By Nidal al-Mughrabi
Gaza - About 200 diehard Palestinian supporters of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein burnt American and Israeli flags on Monday to protest against his capture by United States troops while their leader Yasser Arafat kept silent.
Most Palestinians were no champions of Saddam's brutal dictatorship but all saw him as the only consistent Arab patron of their independence struggle against Israel and many were in shock after his meek surrender.
Chinese-made dolls of Saddam dressed like a boxer had been bestsellers in Gaza but on Monday sales were no longer brisk. "He is no longer fit for boxing," one salesperson said.
Activists of the pro-Saddam Arab Liberation Front and the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a spin-off of Arafat's Fatah faction, marched in Gaza's Khan Younis refugee camp, firing assault rifles into the air and setting US and Israeli flags alight.
They held up old posters of a sleek, imperious Saddam contrasting with the grubby unkempt fugitive found hiding in a hole in the ground by US troops, and waved Iraqi flags.
"The Americans may have captured you but you captured our hearts," an organiser said through loudspeakers.
"We will sacrifice our blood and souls for Saddam," shouted marchers in a chant heard over and over in Iraq through Saddam's three decades of iron rule.
But most Palestinians struggled to come to grips with the shattered reputation of Saddam as an Arab nationalist hero who paid more than $30-million (about R200-million) in cash to families of Palestinians whose sons died in a three-year-old uprising against Israel.
Like many Palestinians, Adli Sadek, columnist in the official Palestinian Authority daily al-Hayat al-Jadia, wrote that Saddam should have died resisting capture rather than submit without a shot fired, despite a pistol by his side.
"Maybe they fired a smoke bomb that neutralised him. Maybe he was asleep and was betrayed by traitors," Sadek mused. "We wish he had resisted as did his sons," he added. Uday and Qusay Hussein died in a shootout with US troops in July.
Aides to Arafat, among the few Arab leaders to oppose the 1991 Gulf War that reversed Saddam's occupation of Kuwait, said he would say nothing about the sensational arrest.
There has been no comment either from Prime Minister Ahmed Korei, a moderate supporter of peaceful compromise with Israelis but wary of deep resentment among Palestinians toward the United States over its perceived pro-Israeli bias.
Like many Arabs no matter how disapproving of Saddam's rule, Palestinians were mortified by the television footage of a exhausted and resigned Saddam submitting to a mouth examination and check for lice by a US army medic.
"I wished this was a Hollywood movie, the wishful thinking of an American director," said Salah Ahmed, a Gaza electrician.
"I did not cry for him so much as I cried because America decides now who will be and who won't be in power in our Arab states," taxi driver Khaled Ali said.