A Palestinian child. More than half of the Palestinians surveyed say they oppose a two-state solution. Photo: Palestine belongs to Palestinians/Facebook.

JNS.org – Fifty-one percent of Palestinians now oppose a two-state solution with Israel, according to the results of a survey conducted among 1,270 people in the West Bank and Gaza from Sept. 17-19 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

Though 48 percent do support two states, according to the poll released Monday, that figure is down from from 51 percent support and 48 percent opposition among Palestinians three months ago. In addition, 65 percent of those surveyed said they did not believe a two-state solution was practical given the existence of Israeli villages in Judea and Samaria.

The survey was conducted during a period of tension among Muslims and Jews with regards to the Temple Mount holy site, as well as the ongoing friction between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party and the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group.

“Additionally, the developments indicated in this poll might have also been triggered by anger at the Arab world as the overwhelming majority believes that Arabs no longer care about the fate of the Palestinians,” wrote the director of the poll, Khalil Shikaki, Reuters reported.

Sixty-five percent of respondents reported wanting Abbas to resign. If new elections were held in the Palestinian territories, 35 percent said they would vote for Hamas, and another 35 percent would vote for Fatah. The latter figure is down from 39 percent three months ago. Forty-two percent reported that armed action is the most effective way to establish a Palestinian state — up from 36 percent three months ago. Seventy-eight percent reported believing the chance of seeing a Palestinian state in the next five years as “slim to non-existent.”