RAMALLAH: Thousands of Palestinians surged across the West Bank on Wednesday for rallies supporting their campaign to join the United Nations as a member state.
The demonstrations are part of the build up to Friday, when Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas is expected to present to UN chief Ban Ki-moon a request for UN membership for a state of Palestine on the lines which existed before the 1967 Six Day War.
In Ramallah, the political capital of the West Bank, thousands of people packed into the city centre to attend what is being billed as a festival — which began late morning — in support of the UN bid, an AFP correspondent said.
Downtown Ramallah was cordoned off to traffic and Manara Square was draped with a huge white flag bearing the words: "National Campaign for Palestine: State 194", as demonstrators shouted: "The people want the liberation of Palestine!"
"We demand that the world recognise our state because it is the implementation of a promise you gave us more than 60 years ago," Ramallah governor Leila Ghanam told the crowd from a stage set up near the square.
She was referring to resolution 181 which was passed by the United Nations in November 1947 and called for Mandate Palestine to be divided into two states: a Jewish state and an Arab state.
In Ramallah, a handful of policemen could be seen standing at a checkpoint on the city outskirts, watching as people poured onto the streets, the correspondent said.
Further north, Nablus was transformed into a sea of flags as several thousand people converged on the city centre, holding up pictures of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and of former leader Yasser Arafat, another AFP correspondent said.
Among the crowd were Muslim, Christian and Samaritan clerics, with people waving Palestinian flags, the yellow banner of Abbas’s Fatah movement and white flags emblazoned with the 194 campaign logo.
There were also around 20 black-clad members of Neturei Karta, a small faction of ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose Israel’s existence, who arrived in the city with a Palestinian police escort to express their support for the UN membership bid.
Palestinian officials have repeatedly pledged that the marches and demonstrations will be peaceful and stay within Palestinian-controlled areas, although Israeli forces have been preparing for months for the possibility they could turn violent.
Several thousand people were also gathering in the southern city of Hebron, an AFP correspondent said, most of them carrying Palestinian flags and the white 194 banners.
Palestinian schools and government offices closed during the morning to coincide with the start of the rallies, officials said.
Abbas is to submit the formal request for UN membership after he addresses the General Assembly on Friday in a move which is strongly opposed by Israel and the United States, which has vowed to block the membership bid in the Security Council.
