About half an hour before Mahmoud Abbas's speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Ramallah's central square was still not full, with quite a few bald patches in the crowd at the southern end of the square. Several hundred celebrators had already gathered, together with policemen and security personnel, journalists and curious onlookers.

As the hour of the address approached, parents began arriving with their children and babies wrapped in blankets. This added to the feeling of spontaneity that had been lacking until then, when most prominent was a group of Palestinian flag-waving youth, most of them from the Shabiba youth wing of Fatah. It is not unreasonable to assume that they were sent to the square under the movement's orders.

The rhythmic songs with the words "freedom' and "our prisoners" made some of those present dance, and added an almost genuine joyful feeling. Then the flags in the square were lowered to allow people to watch on a huge screen the speech by the Sudanese ambassador, which preceded Mahmoud Abbas's address. He was met with whistles of joy and hand clapping whenever he mentioned Abbas's name.

Just before Abbas took to the podium, a few high school children turned up at the square, possibly from the Al-Amari refugee camp, bearing yellow Fatah flags.

Earlier, several thousand Palestinians had gathered in cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the afternoon to mark Palestine's expected acceptance as a non-member observer state in the UN. The day of the UN vote had already been declared a holiday in the civil service and schools "to allow everyone to participate in the celebrations."

In the evening the vote was broadcast on enormous screens in city centers. In Bethlehem it was screened on the separation wall.

Most of the participants in the demonstrations of support, which were organized by Fatah and the PLO, were public sector workers, high school students and Fatah members bearing aloft posters of Abbas. Representatives of Fatah and other organizations in the PLO addressed rallies in various cities, as did representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad – who emphasized national reconciliation and unity.

People in the West Bank spoke of a slightly forced joyful atmosphere and celebrations, and added that the Palestinian media exaggerated the numbers of participants. However, according to a Palestinian journalist who had attended a rally in Gaza, the happiness demonstrated by thousands of participants in the Strip was genuine.

With the cease-fire and the end of Operation Pillar of Defense a week ago, Fatah members went into the streets of Gaza with their yellow flags, but Thursday was the first time in five years that the Hamas authorities allowed them to demonstrate in their thousands in the city center. Organizations belonging to the PLO hired busses to bring demonstrators from parts of the Gaza Strip into the center of Gaza City.