PRESIDENT Mahmud Abbas waved to the crowd of tens of thousands during a celebration in Ramallah, upon his return from the UN General Assembly in New York.
After laying a wreath on the grave of his predecessor Yasser Arafat, Abbas told masses of flag-waving Palestinians: ‘The Palestinian spring is certainly underway, with the creation of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.’
He told the jubilant crowds: ‘Our international rally has begun. The journey is long and there are many obstacles, but with our people’s steadfastness, we will overcome these obstacles.’
The president told the rally that he made his plea at the UN on behalf of the Palestinian people.
‘We asserted to everybody that we want to get our rights by peaceful means, by negotiations, but not any negotiations. We will never agree on negotiations without legitimacy and without full cessation of settlement expansion.’
He ended his short address by telling the crowd: ‘Hold your heads high because you are Palestinians.’
Local unions, Abbas’s Fatah party, and the campaign that backed the UN membership bid called on Palestinians across the West Bank to travel to Ramallah to welcome the leader back.
Buses laid on by different groups were bringing thousands from cities including Hebron in the south and Jenin in the north, organisers said.
Mohammed Amudi, who was awaiting the president’s arrival with his young son, said he wanted to demonstrate his backing for the UN bid.
‘I came to the Muqataa to declare my support for Abu Mazen’s brave speech at the United Nations and his challenge to the United States,’ he said, using Abbas’s popular nom de guerre.
‘Abu Mazen deserves to have all the Palestinians standing with him in this battle,’ he said.
Nearby, 71-year-old Abed Qader Mohammed sat holding a Palestinian flag.
‘I came to show solidarity with Abu Mazen because I believe that his speech to the UN was not just his speech, but our speech,’ he said.
‘Abu Mazen did his job at the UN and put our demands on their table and I’m here at the Muqataa today to say to him: thank you.’
In Jericho, crowds lined up to board buses for Ramallah.
‘I’m going to Ramallah today to say “Thank you President Mahmud Abbas”,’ said Anwar Ahmed, a government employee clutching a Palestinian flag.
‘Before the president’s UN speech I didn’t care that much about politics, but after hearing the speech I understood better the difficulties we face as a people and the difficulties our president faces,’ Ahmed said.
Huge crowds were expected to turn out for the celebration, with the Palestinian workers’ union calling on its members to join and government offices and schools closing early for the event.
Both state television and the state-run news agency Wafa urged the public to mass at the Muqataa, and Palestinians across the West Bank received text messages advertising ‘the official mass reception’.
Abbas is experiencing an unprecedented boost in popularity after delivering a request earlier this week that the United Nations admit Palestine as a full member state.
His address to the General Assembly, delivered shortly after he formally submitted the bid, was broadcast live on big screens set up in the centres of major West Bank cities, where crowds cheered.
Senior PLO official Nabil Shaath said on Sunday that the Palestinian UN team would push for a vote on their application for full UN membership ‘as soon as possible’.
President Abbas asked UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Friday to submit an application for membership to the UN Security Council, which accepted the bid and said it would begin deliberations on Monday.
Shaath said that the presidents of nine countries in the 15-member council had promised to vote in favour of Palestine’s bid to join the UN as a full member.
Nigeria, India and Gabon are among the countries who have pledged their support, said Shaath, a member of the Palestinian UN delegation.
Senior Fatah official Muhammad Shtayyeh told the official Voice of Palestine radio station on Sunday that Palestinian delegations would visit Nigeria and Gabon in the coming days, urging the governments to support the statehood application.
Shtayyeh said Washington was exerting pressure on Nigeria, Gabon and Bosnia and Herzegovina not to support the bid. He said he hoped Arab countries would encourage the Security Council members to vote in favour of Palestine.
The resolution needs nine votes to pass, but it will be thwarted if the US follows through on its vow to veto Palestine’s admission to the world body. Shaath said US President Barack Obama’s position was influenced by the 2012 US presidential elections.
‘We won’t help Obama to win the new elections at the expense of the Palestinian cause,’ he said.
He added: ‘No one will make us retreat in order to save him from the embarrassment. . . Obama prefers to yield to the Zionist lobby but he will lose a lot in the Arab region.’
Shaath dismissed US threats to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, saying that the government would look to Arab countries for funding.
‘We won’t give up the Palestinian cause for some dollars.’
Commenting on Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jiminez’s reference to Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ in her address to the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Shaath noted that elections were on the horizon in Spain.
‘It’s a wrong position and could be the result of pressure as elections in Spain are soon but we should not pay the price.’
l The United States and other world powers called for the Palestinians and Israel to resume direct peace talks within a month and commit to seeking a deal by the end of 2012.
The Quartet of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations acted after President Mahmud Abbas formally submitted his request to the United Nations for Palestine to be admitted as a full member.
The United States has vowed to veto the unilateral bid at the UN Security Council, arguing that the resumption of direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO is the only real path to peace and statehood.
US-brokered talks stalled a year ago when Israel failed to renew a partial freeze on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, but the Quartet urged both sides on Friday to resume negotiations and plotted out a path forward.
‘We urge both parties to take advantage of this opportunity to get back to talks,’ US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters after talks with her Quartet partners on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The Quartet statement did not explicitly call for a halt to Israeli settlements, which the PLO has set as a condition for resuming talks.
Nor did it clearly call for a Palestinian state based on the boundaries that existed before the 1967 war – which would fulfill the Palestinian desire for a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital.
