The Palestinian Authority continued a long-standing policy of telling Israelis and Westerners one thing and then stating exactly the opposite to the Arab world. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas won warm applause from President Shimon Peres , who called Abbas “courageous” for telling Channel 2, "I want to see Tzfat. It's my right to see it but not to live there." His words “prove that Israel has a real partner for peace,” said Peres. Huge protests immediately followed in Gaza, and Abbas' own spokesman said that the Palestinian Authority certainly has not given up the demand that Israel allow the immigration of several million foreign Arabs who claim Israel is their home. Abbas then made it clear to the Arab world, through an Egyptian television network, that although he personally would give up living in Tzfat, “the right of return is holy and no one can deny it.” He said the report of his giving up the demand was taken out of context. “I am not playing with words," he said. "I am telling Israel what I tell Palestinian Authority Arabs." The Palestinian Authority has previously stated different positions to Arabs and to the West. It has committed itself to dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and halting incitement while actually escalating the encouragement of children and adults to become “martyrs” and carry out suicide bombings. Abbas also has said he would accept the existence of Israel, without defining it as a Jewish state, but school maps and PA media teach that the entire state of Israel, from the Lebanese to Egyptian borders and from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, is “Palestine.”
