A Rare Show of Arab Sympathy for Israel

For the first time in more than 40 years, the people of Israel are getting a sympathetic hearing in the Arab world in the wake of Iraq’s missile attacks on the Jewish state.

“Of course, we hate the suffering of the civilian population,” said Abdullah Sharhan, a spokesman for the Kuwaiti government, which has been in exile since Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of the sheikdom.

In Bahrain, newspapers front-paged sympathetic accounts of how Israeli civilians had narrowly missed being hit by the missiles, a shift in mood that would have been unthinkable six months ago.

Perhaps in part, the shift in view has been prompted by television coverage of the attacks against Israel, which are given wide play in the gulf area. The news coverage has touched a chord among the civilians of the gulf’s Arab nations as they too scramble to find gas masks and protect their homes against possible chemical attack.

Arab officials in the gulf, in particular, have privately applauded Israel for showing restraint by not retaliating against Iraq for the two waves of Scud missiles that hit Israel on Friday and Saturday. Israel’s restraint has helped preserve the delicate allied coalition against Iraq, which includes such disparate Arab forces as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria.

“The Baghdad ruler is trying to lure Arabs to a battlefield which is set up to suit the interests of the enemies of the Arabs,” Syria’s official news agency said Sunday. The Syrian government, although long an adversary of Iraq, has also frequently adopted the most unrelenting line against Israel.

Countries such as Egypt have watched the unfolding missile attacks with increasing wariness, fearing that popular support for their continued military participation in the alliance might be undermined by Israel’s entry into the war against Iraq. But in Cairo on Sunday, an opposition paper warned Iraq “in the name of the Arab people to play another game.”

For many gulf leaders, Iraq’s pledge that the missiles would “bury the Zionists” appeared instead aimed at destroying the resolve of the Arabs aligned against Baghdad.

“The missile attacks on Israel are designed to serve a political purpose rather than inflict a military or strategic blow,” said the Khaleej Times, an English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates. “It should be safe to assume therefore that the global alliance will continue to hold together despite Israel’s involvement in the war by way of response to the Iraqi attacks.”

Even the U.S. decision to send Israel advanced Patriot antiaircraft missiles and U.S. Army crews to operate them passed without criticism in the Arab states of the gulf, which in the past have criticized U.S. military support for Israel.

“It’s a matter between the U.S. and Israel,” said a senior government minister in the gulf region who asked not to be quoted by name. “They have a longstanding security relationship. . . . That’s fair enough.”

The new mood in the gulf, of course, does not eliminate the Arab world’s old grievance against Israel for continuing to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. But even on the subject of the conflict itself, there is clearly a new attitude.

In part, countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, which have been loyal supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization, are furious over the PLO’s public support for Saddam Hussein.

“We don’t have a problem with the Palestinians, we have a problem with the leadership of the PLO, who have supported Iraq,” Kuwait’s ambassador to Bahrain, Faisal Hajji, said in an interview.

Added another Kuwaiti exile: “We feel that these people have not appreciated the 40 years we have stood with them. Without the gulf countries, they would have been nothing.”

Support for Iraq, on the other hand, seems to be limited to Jordan, Algeria and Yemen.

Jordan’s King Hussein, long considered a moderate on the Arab-Israeli issue, on Saturday said he could neither applaud nor condemn the Iraqi missile attacks against Israel.

His statement came after the Parliament in Jordan, whose population is heavily Palestinian, came out openly in support of Iraq. Hussein said the Parliament’s decision was “the will of the people.”