PALESTINIAN SOCIETY - Fafo

undeveloped in Palestinian society partly due, perhaps, to the continued
primacy of family links and vertical c1ientele relationships.
Religions Attitndes
Because of the small sample of Christians surveyed, survey results
cannot be reliably used to analyze attitudinal variations among
Palestinian Christians and, indeed, only ceitain coinparisons between
Muslims and Christians as a whole can be made. Analysis of religious
attitudes in this report will focus, therefore, only on the Muslim part
of the population.
Based on survey variables, a three pointindicatorof religiosity was
constructed. The variables included weekly (br more) attendanee at a
mosque and/or religious study circle, visits to religious sites, Islam as
an important political attribute in a future Palestinian state and Islam
as the primary focus of personalloyalty. Some ofthese variables imply
mainly religious belief and practice, others have more political
connotations. A score ofO, "secular", indicates that the individual is
neither religiously observant nor expresses any sort of religious
political values. A score of 1, "observant", indicates religious belief
and observance and a score of 2, "activist", indicates religious
observance combined with political religious identity. Thus the index
attempts to measure the range of religiosity from the secular to the
religiously activist. Because the index is constructed in a manner that
is only applicable to the Muslim sector of the Palestinian population,
in the following analysis the Christian population has been removed
from the sample.
Following this index, the distribution of religiosity for the Palestinian
Muslim population, broken down by region and type oflocality,
is as illustrated in figures 9.6 and 9.7.
These results seem to challenge some of the more common notions
concemingIslamic activism in the occupied territories. They indicate
that Islamicism is not particularly associated with Gaza refugee
camps, nor indeed with Gaza at all, despite the long historical
connection between Gaza and the Egyptian based Muslim Brotherhood.
Of the various types of localities surveyed, Gaza camps, along
with Arab Jerusalem, seem to be the most seculår. To the extent there
is a regional concentration ofIslamicist activism; it appears to be more
associated with the towns and camps of the West Bank. Moreover, the
general percentage of Palestinians who are secular, observant or
activist does not vary with their refugee status. Non-refugees and
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