The Wars Through Arab Eyes; The 'road to Jerusalem'--and Mideast peace--was supposed to lead through Baghdad. But now Arabs see two occupations: one Israeli, one American.

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 31-MAY-04

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Byline: Joshua Hammer, Richard Wolffe and Christopher Dickey, With Dan Ephron in Rafah and Rod Nordland in Baghdad

The images were searing, and strikingly similar. Last Wednesday afternoon, as a thousand unarmed Palestinian protesters marched toward Israeli troops bulldozing houses at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, two Israeli tank shells and a helicopter missile exploded around them, killing eight people, half of them children. No sooner had the world absorbed pictures of the tragedy--ambulances shrieking through the streets of Rafah, shrapnel-ridden bodies--than news broke of new carnage a few hundred miles away. U.S. Apache helicopters fired on what locals said was a wedding party in an Iraqi village near the Syrian border, killing as many as 45 people. The American military said the target was a nest of insurgents, yet women, a well-known wedding singer and several members of his band were among the victims.

For the Arab world, the twin scenes of occupying armies wreaking havoc were a painful indication of American foreign policy in disarray. "Every day we see these terrible parallels--American tanks facing Iraqis, Israeli tanks facing Palestinians," says Jihad Al Khazen, a columnist and the former editor in chief of Al Hayat, the Arabic-language daily in London. "For peace, for the future of the region, there is a sense among Arabs that everything has been brought to a dead end [by the White House]."

Last year's invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein were supposed to bring prosperity and stability to...

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