In a lengthy survey by Foreign Affairs, the magazine notes that in the weeks since Israel’s fragile ceasefire on January 19 and a prisoner exchange agreement with Hamas, the question of what should happen to the Gaza Strip and its 2.1 million residents has become increasingly clear. The war has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, its schools, hospitals, civilian infrastructure, and environment largely destroyed, and much of its population lacking adequate shelter.

The constant threat of the ceasefire collapsing has fueled daily fears of further destruction. Even as US President Donald Trump has floated fanciful ideas about the US eventually “taking over” Gaza and permanently transferring its population, outside powers have made little progress in formulating a governance and security strategy for the region now, and Gazans themselves are largely absent from this discussion. It is reasonable to assume that more than 15 months of devastating conflict have changed the perceptions of ordinary civilians in the region about what they want for their future, how they see their land, who they think should rule them, and what they see as the most likely paths to peace. Given the high price they paid for the October 7, 2023, “Al-Aqsa Intifada,” Gazans might have been expected to reject Hamas and favor a different leadership. Likewise, international observers might have expected that after so much hardship, Gazans would be more willing to compromise on greater political aspirations in favor of more pressing humanitarian needs.

“In fact, a survey we conducted in Gaza in early January 2025, shortly before the ceasefire went into effect, tells a more complex story,” the pollsters say.

The representative survey was developed by the research group Artis International and the Centre for Changing the Character of War at Oxford University and conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR). Using census data and samples of people in shelters based on their original home locations to ensure geographic diversity, the survey included 500 face-to-face interviews with Gazans—248 women and 252 men—aged between 18 and 83. The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points. The survey found that despite Hamas’s decline in popularity since the first months of the war, the movement’s current alternatives attract much less support than the movement, opening the way for Hamas to once again consolidate its influence over Gaza.

The war has also strengthened rather than weakened Gazans’ commitment to maximalist political goals, while eroding support for a two-state solution. Perhaps most strikingly, the survey shows that Gazans still hold strong core values related to their Palestinian and religious identity and connection to the land, values they intend to uphold even if doing so requires great personal sacrifice. As the United States and its regional and international partners confront the reality of postwar Gaza, the survey results may challenge the assumption that any move toward peace with Israel cannot satisfy—or at least symbolically recognize—some of these core values.

One of the survey’s key questions asked respondents which of the possible solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict they considered acceptable and realistic. Before the war in Gaza began, research showed that a clear majority of Palestinians in Gaza supported a two-state solution, while only 20 percent supported a military solution that would lead to the destruction of the State of Israel. In the January survey, less than half, or 48 percent, favored a two-state solution, while nearly the same proportion, 47 percent, favored dismantling the Jewish state. Only five percent saw the third alternative, a binational democratic state with equal rights for Arabs and Jews, as acceptable and realistic.

Moreover, although partition was acceptable and realistic to 48%, only 20% supported a two-state solution consistent with UN resolutions based on the 1967 borders. The remaining supporters of partition preferred a two-state solution that included either a “right of return” for descendants of Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel (17%) or a return to the 1947 UN partition plan (11%). Among the 47% who favored dismantling Israel, a clear majority chose a single state under Islamic law that would tolerate Jewish presence and allow Jews full rights (27%), followed by a smaller group that sought to transfer Jewish immigrants and their descendants—but not Jews whose ancestors lived in the area before Zionism—from Israel itself and the Palestinian territories (20%). The poll also showed how Gazans’ views on Hamas have changed. Prior to October 7, 2023, when the Gaza Strip was still intact, polls showed that popular support for Hamas had been declining for some time. The decline was the result of a variety of factors, including stagnant living conditions and a lack of movement on Hamas’s promise of armed resistance against Israel and toward the establishment of a Palestinian state. As Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Research and Policy Studies, has argued, the October 7 attack could be seen as an attempt by Hamas to break out of a politically unacceptable status quo.

During the first months of the war, Gazans’ attitudes toward Hamas improved. In March 2024, a poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Policy and Survey Research found that support for Hamas’s control of the Strip had risen to more than 50 percent, a 14-point increase from the period before the October 7, 2023 attack. At that time, most Gazans believed that Hamas would continue to control the Strip and was winning the war against Israel. But by January 2025, with the elimination of the group’s top leadership and further destruction of Gaza, that support had eroded again, the poll found.

The January 2025 poll found that Hamas retains the support of only a fifth of Gazans—a sharp decline from the March 2024 poll. Support for other political factions, including the PLO, was even lower, however. In fact, when Gazans were asked to choose between the current options for Palestinian leadership, the most common answer was that none of them truly represents the people. In fact, Gazans believe that the Israeli leadership does a much better job of representing Israelis than the Palestinian leadership does of representing Palestinians.

In short, the survey reveals a Palestinian leadership vacuum that Hamas, despite its decline, is rapidly filling. As some analysts have noted, the organization’s reassertion of authority has been aided by the absence of a viable alternative plan to Palestinian rule from Israel or the United States, and by the Trump administration’s talk of a proposal long championed by the Israeli far right: a population “transfer.” According to Khalil Shikaki, most Gazans do not believe Hamas won the war. “Yet they do not seem to see a better alternative,” he adds.

While the lack of strong support for Hamas may obscure a larger truth about the group’s role in Gaza, as the survey results suggest, despite Gazans’ perceptions of a crisis in Palestinian political leadership, a majority of the population remains committed to Hamas’s political principles, such as sharia as the law of the land, the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to homes they lost when Israel was created in 1948, and the pursuit of Palestinian national sovereignty.

As the January 2025 survey found, Gazans show a high degree of group identification as Palestinians, and many express a willingness to make costly personal sacrifices to achieve specific goals such as Islamic law as the law of the land, the right of refugees and their descendants to return to the homes they lost when Israel was created in 1948, and the pursuit of Palestinian national sovereignty. For each of these core values, the more costly sacrifices respondents were willing to make, the less willing they were to make peace with Israel. Respondents viewed Palestinians as much stronger spiritually than they were physically. This was the opposite of how they viewed Israel and the United States.

Gazans also show a clear tendency to view the conflict with Israel in religious rather than political terms, as a struggle to liberate Muslims from Jewish oppression. But Palestinian religious belief does not necessarily mean intolerance of other groups.

The survey found that for Gazans more broadly, the willingness to sacrifice themselves for shared goals so far in a brutal war strongly suggests that they are unlikely to abandon their struggle simply for personal and family security. This raises questions about the various international “day after” plans for Gaza, which seem to assume that providing personal safety and livelihoods—a cessation of hostilities coupled with the delivery of aid, tents and basic necessities—can stabilize the region even without Palestinian self-determination.

According to the poll, about half of respondents said they expected peace, 44% expected a long-term truce, and 7% expected more war. But among the roughly half of respondents who expected peace, two groups emerged roughly equal in size: those who expected peace as a negotiated outcome (24%) and those who expected peace to arise from the dissolution of Israel (25%). Respondents who expected a temporary truce or war believe that Israelis and Palestinians will not reach a lasting peace either because the required concessions are rejected by the opposing side or because they are too painful for one or both sides to contemplate.

The continued commitment of Gazans to the Palestinian cause may point to forms of compromise that have been ignored until now. For example, it is no secret that Hamas is committed to a sovereign Palestinian state, the right of return, and Islamic law—all of which would be achieved by eliminating Israel as a state. However, Hamas leaders have suggested in the past that they do not view a sovereign Palestine “from the river to the sea” and the dismantling of Israel as non-negotiable values. Studies conducted by the Foreign Affairs polling team between 2006 and 2013 suggested that the right of return, though considered sacred, could be reframed so that it remains non-negotiable in principle but negotiable in practice.

Such an understanding might require, for example, meaningful symbolic gestures from the other side, such as a sincere Israeli apology for the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and lands, Israel’s acceptance of the return of a limited number of refugees and their descendants, and some form of blood money, or financial compensation, to victims or heirs of victims of the Nakba, the mass displacement of Palestinians during the founding of Israel in 1948, as a form of historical reparations.

The poll concludes that after waging a 15-month “all-out war” on the Gaza Strip, Israel may be further away than ever from pacifying Gaza. This is not just because Israel has failed to offer anything resembling a political strategy or a plausible plan for the future of the Palestinians while radicalizing them in a quest for revenge for their killed relatives and lost homes. The poll shows that Gazans, by a large majority, believe their identity and place in the world are more at risk than ever, a sentiment that keeps them resilient and fighting.