The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research recorded 44% support against 50% opposition on a bare two-state item, interviewing 1,270 people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip between 5 and 8 August 2026. A month later the Palestinian Presidency stated a commitment to a State of Palestine on the June 4, 1967 lines living alongside the State of Israel. This report separates the two records: an official position put in dated, quotable terms, and a measured public that does not track it.
Key Findings
- The PLO Executive Committee stated on 1 August 2026, as WAFA reported, that a Gaza agreement should lead to a Palestinian state “on the June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
- The Palestinian Presidency added the reciprocal half on 8 September 2026, stating a State of Palestine “living in security and peace alongside the State of Israel,” as WAFA reported.
- The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research recorded 44% support and 50% opposition on the bare item, and 58% calling the solution no longer practical (n = 1,270, August 2026, error 3.5%).
- The Palestine/Israel Pulse, run by that centre with Tel Aviv University, recorded 33% support among Palestinians and 34% among Israeli Jews in December 2022, its lowest since 2016.
- The Security Council recorded 13 votes to none with 2 abstentions on Resolution 2803, whose route to Palestinian statehood is conditional and expires on 31 December 2027.
What did the PLO Executive Committee state in August 2026?
The PLO Executive Committee stated the position in one sentence on 1 August 2026. As WAFA, the Palestinian news agency, reported it, the Committee affirmed that a Gaza agreement should begin a process “guaranteeing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination through the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on the two-state solution and relevant international resolutions.”
Three things in that formulation are checkable. It names a line, the June 4, 1967 borders. It names a capital, East Jerusalem. And it stops there: the sentence carries no reciprocal undertaking toward another state, and does not mention Israel. Whether that silence is drafting or position is not something the item settles.
The Executive Committee is the executive organ of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the meeting was chaired by the Vice President. The same item welcomed the second-phase agreement on the Gaza ceasefire, the context in which the two-state sentence was produced.
What reaches a reader is reported speech, not released text. WAFA writes in the third person, “It affirmed that,” and no English text of the statement as issued sits on any Palestinian government site. The citable fact is therefore that the agency reported the Committee affirming these words on that date, which is narrower than quoting a document. The agency’s own adjectives, “colonial settlement” and “occupation forces,” belong to it and to the speaker it relays.
Does the Presidency’s wording name Israel as well?
The Palestinian Presidency named both states on 8 September 2026, and that is the citable difference between the two bodies. As WAFA reported, the Presidency reaffirmed a commitment to “an independent, sovereign, and viable State of Palestine along the June 4, 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living in security and peace alongside the State of Israel.”
The line and the capital are identical to the Executive Committee’s. What the Presidency adds is the second state, named, and a description of the relationship between them. It answered a joint statement issued by the foreign ministers of twelve separate countries.
The two bodies are not one body. The Executive Committee is the executive organ of the Palestine Liberation Organization; the Presidency is the office of the head of the Palestinian Authority and of the State of Palestine. Memberships overlap and both name the same line, but the reciprocal clause appears in one and not the other.
Pairing the two claims in one sentence is not new. The Durban Declaration, adopted by the World Conference against Racism in September 2001, states at paragraph 63 of the Declaration that it recognises “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State” and, in the same breath, “the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel.” That instrument is also where a common attribution goes wrong: the adopted Declaration contains the word “Zionism” nowhere.
Which line does the PLO’s own position paper define as the border?
The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department states that it is “the 1949 Armistice Line along with all legal modification thereto up to June 4th 1967,” which its standing position paper calls “the internationally-recognized border between Israel and the occupied State of Palestine.” The page records the organisation’s own negotiating position, last revised on 27 March 2019.
That is the definitional content behind the phrase both 2026 statements use. “The June 4, 1967 borders” is not self-explanatory, and the department states what the PLO takes it to mean: the 1949 armistice line as modified by agreement up to the eve of the 1967 war.
The same page states a position on adjustments. Israel, it says, “has no valid claim to any part of the West Bank or Gaza Strip,” but “in the interest of peace, we have been willing to discuss minor, equitable, and mutually-agreed territorial exchanges and border modifications should we decide that it is in our interest to do so.” Land swaps sit inside the stated position, bounded by three adjectives.
Two limits bind this source. It is a negotiating party’s own published position, establishing what the PLO says it holds and nothing about conduct or merits. And the page carries no references, so no figure printed on it is citable: not its share of mandate Palestine, not its settler count, not its land percentages. It dates the compromise to 1988, which is the PLO describing what the PLO did.
Do Palestinians themselves support a two-state solution?
44% support and 50% oppose, on an item the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research put to respondents “without providing any additional details about it” (n = 1,270, fieldwork 5 to 8 August 2026, margin of error 3.5% on the whole sample). The centre recorded support almost identical in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Ten months earlier the same question returned 45%, so the bare support figure has barely moved. The two shares do not sum to 100 and are not meant to: about 6% gave neither answer, and no pair in this survey partitions the sample.
The Survey Research centre is an independent Palestinian organisation in Ramallah publishing its own sample, method and bound, which makes a poll citable. It reported interviews conducted face to face in 83 residential localities in the West Bank and 44 in the Gaza Strip.
The published margin of error covers the whole sample only. Every regional figure here carries a wider bound than 3.5%, and none is published for the subsamples, so a West Bank and Gaza difference of a few points cannot be tested from the page.
The Gaza fieldwork carries a condition the centre states itself. Interviewing was confined to areas without an Israeli military presence, and interviews with residents of areas under military occupation were conducted in shelters. That is not a free probability sample of the Strip, and the condition belongs with the Gaza figures wherever they are used.
Why does the same survey also report 56%?
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research asked it twice, two different ways. 56% chose “the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders” when the centre offered a three-way menu, against 44% on the bare support-or-oppose item in the same field period. The distance between the two readings is question form, not a change of mind.
The menu is a genuine partition. Alongside the 56%, the centre recorded 14% preferring a confederation between the two states, 10% a single state with equal rights for both sides, and 20% who did not know or declined to answer.
On the menu question the previous wave, in October 2025, put the 1967-borders option below half at 47%, so this reading rose while the bare item fell by a point. Two instruments in one survey pointing opposite ways across one interval is a property of wording, and it is why a single headline share summarises a public badly.
The regional split on this question is not like for like, and the reason is non-response. In the West Bank the centre recorded the three named options at 52%, 9% and 10%, leaving about 29% unanswered; in the Gaza Strip it recorded 61%, 22% and 10%, leaving about 7%. The nine-point Gaza lead therefore sits on a twenty-two-point gap in who answered at all, and reading it as a straight difference in preference ignores the larger difference underneath it. The menu supports a comparison between options, not between territories.
58% of Palestinians say the solution is no longer practical
58% say the two-state solution “is no longer practical because of settlement expansion,” against 36% who say it remains practical, as the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research recorded in August 2026 (n = 1,270, margin of error 3.5%). That is the item this survey puts closest to the question the governing bodies answer.
Ten months earlier the same pair read 56% and 41%, so both halves moved in the same direction by modest amounts. Practicality and support are not one measurement: a respondent can favour the framework and doubt it will happen, and on this instrument many do.
The centre put a harder question alongside it. 64% say the chances of establishing an independent Palestinian state within the next five years are low or nonexistent, against 32% who put them at medium or high. That is a two-to-one expectation of failure inside a public a bare plurality of which opposes the framework outright.
Neither pair sums to 100, and the residuals differ: about 6% gave no answer on practicality and about 4% on the five-year question. The clause inside the question matters as much as the share it returns. Respondents were asked not whether the framework is practical but whether it is practical “because of settlement expansion,” with the cause named inside the item. The 58% therefore measures agreement with a proposition that already carries its own explanation, which is a narrower object than a general judgment of feasibility.
What do Palestinians say they would move to instead?
33% supported “abandoning the two-state solution in favor of a single state for Palestinians and Israelis,” against 27% ten months earlier, as the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research recorded in August 2026. The movement is in willingness to abandon the framework, and the same survey does not carry it into a settled alternative.
It is often said that a Palestinian public losing faith in partition has moved to supporting one state. What the evidence shows is that the two propositions are measured separately and return different numbers. The abandonment item draws 33%; the forced-choice menu in the same field period puts 10% behind a single state with equal rights and 14% behind a confederation, with 20% answering neither.
That distinction is what a headline framing loses. A third will endorse leaving the framework when the question offers leaving as the proposition. A tenth will choose the single state when the question makes them pick a destination. The gap is not a contradiction in the public; it is what happens when a question asks about exit rather than about arrival.
The no-answer share is the quietest figure in the set and among the largest. One in five declined the menu, a higher share than chose either named alternative, and in the West Bank the unanswered share runs near 29%. None of this speaks to what would follow: the Survey Research centre measures stated preference at one moment, not a prediction of anything.
When were both publics last asked the same question?
In December 2022 fieldwork, the last joint wave the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research has published with Tel Aviv University. The Joint Poll recorded 33% support among Palestinians and 34% among Israeli Jews for the general concept of a two-state solution, the lowest level for both since the Palestine/Israel Pulse began in June 2016.
Among Israeli Arabs the same poll recorded 60% support, bringing the total Israeli average to 39%. Two years earlier the two headline figures had stood at 43% and 42%, so the Palestinian reading fell ten points across that interval and the Israeli Jewish reading fell eight, each arriving at the lowest the Joint Poll has recorded.
Two further readings bear on viability directly. The Joint Poll recorded 70% of Palestinians judging the solution no longer viable against 27% judging it viable, and it states that “among Israeli Jews, however, support for one unequal state under Israeli rule is higher than the two-state solution,” a ranking rather than a share.
The series has published no later joint wave. Its index records waves in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020 and this one and nothing after, so no current reading exists in which both publics answered the same question on one instrument. That is why the 33% here and the 44% above are not two points on one line: different frames, since this Palestinian sample includes East Jerusalem and the quarterly sample does not, different modes, and different wording.
Does the endorsed plan set a route to Palestinian statehood?
The Security Council recorded 13 votes to none with 2 abstentions on 17 November 2025, adopting Resolution 2803 and endorsing a Comprehensive Plan that opens a pathway to Palestinian self-determination once a Palestinian Authority reform programme is carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced. The authorization it creates runs until 31 December 2027.
The two texts inside that document do not say it the same way. The annexed Plan opens its point 19 with “While Gaza re-development advances and when the PA reform program is faithfully carried out,” and closes it by recognising Palestinian statehood as “the aspiration of the Palestinian people.” The Council’s own paragraph reverses that to “After the PA reform program is faithfully carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced,” and drops the closing clause. A simultaneous condition in one text is a prerequisite in the other.
The verbatim record of the Council’s 10046th meeting documents who voted how: China and the Russian Federation abstained.
Verification is thinner than the framework. The only report the instrument requires is a six-monthly progress report from the Board of Peace, the transitional administration the resolution created, and the Board of Peace reported on 15 May 2026 on its own implementation. It states that ceasefire violations occur “on a near daily basis, some of which are serious,” with no total, no rate and no attribution, and records that the monitoring force had not deployed. A route exists on paper, the instrument states it two ways, and the body reporting on it is the body implementing it.
Methodology
This report draws on four kinds of source. First, primary instruments: Security Council Resolution 2803 with its annexed Comprehensive Plan, the recorded vote in the verbatim record of the 10046th meeting, and the Durban Declaration adopted by the World Conference against Racism in 2001. Second, a party’s own published positions: two dated 2026 statements by the PLO Executive Committee and the Palestinian Presidency, and the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department’s position paper. Third, two surveys by named organisations. Fourth, the report the Board of Peace filed on itself.
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research published Poll No. 97 from fieldwork of 5 to 8 August 2026, with 830 respondents in 83 West Bank localities and 440 in 44 Gaza localities, and an error of 3.5% on the whole sample. Two limits are the centre’s own: the frame excludes East Jerusalem, and Gaza interviewing was confined to areas without an Israeli military presence, shelter interviews standing in for areas under occupation. The Palestine/Israel Pulse is a separate instrument, its Israeli half collected online from a designed composition, so no figure here shares a line with a quarterly reading. Both WAFA items are reported speech, and no figure printed on the Negotiations Affairs Department page is used.
Conclusion
The PLO Executive Committee and the Palestinian Presidency state a position, and the public they speak for is a different object. On one side sit three dated documents saying nearly the same thing: a state on the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital, on a line the PLO’s own paper defines.
On the other sits a public that was asked and answered. A bare plurality opposes the framework when the question offers nothing else; a clear majority chooses it when the question names alternatives; a larger majority says settlement expansion has made it impractical; two-thirds expect no state within five years; and a third would abandon it. The last time anyone asked both publics the same question, a third of each said yes.
Whether the Palestinian Authority supports a two-state solution is the easy half, and the record answers it plainly on the dates and in the words above. The harder half is what a negotiating position is for once the population it is stated on behalf of has largely stopped expecting it. If a framework survives in the instruments while draining out of the people who would have to live inside it, what exactly is being negotiated, and with whom?
Frequently Asked Questions
Who speaks for the Palestinian side here?
Three bodies, and they are not interchangeable. The PLO Executive Committee is the executive organ of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Presidency is the office of the President of the Palestinian Authority, and the Negotiations Affairs Department publishes PLO positions.
Why do two shares from one survey disagree?
Because they are two questions. A bare support-or-oppose item returned 44%, while a menu naming three frameworks returned 56% for the 1967-borders option. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research published both.
How large is the Palestinian survey?
1,270 respondents, 830 in the West Bank and 440 in the Gaza Strip, interviewed face to face from 5 to 8 August 2026, with an error of 3.5% on the whole sample. The frame excludes East Jerusalem.
Is there a current reading of both publics at once?
No. The Palestine/Israel Pulse has published no wave since December 2022, so comparing the two publics in 2026 means comparing separate surveys by different houses.
What does “the June 4, 1967 borders” mean here?
The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department states that it is the 1949 Armistice Line with all legal modifications up to 4 June 1967, and records a willingness to discuss “mutually-agreed territorial exchanges.”
Does the Security Council framework recognise a Palestinian state?
Not as an operative act. Resolution 2803 endorses a plan opening a conditional pathway to self-determination, and the Council’s own paragraph drops the annexed clause on statehood as an aspiration of the Palestinian people.
Sources
- Board of Peace, 2026. Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025): Report of the Board of Peace through the Office of the High Representative for Gaza. S/2026/418, 15 May 2026. Official record (the report the resolution requires, filed by the body it created).
- Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 2026. Press Release: Public Opinion Poll No (97). Ramallah, 12 August 2026. pcpsr.org/en/node/1014. Named survey organisation.
- Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and Tel Aviv University, 2023. The Palestine/Israel Pulse, a Joint Poll, 2022. Ramallah and Tel Aviv, 24 January 2023. pcpsr.org/en/node/928. Named survey organisations, joint design.
- Palestinian Presidency, 2026. Presidency welcomes joint statement by 12 countries on protecting two-state solution. Ramallah, 8 September 2026, as reported by WAFA, the Palestinian news agency. english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/174557. A party’s own published position, reported speech.
- PLO Executive Committee, 2026. PLO Executive Committee discusses situation in occupied Palestinian Territory, welcomes Gaza ceasefire second-phase agreement. Ramallah, 1 August 2026, as reported by WAFA, the Palestinian news agency. english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/173094. A party’s own published position, reported speech.
- PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, 2019. Our Position: Borders. nad.ps/en/our-position/borders, last revised 27 March 2019. A party’s own published position.
- United Nations Security Council, 2025. Resolution 2803 (2025), endorsing the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, with the Plan as Annex 1. S/RES/2803, 17 November 2025; recorded vote in the verbatim record of the 10046th meeting, S/PV.10046. Primary instrument and recorded vote.
- World Conference against Racism, 2001. Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Report of the Conference, A/CONF.189/12, Durban, 31 August to 8 September 2001. Adopted intergovernmental instrument.