- The American occupation of Iraq has already opened up
various legal and historical files, including issues such as war crimes
tribunals and what to do about the country's Kurdish minority.
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- A less well-known development is that former Iraqi Jews
are seeking compensation for property frozen by the Iraqi government in
the1950s, when the emigrants left the country. Moves have already been
made in this direction now that the US controls Iraq, affecting not only
Iraqi reconstruction but also the future of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
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- The Jewish property claims date back over half a century.
As a result of inter-communal tensions stemming from the conflict between
Zionism and the Arabs of Palestine, a majority in Iraq's ancient Jewish
community emigrated under duress after 1948, especially in 1950-51. Most
of them settled in Israel. The Iraqi Parliament passed a law in 1951 freezing
the property of Jews who had renounced their Iraqi citizenship, which was
a condition for emigration.
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- The issue became enmeshed in the wider Arab-Israeli conflict
when Israel announced in 1951 that it would deduct the value of the frozen
property from any compensation it paid for the property of Palestinian
refugees it had confiscated. The Israeli government undertook several campaigns
to persuade Iraqi Jewish immigrants to register their property claims,
most notably in 1955 when a special semi-governmental commission was established.
To the government's disappointment, only 3,000-4,000 of the 37,000Iraqi
Jews in Israel bothered to register claims in the last campaign.
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- The defeat of the Baath regime in Iraq resurrected such
claims. As far back as the 1991 Gulf War, some Jews, including Yoram Dinstein,
the president of Tel Aviv University, called for the defeated Iraqi government
to compensate its former Jewish citizens as part of its international obligations
to pay reparations for victims of its occupation of Kuwait.
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- The recent Iraqi defeat led to a resumption of talk of
compensation, especially among Iraqi Jews in the US. Several of them began
contacting the World Jewish Congress (WJC) offices in New York on the matter.
In San Francisco, Semha Alwaya, a prominent Jewish-Iraqi lawyer who is
co-founder of a group called Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North
Africa, has spoken publicly of filing a class action lawsuit in American
courts.
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- The object of such suits is to draw on Iraqi funds under
US control. UN Security Council Resolution 1483 , which ended the sanctions
regime against Iraq, declared future Iraqi oil profits immune from lawsuits
until 2007 . However, the US controls other Iraqi funds. In March 2003
, US President George W. Bush seized $1.74billion in Iraqi assets placed
in 18 US banks assets that had been frozen since1990 . He also requested
that foreign banks transfer some $600million in Iraqi funds to a US account
at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, pointing out that the funds would
be used for the Iraqi people. However, at least $300million of Iraqi assets
frozen in the US were previously set aside by American courts for potential
use in paying out claims raised by US citizens. The Bush administration
has said it would honor such claims.
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- Congress has also been looking into the matter of Iraqi
Jews. In April 2003 , a House member called for congressional hearings
on Jewish emigrants from the Arab world. This past June, the House subcommittee
on the Middle East and Central Asia held a briefing titled The Forgotten
Refugees: The Jewish Exodus from Arab Lands. At least one other representative
is contemplating submitting legislation for congressional approval dealing
specifically with Jewish property in Iraq. In addition, Britain's House
of Lords recently heard testimony on the fate of Jews from Arab countries.
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- Jewish groups have also been working to secure property
compensation for Jews from Iraq and other Arab countries. The WJC has held
several conferences in recent months on the issue. Most such efforts predate
Baghdad's fall, starting in the 1990s as a result of Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations. The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries was formed
in 1975, and has championed the cause of compensation, largely to support
the Israeli government's linking the question to that of Palestinian refugee
property compensation. The International Committee of Jews from Arab Lands
(ICJAL) was formed in 1999 by the WJC and the American Sephardi Federation,
and began gathering statistics on lost property. In May 2002 , the Israeli
Justice Ministry announced it was going to work with the ICJAL to establish
a database on property, called the Jewish Refugees from Arab Lands Project.
Another group, Justice for Jews in Arab Countries, was established in September
2002 , although its focus thus far has been on securing "refugee"
status for Jewish emigrants from the Arab world. Finally, the World Sephardi
Federation approved a decision in June 2002 to sue the Arab League for
restitution of Jewish property, although it has not yet done so.
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- These claims will not only affect the future of Iraqi
reconstruction, they will also have an impact on Israeli-Palestinian talks
and on compensation for Palestinian refugees. For this reason, the Israeli
government and some Jewish activists hesitate to raise compensation claims
against Iraq now, preferring to use the issue as a bargaining tool with
the Palestinians. Inter-organizational rivalries have also affected such
efforts. It remains to be seen what the outcome will be.
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- - Michael R. Fischbach is a professor of history at Randolph-Macon
College in Virginia. His book Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee
Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict will be published in October.
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