Anti-U.S. Displays Worry Palestinians

JERUSALEM —  The Palestinians have a major public relations problem. First, there were the pictures of cheering Palestinians in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Then, over the weekend, a few Muslim fundamentalists in the Gaza Strip raised a huge poster of Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the U.S. attacks.

Palestinian authorities have dealt with these displays in the way they know best: They confiscated journalists’ pictures and pretended the incidents didn’t happen.

“We know we are under a spotlight,” a Palestinian security official conceded Saturday in a telephone interview from Gaza City.

Images of young Palestinians rejoicing at American death, or honoring the suspected orchestrator of such carnage, make the Palestinians look bad at an enormously sensitive time and play into the hands of Israel, the official said.

“The Israelis take it as though we are anti-American and use it against us,” he said.

The official said police were under orders to prevent the demonstrations.

The videotapes and camera film were eventually returned to the Western journalists, the official said. This could not be confirmed immediately. Film was also seized last week from photographers at Palestinian celebrations in Nablus, and the journalists were threatened.

The official, who serves in one of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s principal security forces and spoke on condition of anonymity, said pro-Bin Laden demonstrations are rare and are executed by what he regards as an ill-informed minority, in this case members of the militant Islamic Hamas movement.

His comments echoed those of top Palestinian representatives such as Hanan Ashrawi and Information Minister Yasser Abed-Rabbo, who said Palestinian reactions were being distorted to turn the world against the Palestinian cause.

There is no denying, however, that anti-American sentiment has run high among Palestinians, especially during the last year of Israeli-Palestinian clashes that have left more than 700 people dead, most of them Palestinians.

The Palestinian reaction to what happened in the United States last week is complex. Huge numbers of Palestinians do not approve of the murder of innocent civilians. But they are extremely angry at what they see as an arrogant U.S. policy that favors their worst enemy, Israel, and the use by Israel of powerful American weapons.

Many Palestinians have expressed satisfaction that the United States finally understands what it feels like to be brutally attacked.

Arafat, meanwhile, is keen to get on America’s good side and has even offered to join the Bush administration’s “global alliance against terrorism” in hopes of staving off further Israeli assault.

But he will be under pressure to restrain militant groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, which are responsible for suicide bombing attacks on Israelis and are very popular among Palestinian masses.