The Palestinian embassy to South Africa has come out in support of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The embassy’s position on the movement was released over a week after Mahmoud Abbas made headlines by coming out against boycotting Israel.

In a statement (read it in full below) that pushes back against Israel’s attempts to use Mahmoud Abbas against the BDS movement, the South African Palestine embassy said that the “State of Palestine is not opposed to the Palestinian civil society-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.” The embassy added that “Palestinian officials and leaders respect and uphold the right of Palestinian civil society to initiate and lead local and global BDS campaigns against Israel.” And the embassy notes that on December 14th, 2012, Fatah officials “wrote an official letter to the South African President, Jacob Zuma, and members of the ANC communicating that ‘Fatah stands fully behind the BDS movement.'”

The embassy, which jointly released the missive with the group BDS South Africa, is careful to frame the statement not as a harsh rebuke to their leader. Instead, the embassy said that the journalists and Israel lobbyists claiming that Abbas is opposed to BDS have simply misinterpreted his claims. The statement may also reflect a desire to make Abbas look good in the face of activist condemnation of his remarks.

Abbas made the headline-grabbing remarks while in South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s funeral, and it was quickly seized upon by figures ranging from journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren. “We don’t ask anyone to boycott Israel itself. We have relations with Israel, we have mutual recognition of Israel,” Abbas told reporters in South Africa.

The remarkable embassy statement was released on the same day that Haaretz’s Amira Hass reported that an ex-Palestinian negotiator also differed from Abbas on the BDS movement. Speaking to reporters in the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, Muhammad Shtayyeh reportedly said that he “differs with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who endorses a boycott solely of products from settlements in the West Bank,” as Hass wrote in a paraphrase of his remarks. “According to Shtayyeh, one cannot separate or distinguish the settlements from those who have formulated the policies for their establishment.”

This post has been modified to more accurately reflect the South African embassy statement.

Here’s the full statement from the South African Palestine embassy on BDS: