Terrorists win Palestinian Arab popularity contest

The Israel Project commissioned a poll in the West Bank and Gaza last month surveying Palestinian Arab opinions about various topics.

The results are most enlightening.

This post is about one specific question:

Now, I'd like you to rate your feelings toward some people, countries, and organizations, with one hundred meaning a VERY WARM, FAVORABLE feeling; zero meaning a VERY COLD, UNFAVORABLE feeling; and fifty meaning not particularly warm or cold. You can use any number from zero to one hundred, the higher the number the more favorable your feelings are toward that person, country, or organization.

Here are the results, sorted from lowest score (coldest feelings) to the highest (warmest feelings), along with their respective mean scores:

Israelis 3.3 Israel 4 Benjamin Netanyahu 4.4 American Jews 7.8 Tony Blair 9.2 Barack Obama 10.7 The United States 14.5 Hillary Clinton 15.2 A one-state solution 28.7 Two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state and Israel as a Jewish state 30.2 Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 40 Iran 40.4 Two-state solution 41.3 Hamas 42.6 The peace process 42.6 Ismail Haniyeh 44.1 Hezbollah 44.6 Palestinian Authority 54.2 Salam Fayyad 54.5 Mahmoud Abbas 57 Fatah 57.6 Marwan Bargouti 64.5 Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir ("Abu Jihad") 71.2 Dalal Mughrabi 74.5

By far, the winners of the popularity context (at least that were named) were three terrorists, and the top one could not credibly be called anything but a terrorist (the other two at least had some political activities outside of terrorism.)

And for some reason Barack Obama, the most pro-Palestinian Arab president in history, hasn't seemed to have gained much for his efforts at least in this part of the Arab world. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad trounces him in popularity among the moderate, pragmatic, peace-loving Palestinian Arabs.

More analysis form this poll to come.

(h/t JoeSettler)