Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi linked Holocaust victims and Arab suffering in Gaza in a move that threatened to tarnish a visit that until then was widely welcomed by the Israeli public.
"Whenever war takes the place of peace, whenever violence takes the place of reason, humanity disappears. The relationship between men that should always be kept intact disappears," Berlusconi said at a joint news conference with Abbas. "So just as it's right to cry for the victims of the Shoah, it's right to show pain for what happened in Gaza."