Rather than demonstrating against Israel, the Palestinians should be directing their anger over "Nakba Day" at the extremist Palestinian leadership which 64 years ago rejected any accommodation, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu´s spokesman Mark Regev said Tuesday.

Palestinians marked Nakba Day (the "Day of Catastrophe" marking the anniversary of the establishment of Israel and the creation of the Palestinian diaspora) on Tuesday with rallies and demonstrations in various locations in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, as well as a number of neighboring Arab countries.

Regev said the demonstrators should ask themselves why they are not celebrating 64 years to the establishment of a Palestinian state, in parallel to Israel´s celebration of its Independence Day two weeks ago.

"The answer is clear," he said. "The Palestinian leadership in 1947 and 1948 adopted an extremist and maximalist position. Unlike the Jewish leadership, they rejected partition and refused to accept a Jewish state even in truncated borders."

The object of Palestinian anger should not be Israel, he said, but rather the Palestinian leadership at the time which "said all or nothing, and in so doing betrayed the Palestinian people."

Regev said he would ask the demonstrators if the current Palestinian leadership had learned the lessons of "extremist and maximalist" positions.

"I would ask those demonstrators why the current Palestinian leadership still has a problem recognizing the legitimacy of the Jewish state," he said. "I would ask them if they are not repeating the same mistakes of the extremist leadership form ´47 and ´48." (© 1995-2011, The Jerusalem Post 05/15/12)