I don’t know; this just doesn’t seem like the sort of rhetoric we should be hearing from people who are ready to build their own peaceful sovereign state: Palestinian hardliners slam Abbas for meeting Sharon in Jerusalem.

The radical Islamist movement Hamas said Abbas’s decision would only help legitimise Israel’s sovereignty claims. It also questioned the point of the meeting.

It expressed “astonishment” that Abbas had accepted an invitation to meet Sharon, who has frequently described the city as the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people, in west Jerusalem.

“This is a dangerous precedent which could lead to a recognition of the Zionist allegations proclaiming Jerusalem as their capital,” a statement said.

“The meeting ... will do nothing to change the realities on the ground, for the agenda of the Zionist entity is limited to implementing its retreat from Gaza and mobilising the efforts of all parties to this end, including the Palestinians,” the statement added.

“All other questions are of no interest to the Zionist entity.”