Palestine, November 08: Palestinian relatives of accused Fort Hood gunman Nidal Malik Hasan grappled with his motives on Sunday as some neighbours hailed the rampage as revenge for US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Many Palestinians living in and around the West Bank town of Al-Bireh have friends and relatives who have gone to the United States and prospered after finding that opportunities lacked in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
But like much of the Arab and Muslim world they view American policy towards the decades-old Middle East conflict as hopelessly tilted towards Israel and were outraged by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mohammed Hasan, a 25-year-old cousin of the US-born gunman, remembers when Hasan spent a month at his family home in Al-Bireh 15 years ago.
“I was only ten years old, but as far as I remember Nidal was quiet, and he was happy to be working for the American military,” Hasan said, after initially saying the alleged shooter was a distant relative he did not know.
“I am not happy or angry, but what concerns us as a family is to know what it was that pushed Nidal to do such a thing.”
On Thursday Hasan allegedly went on the rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, killing 13 people and wounding another 30 in one of the worst mass shootings ever on a US military base.
Investigators are currently probing whether the alleged shooter — who survived gunshot wounds — was motivated by Islamist ideology or had snapped under the pressure of his job counselling soldiers traumatised by combat.
His cousin Mohammed denied that there were any “religious or national motives” behind the killings, and said relatives in the United States were equally baffled as to what could have provoked the massacre.
“We talk every day with our family in the United States and are following the issue with Nidal. No one knows why he did it.
“Of course, we know that he faced problems from the soldiers he treated, especially because he wore a white dishdasha and prayed,” he said, referring to the traditional Arab ankle-length shirt.
“But our family does not think his being sent to Afghanistan was reason enough for him to have done what he did.”
At a shop down the road from Hasan’s house many of the family’s neighbours welcomed the shooting, seeing it as revenge for the killing of Arabs and Muslims in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Nidal did a great thing, because now the Americans know that that there is someone who says ‘no’ to their policies,” Faris Abu Ras, 61, said.
“Even if the person who did this were not a Palestinian and a Muslim I would still be happy about it, because the Americans only know the language of force.”
At that point an old man sitting in the back of the shop called out: “What’s important is that God heals Nidal’s wounds.”
Mohammed Riyadh, 25, said Hasan was obliged to refuse US military service overseas because it would have required that he kill Muslims.
“What Nidal did was natural. It’s what any Muslim or Arab might do to express his rejection of the killing of other Muslims and Arabs.”
Meanwhile Mohammed Abu Halal, who works at Bir-Zeit University nearby, said that political motivation was unlikely to have played a role in the shootings.
“He worked for a long time in the American army, and that means he must have really wanted to work for them, and didn’t have any political problem with it.”
—Agencies