History
The birth of the Palestinian community in modern Iraq dates back to 1948, when the Iraqi army, which had been fighting in Palestine, returned to Baghdad with a group of Palestinians who had been forced to flee their homes in Haifa and Jaffa. Following the 1967 War with Israel, a second larger wave of Palestinians sought refuge in Iraq. The third and final wave occurred in 1991 after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, when those Palestinians living in Kuwait and other Gulf states fled or were expelled due to (what the Gulf States alleged to be) Yasser Arafat’s support for the invasion. In fact Yasser Arafat was never supportive of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. His opposition to the war against Iraq in 1991 was driven by his principle opposition to US attacks against Arab countries. Over the years, there were also many Palestinians who came to Iraq in search of work. Prior to 2003, there were approximately 25,000 registered Palestinian refugees living in Iraq. In December 2010, approximately 10,000 Palestinians remained in Iraq, the majority of whom were living in and around Baghdad.
Read more about this topic: Palestinians In Iraq
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)