Israel-Palestine Mega Fact Check!

There are undoubtedly some Palestinians today who voted for Hamas and supported a policy of aggression towards Israel. However, this argument makes several wrong assumptions:

1. That every single Palestinian in 2006 voted for Hamas—In reality, Hamas received only 44.5% of the vote in 2006 (Source: 2006 Palestinian legislative election - Wikipedia ), illustrating that 55.5% of people did not vote for Hamas.
2. That every single person who voted for Hamas did so because of Hamas’s policies: But as Harvard scholar Sara Roy has pointed out, many votes were cast not for Hamas but rather against the established rival party, Fatah, whom many at the time perceived as corrupt and inefficient.
3. That every single person who voted for Hamas did so because of Hamas’s stance towards Israel: However, many who voted for Hamas were voting for their promised social reform programs (the main component of their election platform), not for aggression against Israel.
4. That all Palestinians today voted in the 2006 elections. However, most of the Gazan population in 2023 wasn’t of voting age back in 2006 when Hamas was elected, with many not yet born.

It is therefore highly inaccurate to portray all Palestinians as having uniformly voted for Hamas or for a policy of aggression against Israel.