"We All Just Want to Leave"
News: In Iraq, thousands of Palestinian refugees face discrimination and violence -- and they have nowhere to go.
May 4, 2006
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Wanting to be seen as an Arab hero, Saddam Hussein styled himself a great champion of the Palestinian cause, pledging support and special consideration to the 23,000 Palestinian refugees living in the country, most of whom arrived after the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars.
But his generosity toward the Palestinians—which included below-market rent and preferential access to government jobs—provoked envy among less-fortunate Iraqis, and after the US invasion toppled Saddam in 2003, many landlords retaliated by kicking the Palestinians out of their rent-controlled apartments, driving them into refugee camps around the country. One such camp was a soccer stadium in Baladiyat, a Palestinian neighborhood of Baghdad which contains numerous apartment blocks constructed by Saddam's regime. (Only recently were the refugees moved from the stadium to more permanent housing.)
Baladiyat's residents say that the neighborhood's population has doubled since 2003, as Palestinians from around Baghdad continue to arrive, fleeing harassment elsewhere. So many makeshift houses have been constructed on the streets and walkways in the neighborhood that the roads are now too narrow for traffic, so that the area resembles Palestinian refugee neighborhoods in Jordan and Lebanon.
The initial wave of anger in Iraq towards Palestinians has recently intensified, as native Iraqis have accused them—and other non-Iraqi Arabs—of supporting the Sunni insurgency. Dozens, if not hundreds, of Palestinians have been kidnapped, arrested, and assassinated by government-linked militias, most of them Shiite. (Palestinians are overwhelmingly Sunnis.)
Other Palestinians have simply left the country, although many have been unable to find anywhere else to go. Over two hundred remain in a squalid refugee camp on the Jordanian border, where they have been living since March. UN representatives are presently trying to negotiate their entry into Syria. Despite the fact that strong winds and dust storms have recently caused damage to the camp, the refugees prefer to stay in the camp than return to Baghdad.
After the February bombing of a Shiite holy shrine in Samarra, residents of Baldiyat say that there were rocket and mortar attacks on the neighborhood—retaliation by Shiites, presumably. The sheikh at a local mosque, an Iraqi, has been threatened. Many Palestinians have stopped going to work or school for fear of violence.
Abu Mohamed is sitting in a friend's living room, part of a school that has been converted to apartments to make room for those who have fled to Baldiyat. He shows off a bullet wound just below the knee on his right leg, which is swollen down to the foot.
"I was hit by crossfire in the neighborhood 10 days ago. I went to the hospital, but left before getting treatment," he says. "One of the doctors told me I should leave before the Iraqi National Guard came to detain me. That's what happens to [non-Iraqi] Arabs that come to the hospital with bullet wounds."
So pervasive is the fear among Palestinians that Abu Mohamed, like the others interviewed for this piece, refused to give his real name.
David Enders is author of Baghdad Bulletin: Dispatches on the American Occupation.
