GAZA CITY, 28 November 2007 — Tens of thousands of Palestinians joined an anti-Annapolis rally in Hamas-run Gaza yesterday, chanting “Death to Israel, death to America” and calling President Mahmoud Abbas a traitor for attending the peace talks.
Speaking at the protest in Gaza City, leaders of the Islamist group, which seized the enclave from Abbas’ forces in June said the president had no right to make concessions to Israel at the US-sponsored conference near Washington.
“Let them go to a thousand conferences, we say in the name of the Palestinian people that we did not authorize anyone to sign any agreement that harms our rights,” Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, told a cheering crowd. “Anyone who does so will be judged by history as a traitor.”
Waving Palestinian flags as well as the green Hamas banner and black flag of the Islamic Jihad faction, protesters shouted “Abbas is a traitor” and “We will not recognize Israel.” Journalists estimated that up to 100,000 people took to the streets. Hamas put the number closer to 250,000 — similar to the turnout at a rally called by Abbas’ secular Fatah faction earlier this month for the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death.
Abbas hopes the Annapolis conference will launch formal negotiations to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad claim a right to all the land that is now Israel.
“There will be no concessions over one inch of Palestine. We will defend this land by our flesh and we will water it by our blood,” Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed Al-Hindi told the rally. Security forces in Ramallah, Abbas’ West Bank stronghold, dispersed crowds after scuffles at a protest there.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops killed two Palestinian fighters and a civilian in the Gaza Strip yesterday, the Hamas movement and Palestinian medical staff said.
