Many Palestinians Back Iraq, Not Hussein

Najah Samara blamed Monday’s cold, rainy weather for keeping other Palestinians from showing up for a protest in support of Iraq and its president, Saddam Hussein. But her enthusiasm was undiminished as she stood in a breezeway of this Palestinian-ruled city, watching as a few hundred bedraggled marchers passed by, chanting pro-Iraqi slogans and struggling to burn a sodden American flag.

“There is no Arab country that has such a leader,” Samara, 29, said of the Iraqi president, now engaged in a tense standoff with the U.S. over his refusal to allow unrestricted U.N. weapons inspections. “He is fighting for Arab rights against the United States and Israel.”

With a military confrontation looming anew in the Persian Gulf, Palestinians, like many Israelis, are feeling a certain deja vu. For both, memories are strong of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which Hussein spread panic among Israelis by launching Scud missiles at Tel Aviv--and Palestinians celebrated the attacks by dancing on rooftops.

But these days, popular support for Hussein among Palestinians is lower than it was in 1991. While some still view him as an Arab champion standing up to the world’s only superpower, many others distinguish between their sympathy for the Iraqi people and backing Iraq’s president.

“We support the people of Iraq but not the regime, because it is bad and makes many mistakes,” said Ziad Fahr, 40, who owns a Ramallah fabric store with his younger brother. He and other Palestinians are also more realistic about Iraq’s ability to play a wider role in regional affairs, he said.

With parts of Iraqi airspace already patrolled by U.S. military jets, “I do not think Iraq would be able to liberate Palestine,” as many Palestinians believed possible in 1991, he said. “Let them liberate their own north and south first.”

Up the street, demonstrators gathered in the main square and set out just as a light rain became a downpour. They carried Iraqi flags and side-by-side posters of Hussein and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and chanted, “With our blood and soul, we sacrifice for you, Saddam.”

As the rain briefly turned to hail, a few protesters fell behind, trying repeatedly to set an American flag ablaze. They finally abandoned the effort and settled for tearing the flag to shreds before rejoining the others.

At an Israeli roadblock at the southern edge of Ramallah, some marchers threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with rubber bullets. One Palestinian was slightly injured before the rally broke up.

Palestinians held two other pro-Iraq rallies Monday. In the West Bank town of Janin, about 2,000 people marched, with some carrying a model of a Scud missile; an additional 200 rallied in Gaza City, dressed in white clothing apparently meant to represent shrouds and to show the effects of the international sanctions on the Iraqi people.

But so far at least, the protests have been smaller, fewer and less intense than those during the Gulf War.

Fatah, Arafat’s political party, helped organize Monday’s rallies, but he and the rest of the Palestinian leadership have tried to maintain neutrality in the current confrontation between Iraq and the United States. The Palestinians have opposed a U.S. military strike but have refrained from expressing any support for Hussein.

“We hope that the crisis will be solved by diplomatic means,” Arafat said Monday after meeting with the European Commission president in Gaza City. In 1991, Arafat and other Palestinian leaders backed Iraq against the U.S.-led coalition.

Still, Israeli officials on Monday criticized the rallies and warned against any official support for Iraq among Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “disappointed” that Palestinians were expressing support for the Iraqi regime. “It brings back unpleasant memories, and it shows the need for real acceptance of Israel--that has not sunk in,” Netanyahu told a conference of rabbis.

Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai warned that it would be a “very serious mistake” for Palestinians to support Hussein.

In Washington, senior officials expressed “deep concern” Monday about the Palestinians’ pro-Hussein protests for their possible effect on the Iraqi standoff and, more important, on the wider Mideast peace process.

The White House fears that the appearance of Palestinian support for Hussein targeting Tel Aviv for attack, as happened in 1991, could so anger Israel that it could harm the already deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on her recent swing through the Middle East, warned Arafat “not to fall back into the alliances of the past that got the Palestinians nowhere,” a senior administration official said. She was referring to the Palestinians’ costly, isolating support of Hussein in the 1990-91 Gulf crisis.

In the Mideast, Fatah officials said they organized Monday’s rallies to let Palestinians vent frustration over the stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and over perceptions of inequities in the Clinton administration’s treatment of Iraq and Israel.

“Palestinians look at the fact that the whole American campaign is based on the reality that Iraq is not complying with United Nations resolutions on weapons inspections,” said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst and director of the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center. “But Israel also refuses to comply with U.N. resolutions and international agreements, and it doesn’t meet the same level of American pressure.”

Still, Khatib said, many Palestinians are disenchanted with Hussein and fear that the Iraqi standoff will prevent progress on the long-stalled negotiations with Israel. “There is great frustration that the tensions are distracting the international community from the peace process,” he said. “But that doesn’t translate to much support these days for Saddam.”

Times staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.