becoming a service-led economy that is hollow.
In a way, it’s always almost collapsing—it’s like electricity, and there’s a plug, and the plug is kind of coming out. If you put it back in, the system keeps going. If you pull it out, it stops for a while. But when people say the economy is about to collapse, they often mean the formal economy, the state, the Palestinian Authority. the banking sector, the formal corporations, and bigger businesses.
In terms of people’s livelihoods in more peripheral areas, it’s less obvious. The aspect that affects those people the most is work in Israel. I think an interesting question now for the future, and I don’t know the answer to it, is what’s the future of that? Are Palestinians going to go back to work in Israel or not? Because if yes, then maybe it won’t collapse. If not, then it becomes more complicated. For various reasons, all the aspects of the Palestinian economy would be encircled.
The other thing is the Palestinian Authority finances, it’s another big issue. The Palestinian Authority, most of its income comes from our taxes—the Palestinian Authority has improved its tax base significantly to the point that just before the war over 70% of all the money of the Palestinian Authority budget came from Palestinian taxes. So, when people are not working, it really does affect the Palestinian Authority budget. That’s one thing.
The other thing is the clearance revenue issue. It’s often very complicated, but in a nutshell, in the Oslo Accords the PLO signed that because they have no access to borders, the Israelis will collect the tax, the tariffs—the import taxes—and then they will, obviously very trustingly, calculate them, file them, take a small 3% fee, and then send all that money directly to the PA budget. Now, obviously, that didn’t work out. This is the money that Smotrich and others keep holding hostage.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
This is the money. And this is the part that is totally in the hands—under the control—of the Israeli government.
Zayne Abudaka:
100%. At the moment, they are not transferring it. Every year they come up with a different interpretation of why. One time was because of prisoners’ salaries, another because of something else. Also, they deduct from that money arbitrarily without telling us why. For example, when there’s a debt to the IEC, the Israeli Electricity Company, they decide they want to cut it. Then we ask, “give us a more detailed breakdown of where the money is.” They don’t provide that. There’s also the workers in Israel. They have accumulated income tax, right? Where’s that money? They give us income tax, but it’s not broken down to every individual—we don’t really know if it’s true or not. It’s all dependent on the goodwill of Israel. In a way, it’s a glass ceiling with a lid. If the Israelis want the Palestinians to stabilize, they’ll just open the lid a bit. If they want to put them down, it’s like a faucet that they have put on the entirety of the economy.
The other thing that you hear a lot about is the cash accumulation: the issue of using cash. That issue is created because in the Oslo Accords, because we in the West Bank and Gaza use mostly Israeli shekel, although not only, but mostly, use the Israeli shekel for daily interaction, there was a settlement process between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The idea is that the Israeli Central Bank and the Palestinian PMA, the Monetary Authority, sit together and come up with a figure that is how much cash should be in the Palestinian economy. So that any excess cash, the Palestinians can return to the Central Bank of Israel.
There’s a dispute now over this, because Israelis say that there should be much less cash than there is. So they say, “this is all terrorism and crime and illicit cash.” However, if you look at the border between Israel and the West Bank, it’s in one direction—it’s very easy for settlers to buy gas in Palestinian gas stations, for Palestinian citizens of Israel to come and buy from Palestine—and we don’t really measure that. How can they say it’s excess? Because is it excess? You always get an estimation from the PMA and an estimation from the Israelis and the gap is like 10 billion shekel. This is where the excess cash comes from. That’s another lid that Israel has on us.
Why is this bad for the economy? A lot of people don’t really understand that if we have extra cash there are implications. The implications are that all of this cash ends up in the banks. Now, the banks will have a lot of money, but it’s all in fiat money, in cash, in coins, in paper money, and they can’t lend you that. So if you go to the bank now and you want to get a loan out, they can’t give you a bag of cash. All of this money that they’re accumulating is idle money. So the ability to give more credit to the economy is reduced every time they transact—that’s why it’s a problem. The way that Israelis have dealt with this is that it’s the faucet idea. When they think the Palestinian economy needs a bit more credit, they’ll take back some of the cash. When they don’t, they’ll close it back. It’s kind of like a system of control from a monetary perspective.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
And vis-a-vis the genocide in Gaza, what is the data that you are collecting from the West Bank telling you?
Zayne Abudaka:
It’s telling me there’s an extreme sense of helplessness. I’m originally from Gaza, so I talk to a lot of people from Gaza and I talk to a lot of people from the West Bank. And a lot of people in Gaza might believe that people in the West Bank don’t care, or are too busy with their own life and privileges that they have, but it’s not true. People in the West Bank don’t see any direct tools to do anything about it. When we ask people, “what should you personally be doing?” A lot of people say, “I don’t know.” And then the other big segment of people say “financial aid,” as if I’m sitting in some other far away country donating to Gaza.
Because there’s no platform for struggle, people don’t know what to do and they feel helpless. A lot of people talk about strikes, for example. A long time ago, before the PA was established, when Palestinians striked, they affected the Israeli authorities directly because they didn’t pay taxes and actually clashed with Israelis. Today, if you strike, that’s less GDP, less commerce, less employment, less salary, and less pay. It’s not so clear anymore—if you strike—what does it mean?
A lot of the traditional tools through which Palestinians used to struggle have been hollowed out. And intentionally, it is not a coincidence that Israel and anyone who supported the security structure in the West Bank has built it this way. There’s really very few avenues to do anything about it.
Shatha Yaish:
What is the Palestinian favorite method of ending the occupation right now, since we’re speaking about avenues?
Zayne Abudaka:
When we ask people about their most preferred way of struggling or achieving liberation, they cite the more peaceful methods, starting with BDS, then you’ll have peaceful protests or negotiations depending on whether they are in Gaza, the West Bank, the North, the South, etc. there are small differences. Then at the bottom, you have armed resistance and all of that stuff. Armed resistance is not unpopular, it’s just not the top three.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
Why is that their preferred method? Did they achieve anything through BDS?
Zayne Abudaka:
No, but also many would say they didn’t achieve much with armed resistance, so that’s where it comes from. Armed resistance is a very sensitive topic for Palestinians, because on the one hand a lot of Palestinians would say, “I want to fight the occupation, the occupation is unjust, it’s unfair, it’s legal to fight the occupation. It’s not against international ideals and laws.” But at the same time from a practical, pragmatic perspective, is this really the best approach? A lot of people don’t think so. They’re a bit shy to say so because it could be understood as a kind of anti-resistance. But actually, the reality is in-between. People are not anti-resistance, they just want to practically do things that will keep them on their land and relatively safe while also pushing back and hurting the enemy. Now, when October 7th happened a lot of people had the sense as if they broke out of prison. For that reason, a lot of people had hope that it would change the setup—that injected a lot of hope for people. But despite that—like support for clashing with the Israeli army—support for all of these things was low. People had hoped that there would be change, but they weren’t taking up arms and going, that’s not how it worked out.
Afterwards, when people started seeing full scale genocide on TV for months and months and months, that also was playing with the hope. When Trump says, “okay, we’re about to get the ceasefire and then we don’t,” and then “we’re about to, and then “we don’t,” people get exhausted. And then that also affected hop. Hope started going down, and down, and down. For a while people thought that this could be an avenue for change and now it’s looking more depressing than it used to.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
One of the most commonly quoted statistics from Palestinian public opinion polling was from around December ’23. Most of the international media outlets were quoting one public opinion poll that said that some 72% of Palestinians thought that Hamas was correct to launch the attack on October 7. Is this consistent with your research and data?
Zayne Abudaka:
I think this is a bad polling question—it’s a guiding question, a leading question. If I ask people, is armed resistance justified, as a yes or no question, most people will say “yes.” If I asked them, “what’s the best approach to liberate Palestine?,” a minority of people would say “armed resistance.” When you ask questions in a counter factual way, it’s as if someone—a Palestinian—was given a yes or no button and they had to decide. That’s not simulating reality, that’s not the real life situation. I think this is a bad question, and I think in many ways, it was cynically used by the media and by the Israelis to justify genocide. These are questions that we would never ask in this fashion.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
Regarding the questions that you will ask, can you tell us a bit more about your methodology and the way you approach Palestinian public opinion? What is new about the way that you are doing your research?
Zayne Abudaka:
When we started studying the Palestinian public, one of the main things that hit us was this black and white framing of Palestinians. I would say that intentionally or not, many even Palestinians have played into this.
For us, black and white is boring. We want more colors, we want more dimensions, we want more understanding. This is where we come at this from. We started also finding different ways to gauge people’s views, even where it’s difficult or prohibited, for example, like in the Gaza Strip. When the war first started, we didn’t poll in the Gaza Strip, we thought that it’s unethical that we ask people now—maybe they’re in a very bad situation—their answers might be misinterpreted or misconstrued. But because we have data collection teams in Gaza, and they were telling us, “other people are talking on our behalf and we also have a view.” We said, “okay, let’s try it out.”
The other thing is the selection of the questions—what are we asking about in the first place? Because we’re trying to understand the population, the way that we work is by looking at theoretical frameworks that have been developed internationally, but also potentially gaps in those frameworks where we think that studying Palestine could fill that gap.
The theoretical framework of hope: we started with this, testing this hypothesis that hope is about wish and expectation. In order for you to hope for something, you need to wish that it happens and also expect that it could happen. Because if you wish for something and it can’t happen, it’s a fantasy, not a hope. We started trying to analyze Palestinian desires from that framework: is this something that people are hoping for and expecting is possible?
And a lot of the time, for example, the answer as to why people weren’t super enthusiastic about the political solution before the war, was this: that they hoped for it, they wished it happened, but then they didn’t think it was possible.
Shatha Yaish:
I feel that a lot of people, from reporting in the West Bank, tell me that no one asks them what they really want and you disagree with that.
Zayne Abudaka:
Yeah, I think that a lot of people ask us what we want. There’s a lot of polling, there’s a lot of research on Palestinians. Because people have put us in a frame, they will only hear when we say things that are within that frame. If we say anything else, then they don’t want to listen to it.
I think that it’s not necessarily that people don’t ask us. It’s just they ask us, but they don’t listen to what we say back often. A great example is that poll that got picked up—we have polling and we see what gets picked up by the media and what doesn’t. So, “very low support for Hamas in Gaza gets picked up,” a very popular view on the media, everyone wants to cite us, and we become famous. All the other nuances, no one cares about—that’s the reality of the media, also.
Shatha Yaish:
So you’re polling in Gaza right now. What are people wishing for right now, other than to end the genocide?
Zayne Abudaka:
First of all, they want the genocide to end. And then people want their basic needs met. And people also want for this to lead them to some unification with the rest of the Palestinian population. People don’t want Hamas to rule Gaza—that’s very strong, they don’t want that. They didn’t like Hamas before the war, and they like it much less now. I think even the people who are more sympathetic to Hamas don’t see Hamas as a viable ruler of Gaza anymore, because they want to get out of this debacle. A lot of people support a Palestinian unity government, which is code word for PA but a bit more inclusive of Gaza. Or, the PA leadership, there’s a big support base for there.
People are at this stage willing to support pretty much any order that will stop the genocide and keep them in their place. This is why, for example, on the one or two-state solution, a majority of people in Gaza are willing to accept either. They just want a solution rather than a specific desire. Obviously, a two-state solution is much more favorable than one, but they’re both in the majority.
I’m going to tell you a bit about the reality of people in Gaza because that will make it clear why sometimes this question is very difficult to answer. Almost 90% of people don’t eat regularly. People start going into survival mode, and in survival mode, it’s like the law of the jungle, the strong eat the weak, if I can get food, I’ll eat, if my neighbor can’t, it’s not my problem anymore. People are desperate. That’s one thing.
The other thing is the lack of law and order. It’s a very, very big issue because it allows people who have weapons—gangs, stuff like this—to dominate, to steal, to take food, to do all of that. And in fact, this is a major issue. More than 80% of Gazans think that this aid diversion is a major issue. They do blame Hamas for it but most people blame Israel and gangs for it. There’s some sort of organized process to steal people’s food and all of this stuff. This also corrupts the soul of people.
Another thing is that there’s a huge number of households that are headed by women that weren’t like that before the war. These women, a lot of them were keeping a home, not going to get water, not doing all of these things. They are suffering much more than many, many other groups of people because they weren’t living in this situation before, this is the first time.
Also, we know now from our polling, multiple, that the percentage of families that get food from GHF is only 13%. I don’t know—if this was meant to feed Gaza, it’s really not feeding almost 90% of Gaza. I was reading this testimony, part of the stuff we’re collecting, about this guy who went with his brother to collect aid. He got a bag of flour and his brother got shot. So he had to decide, do I take the bag of flour or my brother? He decided on the bag of flour on the basis that he would come back to get his brother, and then he got back and he couldn’t find his brother. This is the kind of situation that people are in. It’s very hard to ask them about “who would you vote for” or “what you want politically” or any of this stuff. We still do, and honestly, it’s a testimony to the resilience of people in Gaza that they actually answer those questions. But there’s a lot of people without food, with all of this trauma around them, and they’re in delirium. It’s almost like nothing is real.
Shatha Yaish:
Your survey said that a lot of people in the West Bank believe that Gazans have superhuman powers. Do you think that aspect is a bit dehumanizing because you are projecting on people in Gaza superhuman abilities while they’re struggling to survive?
Zayne Abudaka:
I think that’s why we ask that question, because we get two different views from the West Bank and Gaza. So the people in the West Bank, they support the people in Gaza. They think of them as part of their nation. They’re really in support of them. Therefore, sometimes because of that, they might project onto them superpowers. A lot of complaints sometimes come from Gaza, exactly on this issue, like, “don’t make this rosy guys because we’re paying a price for this, this is not something we love to do—we’re also forced to do it.” I think when we created these frameworks we wanted to understand [the differences] within the Palestinians because West Bank Palestinians and Gaza Palestinians are separated. They don’t meet, most people don’t meet Palestinians from Gaza.
It’s very important that we do stuff to ensure that while we support them [Gazans] and are proud to have them be this resilient and strong we also don’t make them into some mythical creature. We’re all responsible for this. It’s not like Gaza’s gonna fight for the rest of Palestinians and Palestinians are gonna sit on the couch and wait, because that’s an important thing to notify Palestinians in the West Bank also not to do. This is a real issue between the West Bank and Gaza—I think it’s a consequence of a cut off, basically physical cut off, for years. Sometimes when Palestinians support a certain idea or a certain position, it’s not so clear that this is the better position. It’s almost irresponsible. It’s almost like, “I want this because it sounds good, it’s in line with my ideology, but I don’t really care what the consequences are because they’re not affecting me directly.” That is a way of life that we want not to promote among Palestinians. This is what we’re learning from it.
But again, we’re also learning that this is not necessarily the case for most—a lot of people, as I said in the beginning, they’re very, very affected by what happens in Gaza. They understand, because if you’re from Jenin refugee camp, you really understand. It’s not the same scale, but your kids have died, your relatives have been imprisoned, and so on. This is not only [the case in] one place, this is a lot of places in the West Bank. So just like the inner city people, maybe a bit well off will think, “yes I support fighting Israel until the last Gazan.” It’s a dynamic within Palestinian society—just like any society, you fight oppression forces from outside, but there’s also potentially toxic dynamics from inside.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
We tried in this conversation to understand more what people both in the West Bank and Gaza think, feel, and want. But the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza are about maybe 40% of the Palestinian people. What about the rest? The around 1.8 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, Palestinian refugees in neighboring Arab countries, Palestinians in the diaspora—are you able to measure or analyze their perspectives?
Zayne Abudaka:
We have some conversations, we have some testimonies, interviews, sometimes focus groups, but we don’t really have statistical rigor in this. But that does not mean that this should be the case—I think that this completes the conversation. From the West Bank and the Gaza side there is support for this kind of connection. They predominantly feel one with them, and that they want them to be part of Palestine. They want to be part of governance also. Again, this is not statistical evidence, but I also feel the same energy coming from the other way around.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
Now, Zayne, you are creating a trove of knowledge about the Palestinians, what they think, what they feel, what they want. How do you want this data to be used?
Zayne Abudaka:
The more you study the Palestinian population, you understand that Palestinians are more similar to other people anywhere than they are put on a pedestal to be. Sometimes people are afraid of the complexity, of the contradictions, of the differences between Palestinians—the diverging, sometimes not, opinions. But I think that only adds to the idea that Palestinians are just as fully human as a human can be. They are exactly like everybody else. Sometimes [it’s] sad that this is actually an aspiration because Palestinians are humans—it’s not an opinion thing, it’s a fact. However, unfortunately, a big part of fighting colonialism, a big part of fighting occupation, is the fight against dehumanization.
So I think the more we flesh out what Palestinians are the more human they look, and the more people can look at Palestine as a place to demonstrate how people can fight against oppression for so long, and hopefully eventually prevail. That’s the story that we hope to one day capture in its full extent.
Ghousoon Bisharat:
Thank you, Zayne. Thank you, Shatha. I think what I really learned from this discussion is that the discussion must continue and must be expanded to all Palestinians, wherever they are. So thank you again.
Shatha Yaish:
Thank you.
Zayne Abudaka:
Thank you guys for hosting.
[music]
Ghousoon Bisharat:
This episode was produced by Jennifer Cutler with help from the +972 editorial team.Make sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a review — it really helps new listeners find the show. Visit 972mag.com for in-depth reporting, analysis, and opinions from the ground in Israel-Palestine. And don’t forget to download the +972 app and subscribe to our newsletters.+972 Magazine is an independent, nonprofit media outlet home to Palestinian and Israeli journalists committed to equity, justice, and freedom of information. Now more than ever, independent media is essential. Please visit 972mag.com and click “Support Us” to become a member or make a one-time donation. Every contribution helps us continue to bring you reports and analysis from the ground — truthfully, critically, and without compromise. That’s it for the +972 Podcast. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
