Ostracized by much of the Arab world and blockaded by the West for his takeover of Kuwait, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq has nevertheless scored points that could have serious repercussions for his Arab foes and has already done severe damage to the peace camp in Israel.
The Iraqi leader has generated fervent grass-roots support among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
There also have been fiercely pro-Iraq demonstrations in Jordan.
Since he invaded oil-rich Kuwait on Aug. 2 and annexed it shortly thereafter, Hussein has made clear that he intends to generate internal pressures in the Arab countries to force their governments to support him, like it or not, against his enemies in the West.
The Palestinians who took to the streets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the weekend, waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags, could be harbingers of popular demonstrations in those Arab countries that have followed the U.S. lead to isolate Hussein.
And they already have divided and discredited Israelis working to find common ground with Palestinian moderates in the pursuit of peace.
Abba Eban, perhaps the leading spokesman of Israeli doves, was furious about the Palestinian demonstrations.
No future meaningful progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians can be based on “people who identify with Saddam Hussein,” he declared Monday.
SCORN FROM THE RIGHT WING
Eban said it was “very serious” that Palestinians who should be supportive of the forces of peace are “flocking to the black banner of Saddam Hussein.”
The former foreign minister spoke after Labor Party doves gathered Sunday night to take stock of the embarrassing situation in which recent developments have cast them.
Representatives of the Labor Party and other left-of-center Knesset factions had met only a week earlier with Palestinian representatives at a Jerusalem hotel.
Although they failed to agree on a joint statement, the very fact that Israelis and Palestinians were meeting in Jerusalem was regarded as an achievement.
Kuwait had already been invaded by the time the meeting took place, but Arab popular reaction had not yet crystallized.
What had happened was the brutal murder of two Jewish teen-agers just outside Jerusalem, presumably by Palestinian terrorists.
That triggered three days of unprecedented mob violence by Jews against Arabs in the Israeli capital and its environs. Two Palestinians were killed and scores injured, as Palestinian property was destroyed.
The Israeli right wing, some of whose spokesmen publicly identified with the mobs, has heaped scorn on the dovish camp for meeting with the Palestinians.
They are pointing not only to the murders but to the fact that some of the Palestinian personalities who attended the meeting with the Israeli peace advocates are now waving the flag for Hussein.
These include Faisal Husseini, founder of the Arab Studies Institute in East Jerusalem, which advocates non-violent resistance to the Israeli presence in the administered territories.
ISRAELI ARABS BACK IRAQ, TOO
Husseini is the senior secular nationalist leader in Jerusalem. He is deputy to the chairman of the Supreme Moslem Council in Jerusalem, Sheik Sa’ad a-Din al-Alami, who sent a message of support to Hussein on Sunday.
The East Jerusalem daily Al-Fajr, whose editor, Hanna Siniora, is another Palestinian nationalist with whom Israeli doves have had contact, headlined Alami’s support of Hussein’s “struggle against the impure invaders.”
In the past, Alami has identified with the moderate, pro-Jordanian faction of Palestinians.
In recent months, the Supreme Moslem Council has been dominated by PLO supporters in the territories, including Husseini.
PLO chief Yasir Arafat, moreover, is one of the few Arab leaders to condone Hussein’s seizure of Kuwait.
And Hamas, the fundamentalist Moslem group and archrival of the secular PLO in the territories, also expressed support for Iraq on Monday.
Hamas circulated a leaflet urging Arabs to unite in a holy war against the United States and to harm American interests wherever possible. The leaflet described the present crisis as a conflict between Islam and the West.
Even among Israel’s Arab citizens, there is widespread support for the Iraqi invasion. A poll taken by an Arabic weekly found that 60 percent of Israeli Arabs back Hussein.
An Arab Knesset member, Abd-el Wahab Darousha of the Arab Democratic Party, explained his position.
“I am not a fan of Saddam, but neither am I an admirer of the oil sheiks,” he said Monday, referring to the deposed emir of Kuwait and the U.S-backed Saudi Arabian royal family.
U.S. MAY BE INDEBTED TO SYRIA
Darousha welcomed Hussein’s proposal to link a settlement of the Kuwaiti crisis with the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Saudi Arabia and Israel’s withdrawal from the administered territories, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon.
Eban said Monday he was “very sorry” that people high in the Likud-led government here were “shouting hurrah” in the belief that the peace process is a dead issue because of recent developments.
In point of fact, Eban said, the United States will be “very grateful” to Egypt and Syria for their current roles in the Gulf crisis, which help the Americans project their intervention as a non-imperialistic, multinational venture.
Egypt and Syria are both supportive of the anti-Iraq effort, and the Egyptians have already sent a token military force to join the Americans in Saudi Arabia.
Eban suggested therefore that Washington may well be called upon to show its “gratitude” by an energetic revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process once the Gulf crisis abates.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
