JERUSALEM — Saying it was a “grave mistake” for an official Palestinian newspaper to publish a cartoon that some readers thought depicted the Prophet Muhammad, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has ordered an investigation, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.
Mr. Abbas said it was necessary to take “deterrent measures against those responsible,” Wafa reported. Ali Khalaf, an editor at the newspaper, Al-Hayat al-Jadida, said on Tuesday that the cartoonist and the editor in chief of the paper had been suspended.
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Mr. Khalaf, the editor at Al-Hayat al-Jadida, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that the paper had made a mistake and had apologized for it. Asked about Mr. Abbas’s participation in the Paris rally, Mr. Khalaf said: “The president has his own outside and inside calculations. Every newspaper should have limits to what it publishes and what it cannot publish.”
