Many Palestinians living in and around the town Al-Bireh in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have friends and relatives who have gone to the US and prospered.
But, like much of the Arab and Muslim world, they view US policy towards the decades-old Middle East conflict as hopelessly tilted towards Israel and they were outraged by the 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 10 years old but as far as I remember Nidal was quiet and happy to be working for the American military," Hasan said, after initially saying the 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 went on the rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 30 in the worst mass shootings at a US military base.
Investigators are investigating whether Hasan - who survived gunshot wounds - was motivated by Islamist ideology or had snapped under the pressure of his job, which was to counsel soldiers traumatised by combat or to be deployed to Afghanistan.
His cousin, Mohammed, denied that there were "religious or national motives" behind the killings, and said the killer's relatives in the US were equally baffled as to what provoked the massacre.
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