From Haifa, Palestine to Haifa, Baghdad, a second uprooting of Palestinians

By Lamia Radi
Agences France Press

Plastic tents retain the heat of temperatures which have shot up to the mid-40s Celsius, turning a football pitch where Palestinian children used to play before the outbreak of the US-led war against Iraq on March 20 a shade of yellow.

Children run around women sitting on dusty mattresses, surrounded by old gas heaters and water jerricans which remain the only colourful touch in the sad new homes of the refugees.

Most of the refugees originally came to Iraq in 1948 from the Haifa region, which became part of Israel, mainly the villages of Jabaa, Ejzem and Ain Al Ghazala.

“This region was the last to surrender to the Israelis. Our parents then came here with the Iraqis from the Arab region after the defeat by Israel,” said the director of the makeshift refugee camp at the sports club, Abdel Salam Yussef.

“They then told us that it would be `for a week or two, and then you will be able to return home.' That was in May 1948,” he said.

After the fall of Baghdad to the US-led coalition on April 9, many of the Palestinian families were forced out of homes they thought were permanent, some under the threat of arms.

About 200 other families also received an ultimatum to leave their homes after school exams at the end of June.

“You are from dust, and you will return to dust, God told Man. But for the Palestinians, it is rather: `You are from the tent and you will return to the tent',” said a bitter Darwish Mustafa Fatayer, 65, as he prepared dinner for his wife and eight children.

For 40 years, Fatayer had been living in the same house and the Iraqi government had been paying the rent — 20,000 dinars ($14) a month — in line with its pan-Arab policies.

“Not a single Iraqi has intervened in our favour. They accuse us of having been privileged by Saddam,” he said.

Under the Saddam regime, landlords had been forced to rent houses to the Palestinians for a minimal sum. Today, they want their properties back.

But Khadija Abdel Hadi is even more concerned over the fate of her son, the Palestinian charge d'affaires in Baghdad, Najah Abdel Rahman, who has been detained by US-led coalition troops since the end of May.

“I tried to visit him, but the Americans refuse to even disclose his place of detention,” said the woman, as she swept tears running down her cheek with her white veil.

Her daughter, Sabah, 43, had been living with her husband, an unemployed mechanic, for the last 10 years in Batawin, Baghdad's Jewish neighbourhood.

“It was a rundown house where five families shared toilets, showers and kitchens ... but it was home,” she said.

Pregnant Elham Saber, 34, pointed at her stomach and announced: “I will call him Mokhayyam,” or camp.

Her Egyptian husband went out to work two days before the war, but never returned.

Under the threat of being burnt alive, Saber could only rush out of her home with a few pieces of furniture that she has since sold to be able to survive.

“Everyday, we open the air-conditioned administrative building for the refugees to protect them from sunstrokes,” said the camp director.

Well-protected buses transport students to their exams to avert kidnappings, particularly that of girls, said Youssef.

The spokesman of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Baghdad, Melita Sunjic, denounced the continued silence of the US-British coalition on the problem despite her repeated demands to find suitable housing for the Palestinian refugees.

“Imagine having to live the tragedy of a second uprooting and to become refugees again,” she said.