Half of the Palestinians want to emigrate from Gaza if they could, with 63% wanting a truce with Israel in exchange for lifting the blockade.

By i24news

Gaza residents are unhappy with Hamas regime and with its war with Israel last summer, a new Palestinian poll released Tuesday shows.

A Palestinian shepherd rides a donkey as he herds livestock past residential buildings, that witnesses said were heavily damaged by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war last summer, in Beit Lahiya town in the northern Gaza Strip May 25, 2015. – Photo: REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

According to The Associated Press the poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that 50 percent of Gaza residents want to emigrate, compared to 25 percent in the West Bank.

“Gaza is definitely showing tremendous frustration,” Shikaki said.

63 percent of the poll participants expressed dissatisfaction with “achievements compared to human and material losses” in the 2014 Gaza war that killed over 2,200 Palestinians and 73 people in Israel.

63 percent said they support launching rockets at Israel while a blockade is in place. The same number said they favor indirect talks between Hamas and Israel to negotiate a long-term truce in exchange for lifting the blockade.

NGOs condemn donors over slow Gaza reconstruction

Six months after donors pledged billions of dollars (euros) for devastated Gaza, most of the money remains blocked, and reconstruction efforts are painfully slow, a coalition of aid groups said last month.

The report also condemned the international community for failing to help open the blockaded Palestinian territories up to each other, to broker a lasting ceasefire with Israel and to hold the two sides accountable.

The report also condemned the international community for failing to help open the blockaded Palestinian territories up to each other, to broker a lasting ceasefire with Israel and to hold the two sides accountable.

“Without economic, social and political stability, a return to conflict — and the cycles of damage and donor-funded reconstruction that accompany it — is inevitable,” the coalition added.

Palestinian militants from the Ezzedine al-Qassam brigade, the armed wing of Hamas, carry mock-rockets at a rally at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Central Gaza Strip on December 12, 2014 – Photo: Said Khatib/AFP/File

According to the report, the war completely destroyed 12,400 houses and damaged over 160,000 homes.

The war displaced more than a quarter of Gaza’s population of 1.7 million and left 100,000 people homeless.

The report meanwhile urged Israel to allow Palestinians to freely move back and forth between the West Bank and Gaza, “in line with their obligations as an occupying power.”

View original i24news publication at: http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/74326-150609-poll-majority-of-gazans-are-dissatisfied-with-hamas-gaza-war