Growing stigmatisation of Palestinians

Th AP underlines the growing stigmatisation of Palestinians, as part of a "wave of resentment" as Iraqis increasingly point the finger at "foreign Arabs". A television ad, widely aired across Iraq in recent weeks, shows a wealthy Arab man, with a foreign accent, giving an Iraqi teenager some cash and a bomb to plant. Police burst in and arrest him. "You come here from abroad and want to make this young man kill his Iraqi brothers?" an officer accuses. After a suicide truck bomb killed more than 132 people in a Baghdad market a few weeks ago, the head of the Interior Ministry's explosives department, Maj. Gen. Jihad al-Jabiri, said: "I call on the government to deport (foreign) Arabs immediately."

The article says some of the resentment stems from: "Saddam lavished large cash payments on Palestinian suicide bombers in the 1990s, when Iraq faced crippling economic sanctions and many Iraqis were jobless. That caused Iraqis to feel strong resentment toward Palestinians... Sabah Abdul-Wahed, a 35-year-old Shiite Muslim cashier at a restaurant in Baghdad's predominantly Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad, said he can't help feeling resentment toward foreign Arabs who live in Iraq. "They had more privileges than Iraqis, and under Saddam they had better lives than ours. I don't mean all Arabs but many of them.""