"To become a refugee in the Middle East is in some ways to become like a Palestinian. Their lives are the essence of statelessness. And to be an Iraqi Palestinian, it seems, is to be doubly cursed. In a no-man’s land along the Iraqi and Syrian border lie a desolate moonscape stretching several miles and, on one slab of wind-blown dirt, a collection of neatly ordered tents. When I visited in February, about 350 Iraqi Palestinians were marooned here, refugees for a second time. Most of Iraq’s Palestinians had come from three villages — Ijzim, Jaba’ and Ein Ghazal, together known as the Little Triangle, which were near Haifa in northern Palestine. Other Iraqi Palestinians came from the nearby village of Tira, still others from Ayn Hawd. All of these villages had been forcibly emptied of Palestinians in 1948 by the Israel Defense Forces*. Iraqi troops, fighting as part of a small contingent of Arab volunteers who had come to defend the Palestinians, bused them to Iraq. As many as 5,000 refugees were granted asylum in Iraq by 1949, and they formed the core of Iraq’s Palestinian population. A second refugee group had lived in Kuwait from the time of their expulsion from Palestine, then been evicted by Kuwait into Iraq after the 1991 gulf war. (Many of Kuwait’s Palestinians were accused of sympathizing with Saddam’s takeover of Kuwait.) By 2003, there were as many as 34,000 Palestinians in Iraq." (thanks Nir)
*These were Zionist forces not "IDF" forces. But I am sure that NYT editor inserted that in order to grant legitimacy to the Zionist gangs that formed the Zionit forces in Palestine.