FLASHBACK: Refugees Brace For Hard Times

Aws Al-Sharqy, IOL Baghdad Correspondent

Three months into the end of the U.S.-British offensive and spread of anarchy and lawlessness in Iraq , more than 8,000 families of Palestinian refugees were inflicted with tough living conditions.

Expelled by Israeli occupation forces in 1948, Palestinian diaspora, mostly from Haifa , had moved to Iraq , where then Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs took care of them.

But with the U.S. and British forces rolling into Baghdad on April 9, life took an opposite run for those bereaved people, leaving 1,000 of their families homeless.

"With sky-high rents after the crumbling of the Saddam regime, some 1948 Palestinians were ousted from the rented houses by their landlords who seek more money on their property," complained Palestinian Hassan Abdullah.

Scenes of suffering and humiliation was further demonstrated in Palestinian refugee camps, where people were hit by a sharp shortage of life essentials.Electricity has been intermittent and sewage systems fully broken down, in addition to temperature hitting 50 Celsius.

"We are living in very bad conditions. No one even care about us," said Abdel-Ghani Tawfiq.In the camps, the majority complain of housing and high rent crises which they had not been used to under the former regime.

"As it has been hard for nationals, how do you imagine the situation for others," wondered one local inhabitant.He said that the former regime gave Palestinian diaspora houses for rents not exceeding two dollars a month.

"According to the old regime's laws, the landlords were not allowed to raise rents or even ask for evacuation, but now things changed completely."As Iraq descended into lawlessness, chaos and robbery since the collapse of the regime, Palestinian refugees were left bracing for a harder plight.

Ironically, Iraq has become a second occupied Palestine with military checkpoints, barbed wires, occupying soldiers, women frisking and unemployment becoming everyday scenes in the war-torn country, with the only difference that the occupiers are Americans not Israelis.

U.S. occupation forces also reinforced their intrusive sweeps in Iraqi houses.

Fanned by the American provocations, Iraqi resistance operations have taken an upward trajectory by jeering desperate Iraqis wanting to see an end to occupation, a not-so-different picture long painted in the minds of Palestinians.

6/7/2003 Islam Online