JERUSALEM — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must feel the walls closing in on him.
On one side is Hamas, which supports Osama bin Laden and organized Palestinian demonstrations against the United States this week in which two Palestinians were killed and another was declared clinically dead.
On the other side is the U.S. government, which is pushing Arafat to support the battle against bin Laden and also reach a peace agreement with Israel.
And finally there is Israel, which claims Arafat is as much a terrorist as bin Laden and doesn’t trust him to support the United States or to negotiate peace in the Mideast.
In an effort to demonstrate he is an ally of the United States, Arafat ordered a probe into Monday’s pro-bin Laden rally.
He also persuaded Hamas and Islamic Jihad to block further anti-U.S. demonstrations. Together, the groups issued a statement Tuesday night condemning internecine Palestinian fighting and urging unity.
But it was unclear how Arafat would keep those divergent groups in his camp when so many of their followers support bin Laden.
Nowhere else on the planet was bin Laden as popular this week as in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In his videotape speech aired Sunday shortly after the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began, bin Laden gave the Palestinians more than they could ever hope for.
At last, Palestinians noted with satisfaction, it would be clear to the world why it was suffering from terrorism: It was the fault of Israel and it’s closest ally, the United States.
“I swear to God that America will not live in peace until there is peace in Palestine and the army of the heathen will leave the Land of Muhammad,” bin Laden said in an apparent reference to Saudi Arabia.
He then listed honored “battle sites” where Palestinian militants have clashed with Israeli soldiers in the past year — Rafah, Ramallah and Beit Jala.
For most Palestinians who spent Sunday night glued to their television, they were watching what they called “the best show in the world.”
Palestinian reaction spelled trouble for Arafat, who wants to distance himself from bin Laden and be seen as supportive of the U.S. war on terrorism — unlike 1991, when he sided with Iraq in the Gulf War.
But the events of this week indicated that Arafat might have trouble reining in angry Palestinians who took to the streets at the urging of Hamas.
Monday’s reaction at the Islamic University in Gaza was so violent that two Palestinians were killed by Palestinian police — among them a young boy. In addition, a Palestinian policeman was clinically dead, and dozens were injured. Foreign journalists were barred from the Gaza Strip so they could not record the troubles.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority closed universities and schools to prevent further outbreaks. And reporters continued to be blocked from the area.
Based on the Gaza demonstration and others held in Arab countries, the Arab world in general and Palestinians in particular maintain a deep hatred for the United States.
“There is no other people that has suffered so much from terrorism like the Palestinian people,” said Abdul Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in Gaza. “America has always stood by Zionist terrorism.”
Israeli Arabs expressed similar feelings, and Israeli-Arab Knesset members condemned the American-led attacks.
Knesset member Ahmed Tibi backed bin Laden’s comments, calling his use of the Palestinian issue “sophisticated and emotional,” and predicting that Arab and Muslim pressure on Israel would grow as Afghani casualties mounted.
“Today they have declared war on Islam,” said Abdul Hakim Mufid, senior editor at the newspaper of the Islamic Movement in Israel. “The West has brought the calamity upon itself after hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism.”
In Arab countries, the rumor is also circulating that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by Israeli agents, to sway world opinion against Islam.
Palestinian reaction was further buoyed by a Newsweek poll that showed that 58 percent of Americans, too, feel that American support for Israel is in some measure responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
However, Israel has dismissed such rumors as preposterous, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said any attempt to link the Sept. 11 attack to Israeli policy toward the Palestinians was ridiculous.
“What’s he blabbering about?” Peres said of bin Laden on Israel Radio. “You don’t need any war of liberation for the Palestinians. We offered them liberation without war.”
Like the Palestinians, millions of Muslims shared bin Laden’s analysis that this was a war between Islam and a corrupt West.
Israelis feared possible terror retaliation for Sunday’s strikes — but then, terrorism has become part of the daily routine here.
“There is perhaps no other country in the world which is so well-prepared for terrorism like Israel,” Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said. On the eve of Simchat Torah, he urged Israelis to celebrate as they had planned, stressing that Israel is not part of the evolving war.
Despite Ben-Eliezer’s calming words, Israel feared a possible flare-up on various fronts — Israeli and Jewish targets abroad, from Hezbollah militants on the border with Lebanon and from Palestinian militants.
The fact that initial reaction was subdued did not mean that trouble would not flare up later on. It generally was assumed here that as long as Americans did not attack targets such as Iraq or Hezbollah, there was no immediate danger of a local escalation.
However, Ze’ev Schiff, military analyst for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, suggested that it was quite possible that organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah might try to open “a second front” to make life difficult for Americans.
“Moderate” Arab regimes were concerned about a possible domino effect, fearing that the offensive against Afghanistan could cause instability in countries such as Pakistan and Indonesia — which in turn might stir up spirits among radical Islamic elements in countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Egypt supported Sunday’s attack on condition that it be limited in scope. Iraq and Iran condemned it.
Professor Emmanuel Sivan, one of the leading experts on Islam in Israel, said recently that the attacks in New York and Washington were part of the “third wave of the activities of radical Islam.” The two previous waves were Islamic terrorism in Arab countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Tunisia.
The previous waves have failed, Sivan said, but radical Islam is now engaged in a third wave — against the Western world. “I am quite sure that the West will succeed in winning this round,” Sivan said last week in an interview with the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot. “But if there is something that frightens me it’s the knowledge that there will be a fourth wave, which once again will focus on the Arab countries. I am not convinced that the Arab countries will succeed in overcoming it as they have the first two waves.”