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| Middle East |
| Pro-Saddam rally held in Strip |
| 2002-08-15 |
| Setting fire to U.S. and Israeli flags, and chanting "Dear Saddam, bomb Tel Aviv," several hundred My goodness! Has anything like that ever happened before? The demonstrators waved Palestinian flags as well as posters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and Saddam, who fired dozens of Scud missiles into Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. They were marching through Rafah refugee camp, a flashpoint of violence in the south of the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian uprising which began nearly two years ago. "We are marching to Iraq, giving millions of martyrs on the way," they chanted. Good idea. And you're leaving... when? Many of the marchers were youths and some were children. Some marched with bare chests, clutched automatic machineguns and had black paint smeared on their faces like combat soldiers. They like to pretend they are... Raouf Barbakh, a member of Arafat's Fatah movement and an organizer of the rally, said Palestinians and Iraqis shared "the same present and the same future." That's what we're counting on... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |