Abbas comments enrage Gaza

ISRAEL: Remarks by Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas seen as questioning Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their former homes got a warm welcome from Israel on Saturday but received an angry reception in Gaza.

“Abu Mazen’s courageous words prove that Israel has a real partner for peace,” Israeli President Shimon Peres said in a statement, using the name by which the Palestinian president is informally known in Arabic.

But the Abbas comments sent thousands of Palestinians onto the streets in protest in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip where they burned his picture and chanted “Out, Out, Abu Mazen.” In an interview broadcast on Friday night by Israel’s Channel 2 television, Abbas said he had no intention of trying to regain his childhood home in the northern town of Safed in Galilee, today located inside Israel.

“I want to see Safed,” he said in English. “It’s my right to see it but not to live there.” In a direct pitch to Israeli viewers aimed at assuaging their concerns ahead of a Palestinian bid to seek upgraded UN status, he reiterated his acceptance of the Israeli state within the borders that preceded its capture of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day war.

“Palestine for me now is ‘67 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital,” Abbas said.

AFP