Zionist-backed Abbas ‘Refugee’ Comments Wow Israel, Enrage Palestinians

Remarks by Head of the Palestinian Self-Ruled Authority Mahmud Abbas seen as questioning Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their former homes received an angry reception in Gaza on Saturday.

The Abbas comments sent thousands of Palestinians onto the streets in protest in 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.

“Palestine for me now is ’67 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Abbas said. “… I believe that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine and the other parts is Israel.”

In Gaza thousands demonstrated against Abbas’s remarks, in protests called by Hamas that has said it will never recognize Israel.

In Jabaliya refugee camp about 3,000 people chanting “Out, out, Abu Mazen!” marched and burned his picture, while thousands more protested in Gaza city and in the Southern town of Khan Yunes.

While his statements got warm welcome from Israel.

“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.

On Friday, Gaza’s Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya told worshippers after weekly Muslim prayers that Abbas “has no right to give up refugee rights. He does not speak in the name of the refugees.”