By Xinhua,
RAMALLAH : A 22-day Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip since Dec. 27, which left around 1,400 people killed and large destruction, has consolidated the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement, a poll said on Thursday.
The poll, conducted this week by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center (JMCC) shows that Hamas would get 28.6 percent of the vote if elections were held today.
It added that the rival Fatah faction of West-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would get 27.9 percent.
The survey marks for the first time that Hamas placed in front of Fatah, which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in June 2007.
Hamas, which ran for the first time in the 2006 parliamentary elections since it was founded in 1987, had angered the international Quartet and defeated its rival Fatah.
The JMCC poll, published on Thursday found out that Hamas has stronger support in the occupied West Bank, which is still ruled by Abbas, than it does in its own Gaza that Hamas rules.
In Gaza, the poll put Hamas at 28 percent against 33.6 percent for Abbas’s Fatah. In the West Bank, the poll gave Hamas 29 percent support against 24.5 percent for Fatah. The balance was shared by a countless of smaller parties.
The pollsters surveyed a sample of 1,198 people, 758 in the West Bank and 440 in Gaza. It gave a margin of error of 3 percent.
The poll also found that Hamas premier Ismail Haneya, who was deposed after his movement’s takeover of Gaza, is the most trusted Palestinian politician with 21.1 percent support, far ahead of the current President Abbas with 13.4 percent.
When the poll asked who won the war in the Gaza Strip, 53.3 percent of people in the West Bank said Hamas, compared with 35.2 percent in Gaza.