With Israelis set to go to the polls tomorrow to elect a new prime minister and Knesset, it is interesting to note that Haaretz had two stories on its homepage today with polling numbers about Palestinian opinion — with the data in each story contradicting the other.

In one, Avi Isaacharof reports that Hamas is winning the battle for public opinion against Fatah. Indeed, according to this story, if Hamas is able to persuade Israel to give in to their demands for a mass release of terrorist prisoners and an opening of Gaza’s borders in exchange for the freedom of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, then Fatah is finished. He writes:

For the first time, Hamas is leading Fatah in the polls: 28.6 percent for Hamas compared to 27.9 percent for Fatah. Despite the euphoria in Israel over the Gaza operation, on the Palestinian side at least, some 46.7 percent view the Gaza fighting as a Hamas victory and only 9.8 percent deemed Israel the victor. Some 37.4 percent thought there was no winner.

Interesting. But scroll down further on the Haaretz homepage and you discover another point of view. In a piece credited to the Haaretz service, the newspaper reports that:

Only a quarter of the Palestinians in Gaza support Hamas, Army Radio reported Monday. According to the findings of a new poll conducted in Gaza, support in the ruling Hamas government has drastically gone down following the Israel Defense Forces offensive in the coastal strip. Only 28% of the Palestinians now say they support Hamas, compared to 51% who voiced their support for Hamas in November 2008.

Can both stories be right? Maybe they can. The point of the earlier piece is that if Israel gives in to Hamas demands, it will be seen as a winner and will reap more support from Palestinians. The point of the second is that Palestinians in Gaza saw with their own eyes the conduct of Hamas during the fighting with Israel. Hamas’s armed cadres provoked a war and then spent its duration hiding behind civilians and inflicting little damage on the Israeli Defense Forces. No wonder Gazans view it as a defeat.

While it is hard to imagine what Israel could do to promote Fatah (and given its own terrorist and irredentist inclinations one wonders why they would bother), it is just as important for Israeli leaders to ponder how best to avoid any actions that will give new life to a Hamas that was defeated by the IDF. Ransoming Shalit will be popular and it is hard to imagine any democratic leader resisting the pressure to do so no matter what the price (think about Ronald Reagan and the American hostages in Lebanon). But doing so will have severe consequences.