Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday said the Palestinians prefer to die than giving up Jerusalem, Xinhua reported.
"The principles that the various Palestinian national councils and Palestinian leaders have taken will never ever change," Abbas told thousands of people who gathered at the Palestinian leadership's headquarters in Ramallah.
"We say it very loudly: the first of these principles, that we are ready to die for, is Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine," Abbas told the crowds that gathered to welcome him after he returned from Egypt.
Abbas' remarks were in response to a campaign by Qatar's Al- Jazeera news channel, which has started publishing what it called secret reports about a decade of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).
One of the documents, which Al-Jazeera said was leaked from the Palestinian negotiators' offices, said the PNA was ready to let Israel annex Jewish settlements and neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which was occupied in 1967.