Palestinian Election: BBC Get Their Facts Straight(er)

The BBC are having another bash at a story they botched yesterday. After playing down Mahmoud Abbas' links with terrorists, they now seem to be admitting all is not well in the holocaust denier's race to become Palestine's new terrorist-in-chief:

Mr Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, has been campaigning hard in Gaza - a stronghold of organisations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The two groups are committed to armed confrontation with Israel.
In Rafah, where scores of Palestinians have been killed in the four-year uprising, Mr Abbas praised the residents, those killed in fighting with Israel, and the militants on the run.

While al-Beeb still don't mention Abbas' male-bonding session with terrorist mastermind Zakaria Zubeidi earlier this week, they do broach the softening of his stance on letting such child-murderers go unpunished:

'We will not use force with Hamas but we will use the way of persuasion and negotiation,' he said. 'We consider that fighting among Palestinians is a red line that must not be crossed.'
The Associated Press news agency said the presidential front-runner had gone even further and vowed to protect the militants from Israeli attacks.
'When we see them, when we meet them, and when they welcome us, we owe them,' AP quoted him as saying.
'This debt always is to protect them from assassination, to protect them from killing, and all these things they are subject to by the Israelis.'

This truthfulness is good as far as it goes, but still the BBC don't see fit to disclose another, very interesting fact about Abbas' new-found fondness for terrorism:

An open letter signed by more than 500 Palestinian academics and politicians – including senior Fatah Party figures – told him not to succumb to American pressure to accept a reduced Palestinian state in a deal with Israel.

So what do we make of all this? Simple. The 'moderate' holocaust denier Abbas is coming under increasing pressure from his electorate of head-hackers and Islamist crazies. And he's starting to buckle.