According to a recent Daily Telegraph report, Shiite militias in Iraq have threatened to kill Palestinian refugees who don’t leave the country. Yesterday saw 30 Palestinians abducted. Despite the developments, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told a London think-tank (reported by the Malaysian national news agency Bernama):
He said Palestine remained the “single most powerful factor” dividing them and much of the roots of the conflict and instability in the Middle East, including international terrorism, would disappear if the issue was resolved justly and equitably.
Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turks, Iranians, Iraqis and Syrians have been at each other’s throats long before the state of Israel became independent. A peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians won’t change that.
UPDATE Jan. 24: See Joseph Farah‘s simpler theory about the root causes of terror.
UPDATE Jan. 25: The Washington Post picked up on the Palestinian-Iraqi woes. How does Prime Minister Abdullah explain this?
Mortar shells regularly crash down on the squalid cinder-block Baladiyat compound, the largest settlement of Palestinians in Iraq, with an estimated population of 4,000 to 7,000. In November and December, guerrillas staged at least six organized attacks on the area. On Dec. 13, three hours of mortar attacks killed as many as 11 people, the U.N. report said.
