Iraq's 'liberated' Palestinians
Felicity Arbuthnot

Last week many of Baghdad's Palestinians received hand written notes, delivered by armed men, warning them to leave within seventy two hours or face death, decimation.

The same scenario happened earlier this year. On 3rd October, Jennifer Pagonis of the UN High Commission for Refugees, told journalists in Geneva, that Palestinians in Iraq : '.. lack protection, have serious problems obtaining identity cards and have been target of continuing harassment, threats, kidnappings and killings.' Response to UNHCR's strongly expressed concerns to the multi-national forces and the Iraqi 'government' yielded only 'modest results'. No surprises there.

Iraq's Palestinians are another forgotten tragedy in the predictable carnage the US/UK's criminal, illegal invasion has wrought. There are those who fled Palestine after the British led formation of Israel in 1948, ousted from ancestral homes, fleeing just with keys, deeds and that they could carry or load, vowing to return. Other, their children and grandchildren, born in exile, the dream to return nurtured with their mothers' milk, as Palestinians across the globe.

Of Baghdad's thirty four thousand Palestinians, just twenty thousand remain since the city's fall in 2003. Given the invasion fuelled sectarianism, with disparate factions and private militias entering the country with US/UK tanks and with Israeli soldiers wearing US uniforms and Israeli intelligence allegedly advising, setting policies and Israeli methods being used to demolish homes, empty villages, build walls and generally terrorise, speculation as to the source of the plight of the Palestinians is an uncertain science.

Occupation forces attacked the Palestinian Embassy in Baghdad when they invaded and have occupied it since, refusing the return of all files and still, seemingly, holding three employees.

Yet, it seems, whilst military Commanders took such (illegal) action, kept the records of the thousands of Palestinians legitimately resident in Iraq - many Iraqi born - their policy has been to arrest Palestinians in Iraq as 'foreign fighters'. Those of Palestinian heritage were not eligible for Iraqi citizenship, though before the invasion had identity papers, subsidised housing and even help to start businesses. They could not actually own property, or oddly cars - though the latter problem seemed to be overcome in some 'Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem' way.

The Palestine General Delegate to the UK does not have details of those displaced or held, though the recent video of Mhyar Abdullah, detained in Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib for eleven months after the 1993 invasion, a Palestinian who has lived all his life in Baghdad, one of those detained as a 'foreign fighter' is a documented case in point (www.uruknet.info?p=27217)

In the total ignorance of Iraq's complex society and historic alliances, it is presumably beyond even an interpreter to distinguish that one speaking with a Baghdad accent, rather than one of an area of Palestine, most likely was a legitimate resident of Baghdad (few illegitimate ones existed under Saddam.)

According to Manfred Nowak of the UN Human Rights Assistance Office (Baghdad) 'torture may be worse than under Saddam' and 'is out of control.' Sadly he was also speaking from Geneva, Iraq being too 'dangerous' to go to, out of the confines of Saddam's bunkered palace complex 'the Green Zone' ; the liberators rent free squat.Someone should call the bailiffs.

With death threats - and rent subsidies gone (landlords raising rents to the unpayable for countless Iraqis and residents) Palestinians are again fleeing. But one thousand displaced opted to stay where they knew and set up a refugee camp in Baghdad itself. They petitioned the Occupation Provisional Authority for a building to take over and use their skills to renovate - to no avail. They live in increasing squalor with limited water, sanitation and electricity.

Displaced again, they have named their camp, poignantly : 'Al Awda' (the return.) Every Palestinian's dream. Seven hundred kilometres away, on the border with Jordan, one hundred and fifty Palestinians have camped, many since 2003. Jordan has taken some of those formerly there, but having taken in nearly their own population in 1991 from Iraq's displaced in that onslaught, they have asked for the world to help this time. Those responsible for another humanitarian tragedy have elicited the response of the deaf mute.

Three hundred and thirty men women and children, have been stranded at the Al Tanf crossing with Syria for months, in tents, about to be flooded with the coming of the winter rains. On the other side of the border area further three hundred in the Al Hol camp, with very restricted movement.

At Al Tanf occupation soldiers allegedly pitch up to terrorise men, women and children with no place to hide. A fourteen year old begging for water was reported killed by a truck. At Al Hol a man whose premature baby died, was unable to travel to attend the funeral. Conditions are 'deplorable'. (www.afsc.org)

Just before the invasion, my friend R., opened her heart and gave an example of the nightmare of being Palestinian. Highly educated, elegant, slender, with a face for a painter to dream of, she had developed breast cancer. Iraq's cancer epidemic since 1991 has filled columns and volumes, linked to the weapons used (and used again in greater magnitude in 2003 and since.)

There was no treatment in Iraq (vetoed under the embargo.) She had no passport to travel. Her boss at the UN Agency where she worked pulled every string he could think of to fly her and another colleague suffering the same plight, to a European hospital, under the auspices of the UN. Both had been given scant chance of survival. Six months later, they returned in remission, glowing with literally, a new lease of life.

At her house, her three year old daughter was still overwhelmed at having her mother back. As we talked, Baghdad's precarious electricity went off (spare parts vetoed for thirteen years.) She reached for the candles in the blackness and struck a match - and I heard a scraping sound.

'That is S ..' (her daughter) 'she was terrified of the dark, but now she loves the candles and brings her little chair and sits gazing in to the flame until the lights come back on, then she blows them out.' The tiny child, absorbed, her face lit by the candle, was an unforgettable, living Old Master's masterpiece.

Where are they now? Or are they? April 2003, saw the telephone numbers changed and post boxes for mail collection bombed. 'The catastrophe of 1948 is repeated', says Dr Salem Al-Awawdeh, Director of the Palestinian Red Cross. At the camp at Al Tanf, Louay (21) born in Iraq, of Palestinian parents - child of the embargo and year after year of illegal US and UK bombings - says simply : 'Before I die, I want to spend one minute in Palestine, that is all.'

And the West rails of 'Islamofascists', 'Crusades', 'Islam' the 'new Communism' and Leader of the UK House (of Commons) Jack Straw, attempts to dictate Muslim dress code, while their tragedy is ignored and while the displaced (the lucky ones) ' ... go to a country not of our flesh. The chestnut trees are not of our bones .....We go to a country that does not hang a special sun over us ....' ( ' We go to a country'. Darwish, as above.) Shame on us all.