It Wasn’t a Scud, Palestinian Villagers Say : West Bank: Residents of Deir Ballut still defend Saddam Hussein after a missile falls short.

Occupied West Bank--In the winding streets of this jumble of small stone houses and olive trees, many a villager was shaking his head Tuesday, unwilling to believe what had happened the night before.

In its seventh missile attack on Israel, Iraq had managed to land the fragments of a Scud nearly on the heads of the 2,000 residents of Deir Ballut, endangering the very West Bank Arabs whose rights it claims to champion.

“It was like a big fire in the sky and then a big boom,” said Atar Ali, a farm worker and father of seven children. “We saw it come toward us and then--maybe because of God--we saw it go past.”

A large hunk of the missile landed in an olive grove just outside Deir Ballut, carving out a small crater, damaging trees and shattering windows in the village. If the missile was aimed at Tel Aviv, it fell 10 miles short.

Israeli military officials said that fragments of a Scud fired from western Iraq showered an area spanning the border between Israel proper and the occupied territories. No American Patriot missiles were fired to bring down the Scud because it was out of range, they said.

Defense Ministry spokesman Dan Naveh said Tuesday that he thought the location where the missile landed should bring on some “soul searching” by Palestinians, who are among Iraq’s strongest supporters.

“The people who cheered Saddam Hussein could have found themselves the victims of his aggression,” Naveh told Israel Radio.

But several Deir Ballut residents who clustered on one of the village’s dirt roads Tuesday refused to believe that the missile could have come from Iraq.

“When I heard the alarm, I went up onto the roof,” Fara Mustaffa said. “I have seen the missiles come from Iraq more than four times and they come from this side.”

He pointed eastward.

“This time,” he continued, “it came from the west.”

The missile came “from Israel,” a little girl named Saadi asserted. “Iraq would not hit us with missiles.”

Ali and several other men said the missile that landed near them must have been an anti-missile Patriot, perhaps fired by Israel in an attempt to stop Iraqi missiles farther away from Tel Aviv than in previous attacks.

In the most extreme of the conspiracy theories circulating, a university student named Sami said the Israelis could have fired a Patriot into West Bank territory on purpose because “they want to say to Saddam Hussein: ‘Your missiles fell on Arabs there, so don’t shoot them any more.’

“The missiles don’t know the difference between Arabs and Jews,” he noted.

The Deir Ballut villagers said they back Hussein as strongly as ever.

“All the other Arab countries, all the world, put our problem away in the basket,” Ali said. “But he is the only one asking for a solution to our problem.”

Fearing that the Arabs of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would act in support of Iraq, Israeli authorities have confined them to their homes under a tight curfew since the Persian Gulf War broke out, allowing them outside only one or two hours a day for shopping.

If the missile had any political effect, Ali said, it was to make the villagers more determined to demand the gas masks that they have been promised.

A Jewish village nearby has masks to put on when the alarm sounds, he said, but Palestinians “don’t hide ourselves, we come out to see what happens” when the missiles hit.

If the missile attack had carried chemical weapons, Ali said, “one-half of the village could be dead.”

The Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the Arabs in the occupied territories have the right to gas masks even though their region is not expected to be targeted by Iraqi missiles. But military officials say they have not yet managed to acquire the 1.7 million kits needed to supply the West Bank and Gaza Strip populations.