CRISIS IN THE PERSIAN GULF : Palestinians Angry at U.S., Back Hussein

A wave of anti-American feeling is sweeping through the Palestinian communities of Israel and the occupied territories.

Over coffee in the cafes of biblical Nazareth, in newspaper editorials, in graffiti scrawled on walls and in slogans shouted by angry demonstrators, U.S. policy in the Middle East is being assailed.

The United States has rarely been popular among the Palestinians, but its response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait has generated an outpouring of support for Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein.

“The average Palestinian in Israel thinks the Americans are defending corrupt (Persian) gulf regimes for the sake of oil,” Awad Abdel Fattah, the editor of Al Medin, told a reporter in his bare, third-floor Nazareth office.

Fattah, who also heads the Sons of the Village, a nationalist Arab party, went on to say: “But what really hurts is the fact that in a week’s time the United States was to organize the whole world against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Yet for 23 years the United States hasn’t done anything against the Israeli invasion of the Palestinian territories.”

Palestinians argue that the United States is wrong in sending troops into Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and site of Islam’s most holy places, Mecca and Medina.

According to Said Bader, a trade union official and a member of the Central Committee of the Israeli Communist Party: “We are completely opposed to American policy in Saudi Arabia. They should not be in that sacred place.

“America has no right to appoint itself the arrogant, moral defender of human rights around the world. The more the Americans push in, the deeper the anger is toward them in the Arab world. Those Arabs who invited the Americans in will be considered traitors and will be toppled by their own people.

“You wonder why there is so much anti-Americanism? It is because their presence in Saudi Arabia shows they want to break the spirit of the Arabs.”

Atallah Mansour, the veteran Arab affairs commentator for Haaretz, the leading Israeli daily, said: “There is a widespread view that the American military force in Saudi Arabia desecrates Islam’s home. It is popular now, particularly among the poor people, to be anti-American.”

Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories take the position that the United States is not acting out of altruistic motives--to punish aggression and save Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from invasion--but out of economic self-interest.

“The ordinary Arab,” Hanna Siniora, editor of the newspaper Al Fajar, said in his office in East Jerusalem, “sees Saddam (Hussein) as bringing down the rich sheiks, fighting the international oil companies and taking on the United States, Israel’s chief supporter.”

The Palestinian rage at the U.S. actions is not directed against individual Americans, though they may be subjected to heated lectures. And often the criticism is delivered in a pained way, for Palestinians have always had ambivalent feelings about America, wanting to believe in its effectiveness but often being disappointed.

Mansour, the commentator, said that “of all the places Palestinians would wish to emigrate, America heads the list--many of our native sons from Nazareth have studied in the U.S.”

Many Palestinians think the U.S. government has the power to force Israel to compromise with the Palestinians and settle their long-running conflict. And the fact that the United States has not done so is infuriating to them.

“For years,” editor Siniora said, “we listened to the American diplomats counseling patience, moderation, compromise, while the Palestine Liberation Organization was urged to renounce terrorism.

“We did all that. Yasser Arafat (the PLO leader) went to Geneva, and what happened? The Israelis refused to talk to us and the Americans went along with them, doing nothing. So we believe the whole American-initiated peace process has become a blatant hypocrisy.”

According to Palestinian commentator Daoud Kuttab, there has been a “very sharp rise in feeling against the United States.”

“Many Palestinians and other Arabs,” he said, “think that America is acting like a neo-colonialist imperial power, trying to dictate what Arabs should do. And of course there is always the double standard that we see: The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait must be resisted by all; the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is accepted by all.”