Popular Support for Hamas Essay

The work of Dr. Shikaki and that of PSR is considered unbiased and reliable. The author has intimate knowledge from his time as a policy director at The White House and as the head of a conflict research firm that Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, The White House, 10 Downing Street, the Kremlin, the Knesset, the European Union, the United Nations and the Arab League use PSR's survey work.4 This is mentioned only to further establish the credentials of Dr. Shikaki and PSR since the thesis relies heavily on their survey results from 1993 to 2013. The only public criticism of the survey work of PSR is that it underestimated Hamas Support in the 2006 elections. This critique is incorrect because the data from the polling indicated rising Hamas Support, still slightly less than Fatah going into the January 2006 election. What the data does not show is that Fatah ran multiple candidates in some districts competing with only one candidate from Hamas. Consequently, Fatah's vote became split, while Hamas supporters' votes were consolidated behind only one candidate. The author even witnessed a senior Hamas official arguing with Dr. Shikaki for nearly 30 minutes on the reliability of PSR's polling and the popular support measures only to concede to Dr. Shikaki that PSR polling was good.
In the roughly 114 surveys there were nearly 8,000 questions. These surveys and questions were reviewed and analysed many times. It took months. After understanding
4 Further evidence to the credibility of PSR has been observed while conducting this research during consultations and interviews with White House staff, the UK Stabilization Unit, Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
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what data was available, a database was constructed using answers to select questions that were continually asked in the surveys over 20 years. The popular support measures compiled for the thesis were
1. Popular Support for Hamas and all other Palestinian political parties
2. Support for Violence against Israeli targets
3. Religiosity
4. Support for Peace Process
5. Willingness to recognise Israel
6. Perceptions about the Safety of Family
7. Support for a Palestinian State Along 1967 Borders
8. Support for specific high profile attacks against Israeli targets
9. Support for Islamists
10. Perceptions about corruption in the West Bank and Gaza
11. Support for the Right of Return
12. Definition of Resistance as violent or not and
13. Support for the act of recognising Israel.
For each measure, the data collected was divided into three categories Total, West Bank and Gaza. Not all questions were asked on all surveys and at times questions varied slightly. These variations are described in Chapter 3 discussion because some changes required managing statistical analyses in such a way as to maintain data and statistical integrity. Further, when variations were identified, they were discussed with Dr. Shikaki to understand the intent behind the change of language. Some support measures had too much variation to provide significance and were therefore discarded. All totaled, there were approximately 6,000 data points captured from these surveys.