Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research

Summary

The Ramallah-based Palestinian polling organisation headed by Khalil Shikaki, whose Gazan teams carried out the family survey with Michael Spagat and whose safeguards and vulnerability to interference are assessed in Debunking the Genocide Allegations (Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War from October 7, 2023 to June 1, 2025, PDF p.143-149).

The Gaza family survey relied on 10 teams of Gazan PCPSR employees approaching Palestinians in designated quadrants centred on Israel’s self-proclaimed humanitarian zone, each respondent enumerating household members living with them on October 6, 2023 and their present status, with results extrapolated to the population using “raking” (PDF p.143-144).
The study’s safeguards — strict enumeration areas, interviews in homes or tents, randomised predetermined tents and homes, close monitoring via geolocation and immediate transmission of completed interviews — are described as exceeding the norms for such surveys, though their application seems to have been uneven (PDF p.147-148).
On counter-manipulation procedures, Spagat’s response was geolocated tracking and immediate sharing of results with supervisors (also Gazan); there were no vetting mechanisms to exclude surveyors with family, social, organisational or financial ties to Hamas, and participants were not required to sign an NDA (PDF p.148).
The work argues PCPSR safeguards seemed primarily designed to prevent input of falsified or fabricated interview results, and were probably effective in that, but insufficient against the manipulation methods open to Hamas had it infiltrated PCPSR personnel, as the IDF-released August 2024 documents allege it did in Shikaki’s Gazan polling teams (PDF p.147-148).