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Palestinians targeted in iraq Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO253360.htmhttp://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/GEO253360.htm
No escape for fearful Palestinians in Iraq
23 Mar 2006 15:01:22 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Maher Nazih
BAGHDAD, March 23 (Reuters) - Reports of kidnappings, murder and discrimination against Palestinian refugees in Iraq have forced many to try to flee, but for most there is nowhere else to go.
Jordan's closure of its borders with Iraq on Sunday to prevent entry of 89 Palestinians seeking sanctuary from Iraq's carnage shows the refugees have few options.
Sheikh Ayman Mustafa, a 33-year-old Palestinian cleric who lives in one of the rundown apartment buildings in Baghdad that are home to thousands of refugees, said an explosion of sectarian violence had made it too risky to stay in Iraq.
"Palestinians have been abducted and later found dead," he told Reuters. "Many families have fled, others have come to me seeking protection."
The Palestinians who braved the bandits and insurgents along the treacherous highway to get to the Joranian border may now have to turn around and come back to Baghdad, where there are bombings and shootings daily.
The Jordanian authorities, fearful of a large influx of refugees from among the 34,000 Palestinians estimated by U.N. officials to live in Iraq, closed the border on Sunday after a busload of Palestinians arrived earlier in the day.
The refugees ended up in a camp in no-man's land between Jordan and Iraq, to which hundreds of Iranian Kurds and Palestinians fled after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Most of the Kurds were moved last year to Kurdish-dominated northern Iraq.
PALESTINIANS IN THE MORGUE
"This period is very difficult for the Palestinians. They are kidnapped and killed and tortured," said a Palestinian diplomat in Baghdad who asked not to be named.
Sixty Palestinians had been killed since the invasion, he said, before adding: "Now we find about two to three Palestinians in the morgue every week."
Arriving in Iraq in three waves in 1948, 1967 and 1991, Palestinians enjoyed financial support from Saddam Hussein, who considered himself the champion of the Arab cause.
Their schooling and health care were subsidised, generating resentment among Iraqis who paid dearly through three wars in a quarter of a century, crippling sanctions and one of the world's most ruthless police states.
These days, the mostly Sunni Muslim Arab Palestinians sit in the rundown Baladiyaat district of Baghdad hoping they will not get caught up in sectarian violence which has killed hundreds of people since last month's bombing of a Shi'ite Muslim shrine.
Palestinians say Iraqis began attacking them after a deadly car bomb in a nearby area last year. Their anxieties grew after a popular state television show then featured four bruised Palestinians "confessing" to the attack.
"My brother was completely innocent," said Tahir Nooreddine of one of the suspects.
Sheikh Mustafa said gunmen opened fire on the Palestinian compound and wounded some residents after the bombing of the Shi'ite Golden Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 sparked sectarian reprisals against Sunnis.
"We are sick of living in fear and anxiety," said a resident of the Baladiyaat compound. "We are all threatened here for no reason except that we are Palestinian."
A police official declined to comment on whether Palestinians were being specifically targeted.
Many of the refugees have close family ties in Jordan, where life would be much safer. But Amman says it cannot absorb any new influx of refugees.
For now, the refugees can only watch violence tear apart the only home they know.
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