[Ironically, of all the countries in the middle east, Iraq's population was probably the one that sympathized with the Palestinians the least because of the Palestinians' uniquely strong support of Saddam. But of course they still sympathized a lot, and these last 3 weeks seem to have made it a central issue for many Iraqis for whom it wasn't before. Cole argues that the killing of Sheik Yassin not only caused both Falluja and Moqtada al-Sadr's uprising -- the last things the US expected or wanted right now -- but also contributed to the Sunni/Shiite unity that made them both much harder to deal with, as well as to boosting, among Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs who used to disdain them, the credibility of and the sympathy for both Moqtada and the Sunni fundamentalists who ambushed the Blackwater mercenaries.]
[He further argues that when this all was followed so soon after by the seeming confirmation of the Bush/Sharon press conference it led to a quantum leap in the US=Israel equation being made in the Arab press and Arab popular opinion. If anyone else said this, I would slough it off saying What else is new? and How could it get any worse? But since Cole has devoted part of almost every day for the last year to monitoring the Arabic press, his judgement that there has been a sea-change as compared with just this last year deserves a serious hearing. Clearly, winning hearts and minds in the region this is not.]
[The article is 20K, over the list posting limit. Slate requires you to sit through a 1 minute ad to view it.]
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/16/israel/
Michael