Last month, my colleague Miret el Naggar wrote this story about a group of Palestinians who had fled the war in Iraq only to find themselves stranded in the ungenerous desert along the Syrian-Iraqi border. They were essentially prisoners, prohibited from entering Syria and unable to return to the neighborhoods they once inhabited in Baghdad. Journalists are not allowed to visit the camps, but Miret interviewed several residents by phone and heard horror stories of hardships and disease.

The fate of the 500 or so Palestinians at the Tanaf camp had been largely overlooked as governments and humanitarian groups focus on the 2.5 million Iraqi refugees who have flocked to urban hubs in Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Across from Tanaf, on the Iraqi side of the border, there are another 1,900 Palestinians in the squalid Walid camp.

"We die a thousand times a day," Wafaa Mazhar, 37, a mother of five, told Miret by phone. "We Palestinians are leading miserable lives. We're helpless, and no one feels our pain."

So, which country stepped up to end this suffering? Sudan, of all places.

Al Ahram, a state-backed Egyptian newspaper, reported this week on a PLO announcement that Sudan has agreed to accept the Palestinians who fled sectarian violence in Iraq. The Ahram story said Khartoum will scoop up 2,500 refugees in all, emptying the miserable Tanaf and Walid camps. The government also agreed to accept some other Palestinians who had made it to Damascus.

Sudan is not exactly Sweden, and anyone following the Darfur conflict knows that the Sudanese government doesn't always act in such a model humanitarian fashion. Still, the dusty tableau of Khartoum should be a welcome sight for a community that spent so many agonizing months in a place even the UN referred to as "no-man's land."