AL-BIREH (Occupied West Bank): Palestinian relatives of accused Fort Hood US Major Nidal Malik Hasan grappled with his motives on Sunday as some neighbours hailed the rampage as revenge for US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and continuous backing and support to Israel.

Many Palestinians living in and around the West Bank town of Al-Bireh have friends and relatives who have gone to the US and prospered.

But like much of the Arab and Muslim world they view American policy on the decades-old Middle East conflict as hopelessly tilted towards Israel and were outraged by the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mohammed Hasan, a 25-year-old cousin of the US-born gunman, remembers when Major Hasan spent a month at his family home in Al-Bireh 15 years ago.

‘I was only 10 years old, but as far as I remember Nidal was quiet, and he was happy to be working for the American military,’ Mohammed Hasan said.

‘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 Major Hasan, 39, 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 probing whether the suspect, who survived gunshot wounds, was motivated by Islamic ideology or had snapped under the pressure of his job counselling soldiers traumatised by combat.

His cousin Mohammed Hasan and other relatives living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank initially denied knowing anything about him because they feared if their names appeared in print it would harm their chances of travelling to the United States, another family member told AFP.

Mohammed Hasan 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 ankle-length shirt Major Hasan wore the morning of the killings.

‘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 Mohammed 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, Afghanistan and Israeli-occupied Palestine.

‘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. — AFP