Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

• Cautious optimism towards new Palestinian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayeh
• Support for the boycott of the US administration and rejection of the “deal of the century”
• Strong support for elections in Palestine and refusal to hold them without the Gaza Strip
• Democratic Assembly improves chances of the leftist parties in elections
• A large majority rejects land swaps, security control or customs union in future state

The majority of Palestinians polled, 82.8%, said it was important to hold Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections. Likewise, 86.9% said it was important to hold presidential elections. The poll showed that the public was split into those choosing between independent candidates and those choosing candidates from factions and parties, with 38.6% saying they would vote for independent candidates while 37.7% said they would vote for party or faction candidates. At the same time the majority of Palestinians, 86.6%, rejected holding elections without the Gaza Strip, opposed to 10.5% who said this was acceptable.

Leftist Coalition on the rise

If parliamentary (PLC) elections were held and the Palestinian Democratic Assembly, a coalition of leftist political parties established in late 2018, ran, they would receive 9.9% of the votes, while 34.8% said they would vote for Fatah and 12% for Hamas. 31.1% said they would not vote at all. If elections were held without the participation of the Democratic Assembly, 35.2% said they would vote for Fatah, 12.3% for Hamas, 2.8% for the PFLP and 1.6% for the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) while 31.3% said they would not vote at all.

Presidential elections: Marwan Barghouthi most prominent personality

If elections were held without President Mahmoud Abbas running, Marwan Barghouthi would win 12.6% of the votes, followed by Mohammed Dahlan at 8.1%, and Ismail Haniyeh at 6.3%. Meanwhile, over half of the respondents, 53.9%, said they did not know or they had no answer. The poll showed large discrepancies between electoral tendencies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. For example, the percentage of those who did not know who they would vote for in the West Bank was more than double of those in the Gaza Strip (69% compared to 31.7%) and the percentage of those who would vote for Isma’el Haniyeh in the West Bank was 2.9% as opposed to 11.3% in Gaza. Similarly, 1.1% of those polled in the West Bank said they would vote for Mohammed Dahlan as opposed to 18.4% in the Gaza Strip.

Low trust in fairness of elections

Palestinians expressed low levels of trust in the fairness of elections. Respondents were divided between 45.1% who believe that if elections were held, they would be unfair and 43.5% who said they would be fair.

Trust in the fairness of elections in the Gaza Strip was higher than in the West Bank. The percentage of those who believe elections would be fair was 51.1% in the Gaza Strip as opposed to 38.3% in the West Bank.

Conversely, the percentage of those polled who thought elections would be unfair was 50.2% in the West Bank, opposed to 37.5% in Gaza.

A large majority rejects land swaps, security control or customs union in future state

The majority of those polled, 78.4%, said they would not accept any Peace Agreement that included land swaps between Israel and the State of Palestine, opposed to 17.1% who said this would be acceptable. Furthermore, the majority of respondents, 83.9%, said they would not accept any future Peace Agreement that includes continued Israeli security control over parts of the Palestinian state, opposed to 12.4% who said this was acceptable. At the economic level, the majority of those polled, 72.1%, said they would not accept any future agreement that included a customs union between Israel and the Palestinian state. Almost two-thirds of respondents, 63.4%, said it was not acceptable for any future peace deal to include the integration of Palestinian refugees in neighboring Arab countries, while 32.3% said this was acceptable to them.

Support for national reconciliation

The majority of those polled 89.6%, said that national reconciliation was important or very important, opposed to 8.6% who said it was not important. Regarding the question which side was most responsible for the persisting division, the largest percentage, 32.2%, blamed both Hamas and Fatah together while 16.1% blamed Hamas alone and 8.8% blamed Fatah alone. 21.2% blamed Israel for the persisting division.

Mixed expectations of new Palestinian government

Around one-third of those polled, 35.6%, believe President Mahmoud Abbas’ commissioning of Dr. Mohammed Shtayeh to form the new government is a positive step, opposed to 10.9% who said it was negative and 40.6% who said it was neither positive nor negative. In comparison, 23.8% of respondents said they expected the performance of the Shtayeh government to be better than that of the Hamdallah government, while 10.8% said the opposite. Almost half of the Palestinian public, 49.7%, said there would be no difference between the performances of the two governments. Regarding the public’s expectations of the new government, 36.3% of respondents said that it should improve living conditions, 16.6% said they expected it to combat corruption, 16% said they expected government reforms and 15.3% expecting it to achieve national reconciliation.

Normalization and security coordination rejected by majority of Palestinians

The majority of those polled, 73.8%, opposed the establishment of diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, as opposed to 19% who said they supported this. Moreover, 60.6% said they opposed the continuation of security coordination between the PNA and Israel while 32.5% said they supported its continuation.

Palestinians support boycotting the United States

The poll showed that the majority of respondents, 59.3%, supported the continued boycott of the US administration by the Palestinian leadership, opposed to 30.3% who said they preferred the Palestinian leadership to be involved in diplomatic relations. If, however, the US announced its so-called “Deal of the Century”, about two-thirds of respondents, 65.3%, said they believe the Palestinian leadership should reject the plan, while 6.1% said they should accept it and 21.3% said they preferred that the Palestinian leadership negotiates over it.

Low trust in factions and personalities

Asked which political or religious faction Palestinians trust the most, 28.2% of respondents said they trusted Fatah most, followed by Hamas at 10.3%. The largest percentage, 41.1%, said they did not trust any political or religious faction. The poll also showed that 11.5% trust President Abbas the most, followed by Marwan Barghouthi with 8.4% and Isma’el Haniyeh at 6.3%, while those who said they do not trust any political or religious personality was 47.8%.

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A public opinion poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre (JMCC) in cooperation with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung showed the Palestinians’ pessimism towards the United States’ role in the peace process six months after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. The majority of respondents (79.3%) said Trump was not serious in his call for a resumption of the peace process while 11.9% said he was serious. Meanwhile, 42.9% said there was a decline in the Unites States’ dealings with the Middle East peace process while 42.8% said there had been no change compared to previous US Administrations.

Moreover, the majority of respondents, 54%, advised the Palestinian leadership to agree to a resumption of negotiations if Donald Trump calls for them, on the condition that settlement construction is halted, as opposed to 30.6% who said the Palestinian leadership should not participate.

Negotiations instead of military operations

The largest percentage of Palestinians, 54.2%, still supports the resumption of negotiations with Israel in principle, compared to 41.9%, who oppose resumption. Still, 35.6% of respondents said the peace process was dead and could not be revived, while 39.6% said the peace process was facing difficult conditions with an uncertain future. 19.7% said the peace process was still alive and could be resumed.

Meanwhile, the percentage of those who support the resumption of military operations against Israeli targets as an appropriate response under the current political conditions declined to 28.6% in this poll in comparison to 42.7% in October 2014 and 50.9% in December 2012.

Furthermore, the majority of respondents, 54.7%, continued to support the Arab Peace Initiative compared to 36.1% who opposed it and 9.2% who had no position on the issue.

Balfour Declaration

On the occasion of 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, 40.6% of respondents said Britain bears responsibility for the current Palestinian situation to a large extent, while19.6% said it bore responsibility to some extent and 30.4% who said it did not bear any responsibility at all.

Opposition to dissolving the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)

Despite a decline in the percentage of those who evaluate the performance of the PNA as good or very good, the majority of respondents oppose its dissolution. The percentage of those who evaluated the performance of the PNA as good dropped from 61.6% in November 2013 to 54.1% in September 2017. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who evaluated the performance of the PNA as being bad increased to 45.9% after it was 33.6% in November 2013. Nonetheless, the majority of respondents opposes the dissolution of the PNA and sees a necessity to maintain it, reaching 65.5% in this poll.

Trust in Factions

The poll showed an unprecedented increase in the percentage of those who do not trust any political faction, reaching 42.8%. It is noteworthy that the percentage is far higher in the West Bank (49.9%) compared to the Gaza Strip (30.9%).

The total percentage of trust in Fatah fell to 25% in this poll after being 33.1% in July, 2016. It should be noted that the percentage of trust in Fatah in the Gaza Strip, 34.7%, is higher than it is in the West Bank, at 19.2%. As for trust in Hamas, the percentage remained constant in this poll at 14.5% compared to 14.3% in July 2016. Yet, trust in Hamas in Gaza with 22.9% was considerably higher than it was in the West Bank with 9.5%. However, when asked who was responsible for the aggravation of the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip, the majority of respondents in the Gaza Strip, 51.6%, said it was the Hamas government in Gaza, while 16.9% of Gazans said it was Israel. Yet in the West Bank, a majority of 51.1 % said Israel was responsible with only 17.8% saying it was Hamas.

Increase in Marwan Barghouthi’s popularity

If general elections were held and current President Mahmoud Abbas would not run for office again the largest percentage of Palestinians, 26.1%, said they would vote for Marwan Barghouthi – 25.8% in the west bank and 26.7 % in Gaza- while 12.1% said they would vote for Ismail Haniyeh -9.3% in the West Bank and 16.7% in Gaza . Another 7.7 % said they would vote for Mohamad Dahlan -1.5% in the West Bank and 18% in Gaza-.

However, if presidential elections were held in which only Marwan Barghouthi and Ismail Haniyeh ran for office, about half of the respondents, 50.2%, said they would vote for Marwan Barghouthi while 19.5% would vote for Haniyeh. Moreover, if only Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh ran, 34.8% said they would vote for Abbas, while 27.0% would vote for Haniyeh.

Gender Equality in Palestine

The larger percentage of those polled, 47.5%, said that equality between women and men has improved over the past 10 years while 32.4% said it stayed the same and 16.8% said it had declined.

Police treatment towards women

Regarding battered women and those who report to the police, the majority, 59%, said they thought the police dealt with such cases appropriately, while 27% said they did not. Nonetheless, respondents were split regarding fair treatment of women. Around half of the respondents, 49.2%, said they thought the police adopted fair policies towards women while 47.1% said they did not. In general, almost two-thirds of the respondents, 63.5%, said they had confidence in the Palestinian police to a great or somewhat high extent, while 32% said they had confidence only to a small extent.

Ways of reducing domestic violence

Palestinians were divided over the best ways of reducing levels of domestic violence. 29.9% of respondents said the best solution was passing stricter laws, while 26.2% said it was by increasing the enforcement of current laws and 39.3% said the best way was to improve education and awareness with regards to women’s rights.

Majority considers religion an important part of their lives

A majority of Palestinians, 97.4%, still considers religion an important part of their lives, while 2.6% said it was not. Furthermore, 90.1% said they always performed prayers during the month of Ramadan, while 5.1% said they prayed only on Fridays. Moreover, the majority, 94.2%, said they fasted all or most of the month of Ramadan, while 4.8% said they did not fast at all or only for a few days. As for the Umra (pilgrimage), 28.1% said they had performed it, while 71.9% said they had not performed it or not performed it yet.

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A public opinion poll conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre (JMCC) in cooperation with Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung showed that the majority of Palestinians, 53.7%, have become more pessimistic regarding the possibility of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict after the election of new US President Donald Trump, as opposed to 4.7% who became more optimistic. In comparison, when Barack Obama was elected president in 2009, 28.1% of respondents were more optimistic while 18.9% more pessimistic. In addition, 48.5% said the election of Trump would decrease the chances of reaching a just peace between Palestinians and Israelis against 5.1% who said his election would increase the chances for peace between the two sides. When Obama was elected president in 2009, 35.4% believed his election would increase chances for peace as oppsosed to 11.5% who said the opposite.

As for the best response to a possible move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the largest percentage 23.4%, called for the cancellation of the Palestinian recognition of Israel while 19.7% said they supported a boycott of the US Embassy. 18.7% of the Palestinians polled answered that a complaint should be lodged against the United States at the UN and 16.5% supported an end to dealing with the United States as a sponsor of the peace process.

Preference for holding elections, although women more reluctant

For the first time, the poll separated the answers of Palestinian men and women to get a better idea of how opinions differ on important Palestinian issues. The poll showed there was an increase in the percentage of those who support elections under any circumstances from 37.6% in March of last year to 46.9% this February. The majority of these respondents, 55.9%, are from the Gaza Strip as opposed to 41.5% from the West Bank. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who said they would vote for Hamas decreased to 16.5% in this poll after being 20.2% in August, 2015. Furthermore, 40.4% said they would vote for Fatah in comparison to 41.1% in August, 2015. It is noteworthy that 31.1% of women who participated in the poll said they would not vote under any circumstances while 19.9% of men answered the same way.

If presidential elections took place and President Mahmoud Abbas did not run, Marwan Barghouti would be the preferred option of Palestinians with 14.6% of respondents voting in his favor, followed by Ismail Haniyeh with 9.1%.

In general, the biggest percentage of respondents, 35.4%, still said they trust Fatah the most among the Palestinian political and religious factions as opposed to 16.3% who trusted Hamas the most, followed by the PFLP with 3.8%. It is noteworthy that the percentage of men who trust Fatah is higher than that of women. Contrarily, the percentage of women who do not trust anyone is higher than men.

Discrepancies between men and women: reconciliation and political solutions

The poll showed a discrepancy between the opinions of men and women in regarding a number of pressing issues; for example, men were more pessimistic regarding reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas (19.2% expected it to be completed) as opposed to 24.2% of women. Furthermore, the larger percentage of women, 25.6%, blamed Israel the most for the persisting division – in contrast only 19.9% of Palestinian men blamed Israel.

In all cases, the percentage of those who support the binational (one-state) solution decreased from 21.3% in July of last year to 18.1% in this poll. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who believe the two-state formula is the preferred solution to the conflict increased from 43.7% in July of last year to 49.6%.

In regards to the best method for achieving the goals of the Palestinian people, there is an increase in the percentage of those who believe peaceful negotiations are the best method from 33.6% in March, 2015 to 37.6% this February, with the highest percentage of support among women, 39.1%% . Moreover, 19.3% of those polled blamed the persisting division on Hamas while 12% blamed it on Fatah; the percentage of those who blamed both Fatah and Hamas increased from 24.0% in August, 2015 to 39.2% this February.

Men and women: what about equality?

The largest percentage of those polled, 47.4% - with no notable difference between men and women – said that equality between men and women in our society had improved over the past 10 years. Still, 12.8% of respondents said the level of equality had declined. It should be noted that that a larger number of respondents from Gaza 19.6%, said equality had declined.

48.0% of respondents said the police adopt a fair policy towards women; the majority of these respondents, 52.5%, in the West Bank with 40.3% in Gaza. Moreover, the majority, 61.1% said they believed that police deal appropriately with battered women while 22.4% said they deal inappropriately with them. A much higher percentage of women in Gaza (33.6%) felt that the police deal inappropriately with battered women - in contrast, 15.6% of respondents in the West Bank felt the same way.

Differing attitudes of men and women on social and religious customs

The largest percentage of those polled, 42.5%, said they would support laws based on Islamic Sharia as opposed to 14.7% who said they should be based on Civil Law. The poll showed that women leaned more towards adopting laws based on Islamic Sharia, with 45.1% in support as opposed to 39.8% of men.

The majority of those polled, 83.8%, said they opposed the marriage of girls under the age of 18 while 16.1% said they supported it. Likewise, the majority of respondents, 69.3%, said they opposed multiple wives while 30,6% said they supported it. It should be noted that 42.4% of polled men said they supported multiple wives while 80.4% of women opposed it.

Furthermore, the majority of those polled, 64.6%, said they do not shake hands with the other sex, the majority of these being women. As to why, the majority of those polled, 84.1%, said they do not shake hands with the other sex for religious reasons while 14.7% said for social reasons pertaining to traditions and habits.

Affiliation and the Palestinian identity

When respondents were asked how they would define themselves in one word, more than half, 52.5%, said they were Palestinian, while the other half were divided between 21.7% who said they were Muslim, 5.3% who said Arab, 3.3% who said they defined themselves as Fatah. The majority of the remaining respondents said they did not know or did not have an answer. It should be mentioned that no discrepancies in responses were noted between Gaza Strip and West Bank residents or between men and women.

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