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Abbas was carried shoulder high through the crowd while guns were fired in the air in celebration.
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GAZA
CITY, January 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - After threats
to scrap the visit over unabated Israeli aggressions against the
population, PLO Executive Committee Chairman Mahmoud Abbas took his
presidential campaign to the southern Gaza Strip only to receive a
hero’s welcome.
Abbas,
the sole candidate of the mainstream Fatah movement and the
front-runner in the January 9 vote, was greeted in Rafah by thousands
of Palestinians, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
While
ordinary Palestinians carried portraits of himself and of late
President Yasser Arafat, activists of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, the
armed wing of Fatah, carried Abbas shoulder high through the crowd and
fired guns in the air in celebration.
Earlier,
the official Fatah candidate was also greeted by crowds as he passed
through Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip where an Israeli
incursion has killed 11 since Wednesday.
Two
other Palestinians were also killed Friday, December 31, in Rafah,
further to the south.
On
December 17, the Israeli occupation army unleashed a massive operation
- codenamed “Orange Metal” - in which at least 11 Palestinians
were killed and more than 50 others injured, including three reporters
and five children.
The
Israelis flattened 40 homes and displaced some 400 people during the
operation, according to UN estimates.
Critical
Abbas
Abbas
decided to go ahead with a campaign visit to the southern Gaza Strip
after earlier saying it had been cancelled in protest at intensified
Israeli army activity in the territory.
The
Israeli occupation army raised roadblocks to allow Abbas to travel
through the territory unhindered, but immediately reinstated them
after he passed.
It
can take several hours to travel short distances within the highly
built up Gaza Strip because of Israeli checkpoints, according to AFP.
Arriving
in Rafah, Abbas denounced the Israeli “incursions, the
assassinations (and) the destruction of houses.”
“Rafah
suffers from oppression and occupation, but it will not be defeated
and humiliated and will not back down except after victory and the
establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with Al-Quds
[occupied Jerusalem] as its capital,” he told the cheering crowd.
Abbas
vowed not to “forget those who fight for freedom, those who are in
prisons and the refugees,” braising the as “heroes.”
Israel
squarely rejects the return of millions of Palestinian refugees who
were either expelled or fled their home after the creation of what is
now Israel in 1948.
Similar
statements by Abbas last week on the future settlement angered the
Israeli government, with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz comparing him to
Arafat, long boycotted and sidelines by Tel Aviv and Washington as an
obstacle to peace.
Palestinians
head to the polls on January 9 to elect a successor to lead the
Palestinian Authority after Arafat, with Abbas standing better chances
than the other seven contenders.
The
impoverished Gaza Strip is the stronghold of Palestinian resistance
factions, particularly Hamas.
Hamas
said Wednesday, December 22, it would neither support any of the
Palestinian presidential hopefuls nor name a candidate, charging the
vote has been “tailored”
for Abbas .
