Iran International:

Iran is taking advantage of the ruling Palestinian Authority's lack of political legitimacy in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to arm militants, the director of a leading research center in Ramallah told Iran International.

“Iran exploits this vacuum left by the lack of legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and unpopularity of President Mahmoud Abbas to maintain and sustain this situation," said Khalil Shikaki, the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.

Adding that Tehran's interference is not welcome by most of the Palestinian pubic, the veteran pollster said around 90 percent of Palestinians want the resignation of the 89-year-old president who is 20 years into his four-year term.

“Palestinians don’t like Iran because they see it interfering in domestic Palestinian politics," he said.

"But since October 7 this has started to change, but we don’t see a majority of the Palestinian public favoring Iran. They just don’t see how they can achieve their goals other than those advocated by Hezbollah and Iran which is violence," he added.

Suspicion with Iran's Shi'ite theocracy runs deep among Sunni Palestinians too.

"Palestinians see Iran as a Shia state that seeks to take advantage of the situation to advance Shi’ism in the region, exporting their ideologies as they’ve done in other countries such as Yemen and Iraq - which is unacceptable," he explained.

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