Palestinians' Rage At U.S. Festers

Mohammed Domeh was relaxing on his living room sofa, watching the TV news when he heard the fateful words: President Bush was flatly ruling out the return of Palestinians such as himself to what is now Israel.

"When I heard what Bush had to say — and I am saying this as a Palestinian intellectual — I wished I could wear an explosive belt around my waist and blow myself up in front of Bush," said Domeh, 44.

Such anti-American rage, from an otherwise mild-spoken, middle-class Palestinian writer, is being echoed around the Arab world at a volume some say is unprecedented.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a close ally of Washington, told France's Le Monde newspaper that U.S. support for Israel, on top of the war in Iraq, has driven Arabs to a "hatred never equaled" toward America.

The trigger was Bush's meeting with Ariel Sharon last week, after which the president publicly backed the Israeli prime minister's plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, endorsed the permanence of some big Jewish settlements in the West Bank and said a solution of the refugee question "will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel."

Unlike Domeh, teacher Raja Dirbash said she wasn't surprised. It merely confirmed what Israel and the United States had agreed long ago.

"What do you expect from a murderer?" she said.

Fifty-six years after they fled the land that would become Israel, millions of Palestinians still claim a right to return. Some, like Domeh, have built new lives and citizenships, while many others live in squalid refugee camps. Dirbash, 46, insists on living in the Baqaa refugee camp outside Amman until she returns to her ancestral home.

Domeh yearns for the 100 acres he says his family abandoned when they fled their village near Haifa in 1948. He thinks it must be worth $1 million today.

While Israel has always insisted there can be no refugee return, Palestinians have clung just as stubbornly to their "the right of return." It played a big part in derailing the last Palestinian-Israeli peace effort four years ago.

Hopes for a return are strong even in Jordan, the one Arab country that has integrated its 1.7 million Palestinian refugees and given most of them full Jordanian citizenship. Prominent Palestinian families control much of Jordan's trade and banking. The queen is of a renowned Palestinian family.

Domeh, who was born in the West Bank seven years before Israel captured it in the 1967 war, reckons many Palestinians would probably not go back even if they could, especially those who do not have property in what is now Israel. But it's the principle that counts — "it's a question of rights," he said.

"To be frank, I hate the Americans. I don't like them. Now my hatred has tripled. Before, I didn't like them because of their unfair policies. Now, it's about me; it's personal. It's my right. It's not just about my country," said Domeh.

And Israel is only one source of anger. Iraq is another. Then there are reformers who accuse Washington of backing repressive Arab regimes, and conservatives who blame American pop culture for declining morals.

Refugee Fuad Mansi says his hatred built up over the years as Washington killed one U.N. Security Council resolution after another condemning Israel for its actions against the Palestinians.

"With every veto, they chip away at our dignity and play with our emotions," said Mansi, 30, who works in a car repair shop on the edge of the Wehdat refugee camp.

The United States usually says it imposes its veto when resolutions are one-sided. After the most recent veto, of a condemnation of Israel's assassination of Palestinian Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, John Negroponte, the U.S. representative, said:

"This Security Council does nothing to contribute to a peaceful settlement when it condemns one party's actions and turns a blind eye to everything else occurring in the region."

Sarah Ghanem, 52, who lives in the Baqaa camp, said if it weren't for U.S. money, weapons and diplomacy backing Israel, "we would have been able to drive the Israelis out of our lands."

"America is our enemy as much as Israel is," she said.

By Scheherezade Faramarzi