The
appeal arrived via Facebook. It was like a message in a bottle thrown into the
sea with little hope. The sender said he was living in a camp on the
Iraqi-Syrian border along with some 200 other Palestinian refugees. They had
been left stranded on the dangerous frontier between a country that is facing a
combined civil war and foreign onslaught, and another that has been occupied and
now persecutes them as “Saddam remnants.”
The place is called al-Hol
camp. The Palestinian embassy in Lebanon said it knew nothing about these
Palestinians. UNRWA said they were not registered with it. How come?
We
contacted the young man, named Firas Saidam, to ask. A few days later – the web
in Syria is not in good shape – we succeeded. He replied that after Israel
occupied Palestine in 1948, the Iraqi government undertook to care for
Palestinians in its territory, in return for not contributing to UNRWA.
And
so it was.
In the 1970s, after the Baath party
came power, the Palestinians were accommodated at public
expense in state-owned housing in the al-Baladiyat district and some
other parts of Baghdad. But after Iraq was
subjected to sanctions in 1990, Firas explained, living conditions
worsened badly for Iraqis. Yet Saddam continued to
boast of his support for the Palestinians, publicly pledging in 2002, for
example, to donate one billion euros to Palestine, at a time when Iraqis were
going hungry. “People became very poor,” he said,
“and so they started hating us.”
Then came the American
occupation, followed by anarchy and the outbreak of sectarian violence,
especially after the bombing of Shia shrines. “The Palestinians were in trouble
twice over. They were Sunni, and they were ‘Saddam’s pets.’ Either way, we had
to escape,” he said.
Did they flee in fear, or actually face reprisals?
He sighed and replied: “My dear, out of the two hundred people currently here,
90 percent have had relatives kidnapped or killed.”
Three refugee camps
were initially established on the Iraqi-Syrian border: Al-Waleed camp on the
Iraqi side; al-Tanf camp in the no-man’s land in between the two countries’
territories, and al-Hol some ten kilometers inside Syria and 50 kilometers east
of the town of al-Hasaka.
“We are the left-over people from al-Tanf,”
said Firas. He was referring to the closure of the al-Tanf camp by the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in early 2010, after it arranged for the
resettlement of most of the inhabitants to third countries. Others were moved to
al-Hol, where 215 people remain today, including around 100 who have no solution
to their cases in sight, according to Firas.
As Firas and fellow
Palestinian refugees in Iraq were not placed under UNRWA’s jurisdiction in 1948,
they are being dealt with by UNHCR. It provides refugees with one of three
possible solutions: return to the country they came from, settlement in the host
country, or resettlement in a third. Many of the displaced Palestinians in the
border camps opted for the third option after 2006, when the Arab League signed
an agreement with UNHCR stating that this would not prejudice their right of
return to Palestine. But according to Firas, the resettlement program was
discontinued when there were only some 200 cases left to process, due to a
change of priorities at UNHCR.
What about returning to Iraq? “That would
be impossible,” Firas said. “We heard news just a couple of days ago that they
were still raiding our homes in al-Baladiyat and other areas ... Our lives are
still in danger there. We cannot.”
How about settling in Syria? “We are
grateful to the Syrians for hosting us for seven years even though they were not
obliged to,” he said. “But Syria in its current state is not a solution.” Al-Hol
camp is adjacent to a Syrian army base that recently came under attack from
gunmen (on the night of April 28). Residents are in real danger, and living
conditions are poor, with plastic sheets used as roofing. They feel abandoned by
UNHCR.
According to Firas, the Commission only began paying serious
attention to the plight of the refugees at al-Hol after they staged a strike in
2008. Resettlement then began to places like Canada, Australia and Sweden – as
no nearer country was prepared to take them. A handful of the al-Hol camp’s
residents have been there since 2006, and are still waiting for countries to
accept them.
But with the issue of the Iraqi-Palestinian refugees fading
from the media and the international public eye, fewer potential host-states
countries have been prepared to consider taking them in. More than two thirds of
the 215 remaining at al-Hol are women and children.
UNHCR reportedly
tried to promote the idea of arranging for them to be moved permanently to
Damascus. But this fell through as a result of events in Syria. While it is
unclear if the Commission is indeed still seeking such a solution, it is one the
remaining refugees themselves strongly oppose – for legal, practical, personal
reasons.
Firas charged that the UNHCR had conveyed the false impression
that all the cases in the camp had been resolved. In 2010, it offered some of
them a chance of going to the United States, but many turned that down because
they had been detained by US forces during the occupation, and for other reasons
related to immigration procedures. He said the refugees had tried to reason with
UNHCR, but facing an unknown future and worsening conditions, they decided to
stage an open-ended protest, possibly leading to a hunger strike.
Their
principal demand is to be resettled in countries where they have relatives –
mostly outside the Arab world, as the supposedly “fellow” Arab states have
refused to receive them, and they cannot go back to their occupied
homeland.
In the meantime, they want to be moved to a safe
location outside Syria, where having already fled persecution and death in Iraq,
they now face new dangers.
Their case, incidentally, has not
been taken up by any Palestinian agency, official or unofficial.
Este é um discurso de 17 de Outubro de 2008, em Nova York que vale a pena rever. Trata da importante questão do negócio entre justiça e paz. Quando a comunidade internacional aceita oferecer segurança e exílio a um tirano e a amnistia aos seus colaboradores para acabar com uma guerra civil. À primeira vista um bom negócio, evitamos a morte de milhares de civis e combatentes em troca de uma aministia geral. Mas sem justiça, permitimos aos violadores, torturadores e assassinos que se cruzem com as vítimas e seus familiares na rua. Será difícil imaginar quantos não tentaram fazer justiça pelas próprias mãos? Que mensagem deixamos aos que no futuro se prepararem para cometer actos semelhantes? E não estaremos simplesmente a adiar o problema e lançar as sementas da nova guerra que se avizinha?
