Abbas gets a hero’s welcome

PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas got a hero’s welcome from thousands of Palestinians who denounced the Qatari regime and its Al Jazeera television channel for accusing their leader of selling out to Israel.

Supporters burnt posters of the Emir of Qatar, who an Abbas aide said had approved Al Jazeera’s broadcast of leaked Middle East negotiation documents, as well as Israeli flags with Al Jazeera’s name sprayed inside the blue Star of David.

“We will go to Jerusalem, a million martyrs strong,” the crowd of over 3,000 chanted, in a rousing endorsement for Abbas using a famous slogan not heard since the days of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat.

“The Palestinian principles have not and will not change and the first of them is that East Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Palestine,” Abbas said to cheers from supporters from all over the occupied West Bank.

He said Al Jazeera had used “fake” documents in its bid to convict Abbas’s Palestinian Authority of cowardice and duplicity in confidential talks with Israel over concessions it would make for a peace treaty and a Palestinian state.

“No one in the world can make us give up on a centimetre of our land, the issue of the refugees or the issue of Jerusalem,” Abbas told the people.

Documents released by Al Jazeera show Abbas’s negotiators willing to give substantial ground on issues at the heart of the decades-old conflict with Israel, such as the fate of Jerusalem.

Al Jazeera is sponsored by Doha, though the government disavows direct control of the channel.