Introduction:
The Palestinian Authority [PA] has consistently seen Iraq as one of its closest allies and Palestinian enmity towards the United States dates back to the first Gulf war when Palestinians supported Iraq in their attack on Kuwait. Iraq has recently gained even more status in the PA due to Iraq’s support of their terror war with Israel. Especially prominent are the large financial grants that Saddam Hussein has given to families of suicide bombers in public ceremonies televised on PA TV.

For these reasons the PA as policy, has sided openly with Iraq the coming war and continues to send them messages of support combined with vicious expression of hatred directed toward the United States. This past Friday, in the official Sermon on PA TV by religious figure Ibrahim Madiras, America is defined as “the foremost enemy of the Muslim nation” and is compared to Pharaoh of the Bible who said, according to Islamic tradition: “There is no God besides me….” The US war against Iraq is said to be an imperialist war over oil, and the war on terror is said to be the guise for the theft of the oil. Attacks on US policy appears regularly in the PA media.

The following is from the sermon:
“America is the first-degree enemy of the Palestinian people and the Islamic and Arab nations. Yes, America is the foremost enemy of this people. America is the foremost enemy of the Muslim nation, because it has started a war against this Arab, Islamic people… Iraq possesses far more oil … than the oil reserves in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and America wants to have control over the oil. Therefore it has created various methods and fabricated lies and deceit in order to enter into a war against Iraq…. America is behaving like Pharaoh at this time; I only see within America what we saw and heard from Pharaoh, the curse of God upon him. America is behaving like Pharaoh right now. It is telling the whole world: “There is no God besides me…” (Surat Alkatzetz, verse 38). The entire world is standing there saying ‘no’ to war against Iraq and ‘no’ to war against the Arab nation. Yet America is saying what Pharaoh said: “There is no God besides me….” [PA TV February 21, 2003] (PMW.ORG.IL 02/27/03)