More than 50% of Palestinians believe Hamas should govern the Gaza Strip when the current war ends, while just 11% want Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to administer the enclave, a survey by a leading Palestinian polling institute has found. The findings were published on Wednesday by the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research (PCPSR) in Ramallah and done in cooperation with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), as international alarm grows over the spiralling Palestinian civilian death toll in the Israeli offensive against Hamas, now in its sixth month. According to the survey, which was carried out between 5-10 March and sampled some 1,580 Palestinian adults in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, 70% of respondents said they were satisfied with the role Hamas has played during the course of the war, with 61% also approving of the role played by its Gaza-based leader, Yahya Sinwar. Fifty-nine percent of the respondents in Gaza and the occupied West Bank said they wanted Hamas to run post-war Gaza, a five percent drop from PCPSR and KAS's last poll in December. Another 13% said they hoped the PA would return to control the Strip but only under the leadership of someone other than Abbas. The 88-year-old has seen his popularity plummet in recent years over failures to advance Palestinian hopes for statehood and his reluctance to mend ties with Hamas. There have also been no substantive peace negotiations with Israel in more than a decade, and the PA is widely seen as having become increasingly corrupt and autocratic. Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005, has not named a successor. The survey also found that 71% of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank believed that the attack on southern Israel on 7 October was “correct”, a drop of just one percent, according to the organisation’s previous poll published in December. Israeli forces have killed nearly 32,000 Palestinians since 7 October, including at least 13,000 children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. - @middleeasteye