According to the most recent polls, more Palestinians would prefer to be ruled by Hamas than by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party. But perhaps the more interesting datum is that 44 percent of those surveyed do not think either group “best represents the Palestinian interest.” Shaul Bartal assesses the situation:

The largest party in Palestinian politics is an assortment of new local organizations such as the Lion’s Den and local battalions in Nablus, Jenin, and elsewhere in the West Bank. These local organizations do not see themselves as committed to a specific organization. What unites them is the war against Israel.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is seen in the eyes of a large part of the Palestinian public as a corrupt governmental authority that colludes with Israel. The way to gain legitimacy among the public is through struggle and resistance. A whopping 58 percent of the public support a return to an armed intifada. [Therefore], it is little wonder that support for a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians is at an unprecedented low, with 74 percent of the Palestinian public believing the two-state solution is no longer a relevant option.

What is relevant? Violent resistance. Hamas is increasing its pressure on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. . . . At this stage, it appears that Hamas’s game plan is to destabilize the West Bank through increased violence, increase its popularity in that area in the process, and subsequently take control of the PA’s power centers. The continuation of this explosive situation may well lead to the disintegration of the PA and a different government situation that Israel will have to deal with in the West Bank.

While roughly a third of Saudis are willing to cooperate with the Jewish state in matters of technology and commerce, far fewer are willing to allow Israeli teams to compete within the kingdom—let alone support diplomatic normalization. These are just a few results of a recent, detailed, and professional opinion survey—a rarity in Saudi Arabia—that has much bearing on current negotiations involving Washington, Jerusalem, and Riyadh. David Pollock notes some others:

When asked about possible factors “in considering whether or not Saudi Arabia should establish official relations with Israel,” the Saudi public opts first for an Islamic—rather than a specifically Saudi—agenda: almost half (46 percent) say it would be “important” to obtain “new Israeli guarantees of Muslim rights at al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Haram al-Sharif [i.e., the Temple Mount] in Jerusalem.” Prioritizing this issue is significantly more popular than any other option offered. . . .

This popular focus on religion is in line with responses to other controversial questions in the survey. Exactly the same percentage, for example, feel “strongly” that “our country should cut off all relations with any other country where anybody hurts the Quran.”

By comparison, Palestinian aspirations come in second place in Saudi popular perceptions of a deal with Israel. Thirty-six percent of the Saudi public say it would be “important” to obtain “new steps toward political rights and better economic opportunities for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.” Far behind these drivers in popular attitudes, surprisingly, are hypothetical American contributions to a Saudi-Israel deal—even though these have reportedly been under heavy discussion at the official level in recent months.

Therefore, based on this analysis of these new survey findings, all three governments involved in a possible trilateral U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal would be well advised to pay at least as much attention to its religious dimension as to its political, security, and economic ones.