By Greg
Rollins. Greg is a member of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an
organization that asks, "What would happen if Christians devoted the same
discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to
war?"
The flashbacks
disoriented me. Sometimes, for brief moments I could not remember where I was.
Amidst a
mob of Palestinian children, our Palestinian guides showed us through the
refugee camp. They showed us four room apartments that house up to five families.
They showed us warehouses that people sought shelter in after they had been
kicked out of their houses. They showed us bullet holes from the police and
soldiers who randomly shoot at the apartments. We saw alleys and walkways
blockaded with fallen palms and water tanks filled with sand to keep the police
or soldiers from driving through the camp in the middle of the night and
blasting their horns or playing loud music.
None of
this was new to me. I see things like this all the time in Palestine. Then I
remember, I’m not in Palestine, I’m in Iraq.
In the
refugee camp my team mate Will and I listened to Palestinians who told us about
life for them in Iraq. One man, born in 1946 just outside of Haifa, Palestine,
told us how the journey to Iraq started. During the war of ’48 the Iraqi army
was fighting the Israelis in the Galilee/Haifa area. The Iraqis evacuated many
Palestinian families from their homes due to the fighting. At the request of
the Iraqi Queen Alia, they were invited back to Iraq. The Palestinians went.
When the fighting in Palestine ended, the Israelis did not allow them to
return.
Our hosts
told us that life for Palestinians in Iraq is hard. Many of the some 30,000
here would rather live under the Israelis. Because the Palestinians were
invited to Iraq and not forced here, they have not been given refugee status by
the UN. But they are not Iraqi citizens either. They are almost nothing. They
cannot own homes or land; they cannot own businesses, or even cars. Although Saddam
boasted that he treated the Palestinians in Iraq better than he treated the
Iraqis, our hosts told us that it was not true. Saddam only talked about
treating the Palestinians luxuriously but he never gave them anything.
Today,
under a different government, life is no better. While Palestinians suffer like
Iraqis, without water, electricity or work, they continue to suffer from
discrimination. In some respects they are lucky, they have yet to be the target
of insurgents, but the Iraqi Police and National Guard search homes in the
camps three or four times a week. They insult the residents and arrest people
for no reason. Because they are not citizens, all Palestinians must go to the
residency office once a month to receive permission to remain in the country.
One man told us that if your stamp expires and you are stopped by the police or
National Guard, you’ll go to jail. Another told us he shows police his ID from
a human rights organization he works for because it doesn’t say that he is
Palestinian.
After Will
and I left the camp we felt confused by what the Palestinians told us. I knew
that Palestinians are discriminated against throughout the Middle East, but
their plight here adds one more dimension of oppression and chaos to an already
oppressive and chaotic situation. It enforced in my mind that this is not a
black and white situation, it is gray. The situation grows grayer here every
day.