BEIRUT -- In his workshop in suburban Beirut, Reef Hammoudi has been painting Israeli and American flags at the rate of 50 a day, so high is the demand from people demonstrating in support of the new Palestinian "intifada." He does them on nonabsorbant cloth just an hour or so before they are due for ritual burning because, he says, "I can't stand them in my shop and they disgust my clients."
Lebanon is usually the most eloquent sounding-board of Arab and Muslim emotions. True to form, it was the first to react to Israeli Gen. Ariel Sharon's provocation at Jerusalem's Temple Mount and the tumult that followed it, with those twin villains, Israel and the United States, more tightly linked than ever as the target of the demonstrators' wrath.
But this time it was far from alone. The protests sweeping the Arab world these past few days are by far the most widespread for many years.