Abbas: Wage Peace

From the Beirut Daily Star:

Presidential election front-runner Mahmoud Abbas urged Palestinians to abandon the armed intifada on Sunday, saying that independence could only be achieved through peaceful means, while prominent Palestinian figures appealed for an end to violence.

"I believe that it is clear that a military solution is impossible," the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman told a gathering of business leaders in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

"The only way is the choice of peace. It is impossible to liberate Palestine with the use of weapons because the balance of power is not with us."
...
"We reaffirm our legitimate right to confront occupation, but call for restoring the popular character of our intifada and ceasing actions that reduce the range of (international) support for our cause and harm the credibility of our struggle," they said in a front-page advertisement in Palestinian newspapers.

They also pressed Abbas not to compromise on his aim of a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza, taken by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, with East Jeru-salem as its capital and a "fair solution" for Palestinian refugees.

All seven presidential candidates have hitched their campaign coat-tails to the image of Arafat as the charismatic patriarch of Palestinian nationalism. But they have distanced themselves from the chaos and corruption he left behind.

While Abbas has been a consistent critic of the militarization of the Palestinian uprising, he made no reference to the conduct of the intifada in a hard-line speech at the launch of his campaign on Saturday.

However Sunday's speech to the business leaders, who have seen the local economy devastated by the impact of the violence, he stressed his belief that "the use of weapons has a harmful effect on us."

Abbas' campaign launch speech, when he demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied since 1967 and the freeing of all Palestinian prisoners, had disappointed Israelis who have been looking to his expected election victory as a chance to revive the peace process.

Note that the photo in the Star shows Abbas holding hands with a Muslim sheikh and the Orthodox Christian Archimandrite (I think he's a kind of archbishop).