The Palestinians Back Another Loser

By Jon D. Hull/Jerusalem

The Palestinians tell their own version of the war. An Iraqi Scud missile slammed into Israel's Ben Gurion Airport, killing 400 Soviet Jewish immigrants just off the plane. Thousands of Israelis were slaughtered by the Scuds, and the Dimona nuclear complex in the Negev lies in ruins. The Americans lost 100,000 soldiers in battle. Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait was only tactical, designed to lull the allies, while Saddam Hussein waited for the right moment to incinerate the Jewish state. "Every Palestinian knows that Saddam will emerge victorious," said Abdul Majeed Shahin as he discussed the war with a dozen others gathered in Jerusalem's Muslim quarter last week. "You see, he's got a secret weapon."

% Such wild fantasies are remarkably widespread among Saddam's Palestinian supporters, who simply cannot accept that they have once again backed a loser. Even after the Iraqi leader cavalierly jettisoned their cause during last- ditch peace negotiations with the Soviets, many Palestinians refuse to believe they have been abandoned by yet another Arab leader. "It's very hard for Palestinians to admit that they were sold out," said Mohammed Kamel, a merchant from Jerusalem's Old City. "We are depressed and desperate because we have no friends and no allies. This is the story of our lives."

Palestinians blame everyone but themselves for their latest setback, failing to acknowledge that the enormous political and financial damage they are suffering is largely self-inflicted. By siding with Saddam, they lost sympathy and support among the allies, both Western and Arab, and handed Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir a propaganda windfall. Unless they quickly face up to their mistakes, they will miss a unique opportunity to press their case in postwar negotiations.

But so far the reaction on the streets of the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan is defiant. "Maybe he lost the battle, but that doesn't mean he lost the war," said Faisal al Afghani, whose Amman souvenir shop sells miniature Scud missiles. "We haven't had a leader like Saddam since Saladin." Unable to digest Iraq's defeat, many sought refuge in elaborate rationalizations. "The surrender of Iraqi troops," declared Stawri Khayat, a 30-year-old linguist from Jerusalem, "was staged by the Zionist-controlled media."

This capacity for denial even in the face of manifest evidence may strike Westerners as absurd, but it is deeply rooted in the Arab psyche's mixture of bravado, rhetoric and religious conviction. Arabs denied Israel's existence for decades and believed that Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser had a trick up his sleeve when his air force was destroyed in the first hours of the 1967 war. Fouad Subhi, a butcher at the Baqa'a refugee camp near Amman, still puts his faith in Saddam: "After he rebuilds Iraq, he will try to liberate Palestine again."

Not all Palestinians are capable of such self-delusion. When Iraq retreated from Kuwait last week, many men and women in the occupied territories wept. "I stopped praying for Saddam because he has turned out to be just another lying and cheating Arab leader who doesn't give a damn about us," said Ayyob Saber, a laborer from Hebron. The clandestine leadership of the intifadeh ordered Palestinians to tune in to Jordanian television, which offered a rosier version of events. Many Arabs avoided the news altogether. Said Thalji Shwaiky, a vegetable seller from the West Bank village of Halhoul, "I can't stand the humiliation."

In Amman, anguish at Iraq's defeat is tempered by the belief that Saddam has succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue at the top of the international agenda. "All the world is looking at our problem now," said Yussef Fawaz, a former Palestine Liberation Organization guerrilla. But as the U.S. begins its postwar diplomacy, Palestinians are less inclined than ever to put their faith in an American-imposed solution. They expect that Israel will exact a high political and financial price from Washington for its restraint, blocking any solution sympathetic to Palestinian desires. Yet the real tragedy is that as long as the Palestinians cling to illusions, they will never be capable of turning their dream of statehood into reality.

With reporting by Jamil Hamad/Nablus and Scott MacLeod/Amman