Palestinian Arabs depressed - but not over "occupation"

Near East Consulting recently polled Palestinian Arabs on their attitudes, as they do every month.

A whopping 70% described themselves as "extremely depressed" or "depressed." So obviously they must be depressed over that insidious Israeli occupation, right?

Well, not quite:

Main issue that makes you feel concerned:

		Frequency	Percent	Valid Percent
	The economic hardship of my household	338	34.7	35.4
	The absence of security for me and my family	193	19.8	20.2
	The internal power struggle	216	22.2	22.6
	The Israeli occupation	76	7.8	8.0
	Family problems	48	4.9	5.0
	I have no concerns	83	8.5	8.7
	Total	954	97.8	100.0

There has always been a major disconnect between the attitudes of real Palestinian Arabs and those of the people who pretend to speak for them - often their power-hungry so-called leaders, but also people of Palestinian Arab descent who moved to the West and and gained positions in academia or other professions where they can trumpet their extreme anti-Israel opinions that are increasingly divorced from how real Palestinian Arabs think. (The same poll in August showed that only 2.6 percent mentioned the Israeli "occupation" as their major concern.)

This has been a consistent pattern over recent decades - the Palestinian Arabs who have enough ambition to get the hell away from the territories are the ones who claim that they can speak for those who have stayed. They live privileged lives in the West as they rail against the Western countries that treat them best. Above all, they are complicit in the crime that allows Arab countries to keep up their apartheid uniquely against Palestinian Arabs, not allowing them to become citizens like any other Arabs.

Not only are Palestinian Arabs being betrayed by their own elected leaders, but they are being kept in misery by their own cousins who left them behind and pretend to speak for them. Because of them, the amount of pressure on Palestinian Arab leaders to truly reform in minimal while they spin their wheels railing against Israel, who the real Palestinian Arabs do not seem to have nearly as much of a problem with.
(h/t IMRA)