RAMALLAH, 26 December 2004 — Mahmoud Abbas kicked off his campaign to succeed Yasser Arafat yesterday, pledging to uphold the late Palestinian leader’s legacy and deliver on his promise of Palestinian statehood.

Abbas, the interim Palestinian leader and front-runner in the Jan. 9 elections, plastered pictures of Arafat on his campaign posters and peppered his campaign announcement with references to him, hoping that their decades-long relationship — rocky though it was — will propel him to overwhelming victory.

Speaking to a hall filled with hundreds of supporters, Abbas called on Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War, said he favored a negotiated peace settlement and promised to respect the rights of Palestinian refugees.

“We are choosing the path of peace and negotiation,” said Abbas. “If there is no peace here, there will be no peace in the Middle East or the rest of the world.”

Abbas, the candidate of the ruling Fatah movement, made it clear he intends to paint himself as the heir to Arafat, who has become a symbol of Palestinian aspirations since his death Nov. 11.

Abbas appears alongside Arafat in campaign posters and advertisements that ran in Palestinian newspapers yesterday. “Comrades in revolution,” read one poster of the two men.

More than a dozen speakers — religious leaders and representatives of student groups, refugees and people injured during the four years of fighting with Israel — introduced Abbas, nearly all of them invoking Arafat’s legacy and praising Abbas’ commitment to follow in his path.

In his speech, Abbas called for a moment of silence for Arafat, said no one could fill the hole he left and pledged fealty to the late leader.

“Whatever you said on various occasions, whatever you talked about in different meetings ... is your will, and it is our duty to carry it out as long as we live,” he said, symbolically addressing Arafat.

In his speech yesterday, Abbas called for an end to the occupation and reiterated his previous promise to hold Palestinian parliamentary elections early next year.

He appealed to Israel to release all Palestinian prisoners, especially jailed uprising leader Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti, a Fatah rival of Abbas, pulled out of the race under intense party pressure.

— With input from agencies