West Bank Palestinian opinion on Israel’s right to exist is sharply divided, with 46% of respondents saying Israel has no right to exist against 41% who say it does, according to a survey by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University.
The INSS Special Survey on Palestinian Public Opinion in the West Bank also found that 42% of respondents believe it would be possible to bring about the end of Israel’s existence, either in the near or distant future. Conversely, 32% consider ending Israel’s existence impossible.
No Political Framework Commands Majority Support
On preferred political outcomes, West Bank Palestinian opinion is similarly fragmented. Twenty-seven per cent of respondents favour a two-state solution, while 22% support a single binational state with full equal rights for both peoples.
A further 26% favour a Palestinian state encompassing all of what they regard as historic Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, with no permanent Jewish presence. Seventeen per cent support a Palestinian state across that same territory in which Jews would be permitted to live as citizens or residents.
Crucially, 44% of respondents gave no support to the two-state solution or either of its stated alternatives, according to the INSS Special Survey on Palestinian Public Opinion in the West Bank. No proposed framework reached a majority.
The results mark a pronounced shift from an earlier INSS survey conducted during the immediate aftermath of the October 2023 conflict. That earlier poll, the INSS Swords of Iron Survey on Palestinian Public Opinion, found 52% of West Bank Palestinians backed a two-state solution as their preferred political outcome, with 28% supporting a single Palestinian state without Jews and 16% a single binational state. The more recent survey, which supersedes those figures, puts two-state support at 27%, less than half the earlier reading.
West Bank Palestinian Opinion in a Broader Regional Context
The INSS findings sit alongside data from a separate joint Israeli-Palestinian survey conducted by Tel Aviv University in September 2024. That poll found that 89% of Palestinians and 87% of Israeli Jews each regard themselves as the rightful owners of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, according to the Tel Aviv University Peace Index, Israeli-Palestinian Pulse, September 2024.
The same September 2024 Pulse survey recorded the highest level of Israeli Jewish support for West Bank annexation without equal rights for Palestinians since the series began in June 2016, with 42% of Israeli Jews backing that position. Support for a one-state solution with equal rights stood at 25% among Palestinians, 14% among Israeli Jews, and 49% among Israeli Arabs.
Taken together, the surveys present a picture in which the populations directly involved in the conflict are, in substantial majorities, attached to competing and mutually exclusive territorial claims, while support for negotiated compromise has contracted sharply on the Palestinian side since the onset of the current conflict.
What the Numbers Mean for Any Peace Process
The data matters for any government or institution attempting to design a viable political process. If fewer than three in ten West Bank Palestinians back a two-state framework, the conventional basis of international diplomacy on the conflict, that framework requires either a dramatic shift in Palestinian public opinion or a process that can succeed without it.
The 26% who favour a Palestinian state stretching across the entire territory between the river and the sea, with no permanent Jewish presence, and the 17% who would permit Jews to remain as citizens or residents, together represent 43% of respondents opting for a single-state outcome under Palestinian sovereignty. Neither variant is compatible with the continued existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.
The i24 News report on the INSS survey confirmed that no political solution in the poll attracted majority backing, a finding consistent across all the demographic breakdowns the survey covered.
With the gap between the two-state results in the Swords of Iron survey and the more recent INSS poll spanning 25 percentage points, the trajectory of West Bank Palestinian opinion since October 2023 will be the figure to watch in any subsequent polling cycle.
