The Pals aren't sucking it up too well. They keep supporting the losers.
DAILY EXPRESS
Unkindest Cut
by Hassan Fattah
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 04.16.03
On the eve of Saddam's fall on April 9, hundreds turned out in Bethlehem to offer their condolences to the relatives of Imad Humabi, a Palestinian who had volunteered to fight in Iraq and had been killed in battle. Humabi, who had grown up in Amman and was virtually unknown in the town, was rumored to have been an attempted suicide bomber. But as the villagers poured in, most simply expressed their regret that the young man had given his life for nothing.
For some in the Middle East, the war in Iraq was the last stand for Arab nationalism. For others it was only the latest tragedy to beset the region. But no matter their take, most Arabs expected the invasion to be a long, bloody fight. If nothing else, the thinking went, the Iraqi regime would teach the United States a lesson, even as it collapsed.
So when Baghdad fell in a matter of days, it left the Arab world stunned. Every assumption, every calculation, and every article of faith had suddenly been undercut. And nowhere was that reaction more pronounced than in the Palestinian circles that had looked to Saddam as their only champion, a heavyweight who had stood the test of time. Many had seen Iraq's fight against the United States as analogous to the Palestinian intifada. They had expected Saddam and his crew to stand just as firmly as the Palestinians had. But he had failed them.
[O] ne need only consult the unusually sedate Arab media to gauge the depths of the disappointment now settling in across the Middle East. Arab TV reports continue to lament the vandalism and looting in Baghdad under the watchful eye of American troops. An editorial in the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat recently mourned the demise of Arab identity.
But it was the Palestinian newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida that most succinctly captured the depths of Arab despair, running a cartoon of an elderly Palestinian man weeping as he waved a flag imprinted with the name "Baghdad." "Everybody felt personally defeated not only in their position [supporting Iraq] but also in their expectation," says Mahdi Abdul-Hadi, head of the Palestinian Academic Society in Jerusalem. "Our thinking and way of being is dominated by our passions. ... People expected steadfastness and a willingness to stand up. How could Jenin stand up to all that bombardment, how did Arafat resist the siege in Ramallah for all these months, but Saddam couldn't stand up to the invasion of his country?"
A recent public opinion poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC) summed up the feeling, reporting that 56 percent of Palestinians surveyed believe the war in Iraq will have a negative influence on the Palestinian cause. "I think people were so surprised that there wasn't any resistance and were so disappointed with the reaction," says Khader Abuswai, acting director of the JMCC. Abuswai explains that in recent years the Palestinian "street" has been eager to seize on the slightest hint of a successful resistance. But each time that resistance fails to produce any tangible results, the ensuing despair can be intense. "It happened with the Intifada, and nothing happened. And now it happened in this war and still nothing happened."
Even the most ardent Saddam supporters have trouble suppressing their disillusionment. "These are not the Iraqis that I knew," laments Mohanna Shbatt, an activist with the Arab Liberation Front, the Palestinian branch of the Baath movement. Shbatt had studied in Iraq and looked to Saddam as the last true Arab leader. He had carried Saddam's flag in Gaza for years and just two weeks earlier had been responsible for dispensing Saddam's money to families of Palestinian militants and civilians killed in the intifada. Saddam had handed out $32 million over 30 months, but in just a matter of days he had become an embarrassment. "I didn't think that the Iraqi people could fall so far," Shbatt broods.
All of which has provoked a desperate round of defiance among Palestinian elites. In his office in Jericho a few days later, Palestinian spokesman and minister for local government Saeb Erekat railed against the dramatic fall of the Iraqi government and the looting and occupation that stripped the country of much of its history, maybe even its dignity. "What this means to us is that we have to be more determined than ever to stop the occupation," Erekat said, quite determinedly. The leaders of terrorist organizations like Islamic Jihad and Hamas have offered a different take on the same idea: They've promised to escalate their attacks against Israelis.
What's not clear is how representative these views are. At the very least, many non-Palestinian Arab opinion-makers are beginning to see the fall of Baghdad as an opportunity for introspection. "If we don't face ourselves and discuss our shortcomings ... nobody can do anything for us. We are responsible for all that is happening to us," wrote Saudi columnist Anas Zahid in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. In the Lebanon's English-language Daily Star, Shafeeq Ghabra, president of the American University of Kuwait, sounded an even tougher note. "These fateful days have revealed the degree of cultural degradation in our region."
And that message may be resonating with the average Palestinian. "It's bad news, but always in bad news there is good news," says Abdul Hadi. "It's time for [our leaders] to take a position--this has simply exposed their hypocrisy." "At the end of the day, people are saying that we have to speak our mind. There's not going to be obedience to rulers as before," he adds. "This has been a lesson to every Arab regime that they need to look to their people. If a storm comes from outside, the only way to stand is to have a constituency supporting you."
Hassan Fattah is a reporter based in the Middle East. |
