The Shiites are not going to be taking any unnecessary risks with the stakes being so high:

Baghdad/London: Palestinians living in Iraq have been warned that they will be killed by Shiite militias unless they leave the country immediately.

Iraqi police say the immigrants, who are mostly Sunnis, are the target of a backlash by hardline Shiites, including members of the Mehdi Army led by the cleric Moqtada Al Sadr.

More than 600 Palestinians are believed to have died at the hands of Shiite militias since the war began in 2003, including at least 300 from the Baladiat area of Baghdad. Many were tortured with electric drills before they died.

Now Shiite militias are stepping up their campaign to drive out Iraq's 20,000 remaining Palestinians -half the estimated 40,000 living in the country at the start of the war, all of whom were welcomed by Saddam Hussain and provided with housing, money and free education.

Who wants to bet that a number of these are beneficiaries of Saddam's suicide bomber payment program? It is a well-established fact that for years, Saddam Hussein bankrolled a lot of the terrorism against Israel, and made suicide bombing a very lucrative way to make money for families who didn't particularly value the lives of their loved ones. While there is no doubt internecine hatred between Sunnis and Shiites that figures heavily into this, a lot of Palestinians have not exactly shown a lot of good sense in who to support and when to show it. The Palestinians are commemmorating Saddam Hussein at a time when a lot of Iraqis are extremely happy to see the man dead. The Shiite hardliners clearly have no love for them as a group because of their close relationship with the nominally Sunni Hussein.

Collective responsibility is never fun, but I am not going to extend a whole lot of sympathy off the bat to any of these Palestinians. The Palestinians have experienced too many problems with other countries in the region to give them the benefit of the doubt. I would be very surprised if the majority of these people were honest, decent refugees rather than people who profited handsomely (by Middle Eastern economic standards) from Saddam's terrorism funding activities.