The trail of human suffering goes on – how many more illegal acts will it take?

By Jeremy Corbyn MP

At one of the border points between Syria and Iraq, reached after a four hour drive across the stony desert from Damascus, the road is barred to all vehicles and travellers by a checkpoint. Those allowed through drive on. This is the road to Baghdad, where armies have marched, peace-makers have travelled and refugees have fled. Beside it, where the huge lorries lumber up to speed, are the refugee tents covered in standard-issue UN High Commission plastic, makeshift roads and bored kids wandering about.

These are the refugees who have left Iraq but have not yet been allowed into Syria. Their stories are heart rending. I meet many families and am moved by so many tales of the endless search for a place of security and hope, always dashed.

I sit in a tent – carpeted and clean, but still a tent – with a couple and their children. Both are Palestinians born in Baghdad, whose parents lived and thrived as children in Haifa until the state of Israel was founded and they were driven out as unwanted residents from a land given to somebody else. They joined the hundreds of thousands who fled. Many went to Iraq, others to Jordan, Gaza and all over the region – and indeed the world.

In Iraq they had identity and recognition as Palestinians and held onto the dream of returning to their homes. But life was never easy and they worked hard until the invasion of 2003. In the chaos of the ungoverned post-Saddam Iraq, the Shia crowds turned on the Palestinians and accused them of being Saddam stooges and supporters of the Sunnis. Death threats followed and some were assassinated.

Fearing the worst, many families either went into hiding, fled to other parts of Iraq or tried their luck in neighbouring countries. Despite all the pro-Palestinian rhetoric of most countries in the Middle East, only Jordan and Syria have taken in Palestinians. The border camp at alTanf is home to hundreds of people as they await their fate.

The family explain how their lives consist of daily bread and basic food deliveries from the UN and a primary school in the camp. It is bitterly cold at night and they are fearful of snakes, scorpions and fires which can set tents ablaze during cooking.

But these families do not criticise their treatment by Syria or the UN but by Iraq and the big powers.

In the midst of such apparent hopelessness, the children are an inspiration for the future. A bright 12-year-old girl tells me of her ambitions to be a doctor and her family proudly listen. All have one aim: to get out of the camp.

Other camps house Palestinians as the UN bears their food and living costs, waiting for decisions on where they will go.

These Palestinians are the children of the survivors of the “nakba” of 1948, when huge numbers were displaced from their homeland, along with the victims of the “liberation” of Iraq who now await the outcome of complex negotiations as to their ultimate destination.

Meanwhile, the weather worsens and conditions deteriorate. Four hours down the road there are more Palestinian camps, or rather Palestinian towns that happen to be in Syria.

On Monday – Balfour Day, when Arthur Balfour gave his infamous declaration of support for a Jewish state of Israel – I sit in a crowded room with a group of Palestinians who describe their lives and their dreams. Clearly well aware of all aspects of their history, they roundly condemn Britain and the US for their plight and take a keen interest interest in the putative talks for a settlement of the conflict.

Their lives forever blighted by the war and loss of nationhood, it seems appropriate that another big disappointment awaits on Balfour Day. Once again the Israeli tail wags the US dog as Hillary Clinton drops demands to even halt new settlements as the Netanyahu government pushes to continue its dismemberment of the West Bank. Barely a week has passed since the British and US did not vote at the UN Human Rights Council on the reference of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war to the security council.

Just how many more illegal acts does Israel have to commit before it is condemned?

Israel’s argument about living space convinces some that they have the “right” to continue to take Palestinian land and water. Yet across the region and the world, six million Palestinians wonder what happened to their rights.

Wars always leave a trail of human suffering that goes on and on. Those freezing on this isolated border – victims of the power politics of the 1940s and the absurd and dishonest assertions of Bush in 2003 – are but one tragic example of this incontrevertible truth.

Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. This article was formerly published in the Morning Star.

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