Palestinians Are Buoyed By the Attacks on Israel

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JERUSALEM, Jan. 20 — “There is an Arabic proverb which says there are days of honey and days of onion,” a young Palestinian, shoulders hunched against wind and rain in the Old City, says philosophically. “For years Israel has known only honey — now it is tasting the onion.”

Along wet stone streets and past shuttered shops, Palestinians hurried today with crates of milk, huge sacks of rice and potatoes and bags crammed with flat pita bread. Like Israelis, they used the first quiet moment after Iraqi missile attacks on Friday and Saturday to stockpile for further siege.

But unlike the Jews, the Palestinians say they welcome the missiles, because they believe Israel deserves to be attacked, and because, one way or another, they think war will help create a Palestinian state.

In the occupied areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in East Jerusalem, people acknowledge that the rocket attacks terrify them, but they also say the missiles have restored spirits that were dashed when United States and allied planes bombarded Baghdad on the first night of the war.

After months of unyielding support for President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Palestinians were devastated by the apparent ease of the American assault and Iraq’s failure to resist. ‘A Joyous Moment for Us’ But morale among Palestinians soared when President Hussein kept his promise to fire Scud surface-to-surface missiles at Israel.

Many Palestinians were skeptical, suspicious that like other Arab leaders, the Iraqi’s threats against Israel and promises to help the Palestinians were just rhetoric. Then President Hussein proved, Palestinians say, that only he is willing and able to stand up to Israel, and that only he understands that the Israeli-Arab conflict is at the root of Middle East instability.

“When the first air raid siren went off, it was a very joyous moment for us,” said a 21-year-old bank teller who declined to give his name. “It was great — we clapped our hands and made victory signs with our fingers.” He added: “Look, the Israelis have been attacking us for nearly 50 years, and they attack southern Lebanon just about every day.

They deserve massive missile assaults, not just a few.” Military Curfews Lifted Walking arm-in-arm in the drizzle with a friend, another Palestinian, 18-year-old Ghada Bitar, said: “The Israelis have to know what we Palestinians feel, what the Iraqis are feeling, what it feels like living with war. Now we are hopeful that this will help liberate Palestine.”

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip this morning, military authorities temporarily lifted curfews that had been in place since the war erupted, to allow Palestinians an hour or two to shop for food. In Ramallah and Bethlehem, the army resumed the court-ordered dispersal of gas masks by taking Palestinians in buses to distribution centers and driving them back home.

But only Palestinians living in towns close to Israel are to receive the masks, because the military does not have enough for the entire Arab population. In Beit Sahur, next to Bethlehem, residents refused to accept adult-sized gas masks because the army was not issuing the gear for children at the same time.

… Outside the Old City, Pierre Salfiti is kept busy all day by crowds shopping in his market. Mulling over the missile attacks, he had another suggestion: “Israel maintains it has the right to strike back at Iraq any time it wants, maybe now, maybe in 10 years.

It could be that Saddam Hussein also reserved the right to strike back for what the Israelis did to him in 1981, when they destroyed his nuclear reactor.” He paused for a moment, and then added: “We Palestinians are like someone who is drowning — we look for anything that will save us. That may be why people see Saddam as a great savior.”

How this transcription was made

Masthead not readable on the scan. The label on the slide read: [no masthead on the clipping; the credit line under the byline reads “Special to The New York Times”] — Single scan, two columns, clipped at the top rule and at the bottom rule; no masthead, folio or page number survives. Read at 6x–8x magnification throughout — the type on this scan is small (the source image is 452 px wide) and nothing here was read at native size. The two subheads inside the text (‘A Joyous Moment for Us’ and Military Curfews Lifted) are set as crossheads in the paper and are reproduced in the excerpt on their own lines. Two further crossheads, Uneasy at Civilian Targets and Working to Israel’s Advantage, fall in the portion after the excerpt ends. Nothing on this clipping required summarizing for graphic content. — No masthead, folio or printed date on the clipping. The dispatch is datelined “JERUSALEM, Jan. 20,” and the body refers to “Iraqi missile attacks on Friday and Saturday” and to allied planes bombarding Baghdad “on the first night of the war” — the Gulf war air campaign opened 17 January 1991 and the first Scud attacks on Israel were 18 and 19 January 1991, which are the Friday and Saturday named. A Jan. 20 dispatch runs Jan. 21. Maria's label is consistent with every internal marker; nothing on the page contradicts it, but nothing on the page prints the date either. A further passage was transcribed on 2 November 2026 so a quotation on the voices wall could be checked against this record.

Cite this clipping

"Palestinians Are Buoyed By the Attacks on Israel," (newspaper unidentified), 21 January 1991. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1991-059. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1991-059