In September 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled a peace plan to end the war in Gaza, vowing it would not only rebuild the devastated territory but also usher in “eternal peace in the Middle East.” A year later, the plan has stalled. Hamas has not disarmed. Israel still controls more than 60 percent of the strip. A promised technocratic government and international security force has not materialized, and large-scale reconstruction has barely begun; most Gazans still struggle to obtain food, water, and shelter. And as Israel’s October election approaches, the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has hardened his position, rejecting a U.S.-backed disarmament deal. Although the 25-country Board of Peace—the mechanism Trump established to implement his peace plan—did announce a more detailed reconstruction program this week, high-level officials have told the Times of Israel and other outlets that the group has stopped pressuring Netanyahu to comply with the plan because of the upcoming vote.

This hard-line stance appeals to the majority of Israelis, who do not think that Palestinians are interested in negotiations or diplomacy. Surveys have repeatedly shown that Israelis overwhelmingly believe Palestinians do not want peace at all and, therefore, that Israel has no real negotiating partner. In July of this year, for instance, a Tel Aviv University poll asked Jewish Israelis what they think Palestinians want. Seventy-two percent said they believed Palestinians were “moderately or very opposed” to any peace negotiations, and over 80 percent said they believed Palestinians thought no peace with Israel was achievable.

But this perception completely distorts what most Palestinians believe and are prepared to accept. For two decades, Arab Barometer, a survey project that we help run, has carried out comprehensive polls of Palestinian public opinion in both the West Bank and Gaza. Our most recent broad survey, conducted in October 2025, showed that a majority of Palestinians regard diplomatic negotiations, not armed resistance, as the best way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for good; conditions on the ground have not changed in a way that would meaningfully modify these findings, and they are backed up by questions asked this August by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), an Arab Barometer partner.

In fact, many Palestinians have a clear and realistic vision for the future. Far more of them support a two-state option than any other potential resolution. And Gazans, despite having borne the brunt of destruction over the past three years, tend to be the most pragmatic: an even greater proportion of them are open to a two-state solution than are Palestinians living in the West Bank, and half of Gazans would back Arab states’ normalization of diplomatic ties with Israel as long as the process includes tangible progress toward Palestinian self-determination. Palestinians’ confidence in both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) has also deeply eroded; they judge that neither faction has secured their safety or improved their lives, and they want political renewal. Strikingly, most Gazans express a wish to stay and help rebuild their devastated homeland rather than emigrate.

Gaza’s immediate situation is bleak. The conditions for Palestinians living in the West Bank are deteriorating rapidly. The status quo is not sustainable, despite there being no clear end to conflict in sight. But Palestinians’ own views offer glimmers of hope. Israelis have a chance to choose a new government more committed to negotiation. If such a government and international donors were to pursue a transition that treats Palestinian statehood as a central part of negotiations and recognizes Gazans’ desire for security and legitimate governance, Gazans are ready to compromise, as are many Palestinians in the West Bank. They are willing to work toward a new political order, but it must be just that: new.

Last October’s Arab Barometer survey revealed just how desperate conditions had become in both Gaza and the West Bank—a security, economic, and humanitarian crisis that has not improved meaningfully since then. The survey polled 855 people in Gaza face-to-face in the respondents’ homes, shelters, or camps, and 800 in the West Bank face-to-face in the respondents’ homes. It began the same day that a formal cease-fire in Gaza was announced, providing a broad picture of the conditions confronting the strip’s rebuilding. Because of the survey’s timing, some questions that were asked in the West Bank and other countries across the Middle East (such as queries about domestic politics and social relations) were not asked in Gaza to make room for questions that would bring to light Gazans’ immediate needs. Since the 2025 Arab Barometer poll, no similar survey has been done to capture Gaza’s humanitarian situation; given the limited aid that has been allowed to enter Gaza and the Board of Peace’s failure to make real progress past the cease-fire’s first phase, the scale of the challenge remains largely unchanged.

In our survey, 85 percent of Gazans indicated that they had been displaced at least once since early October 2023. Among those who had been displaced, 70 percent had been uprooted three or more times. Sixty-one percent of Gazans said that a member of their household had lost employment as a result of the war, and under........

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