Abstract
The Palestinians are the oldest and one of the most numerous refugee community in the world. This chapter describes, first, who are labeled as Palestinian refugees and their historical-political paths, both in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the international one. Secondly, it discusses the new challenges this community currently faces: the war in Syria, the Great March of Return in Gaza, and the serious cuts that the United States has imposed on the budget of UNRWA, the United Nations agency tasked with the aid of Palestinian refugees and their camps throughout the Middle East.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Article 1 defines as a refugee anyone who: “due to an informed fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of a certain social group or political opinion, is outside his country of nationality and cannot or, because of such fear, he is not willing, to get the protection of that country; or who, if he does not have nationality and is outside his usual country of residence (…) because of such fear described, is unable or unwilling to return.” As previously raised, this definition, like the rest of the Convention, excluded Palestinian refugees.
- 2.
This criterion has generated a number of accusations of sexist discrimination against the Agency, which is justified in the patriarchal system of the societies in which it works. See: Cervenak, Christine M. (1994). Promoting Inequality: Gender-Based Discrimination in UNRWA’s Approach to Palestinian Refugee Status. Human Rights Quarterly, 16(2), 300–374.
- 3.
BADIL, What Role for UNRWA? Opportunities and Constraints, document presented at the UNRWA Workshop on the Future of The United Kingdom in Minster Lovell, United Kingdom, on 19 and 20 February 2000.
- 4.
The resolution was adopted with the opposing votes of Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Yemen.
- 5.
However, the UN played some role in helping to limit the dimensions of the conflict. Thus, at the time, this international body sent troops to Egypt in the 1973 war to avoid Egyptian-Israeli confrontation, then in the latent peace process. In 1974, it did the same in the Golan Heights to reassure the area and in southern Lebanon in 1978, to follow up on the Israeli withdrawal.
- 6.
Today, the UN system of programs and agencies in the region is led by the United Nations Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories (UNSCO), which in turn works with the World Bank to assist the Palestinian Authority.
- 7.
Members of the Arab League signed the Casablanca Protocol 1965, committing to guarantee Palestinians full access to employment and freedom of movement through the issuance of travel documents, safeguarding their Palestinian nationality.
- 8.
There was no negative record in the Palestinian collective memory: on Black September 1970 in Jordan camps, massacres in the 1982 Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon, or the expulsion of Palestinian refugees from Kuwait in 1991.
- 9.
However, other official UNRWA documents, such as its 2017 annual report, indicate that 560,000 Palestinian refugees existed in Syria prior to the conflict. See United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East, UNRWA Annual Operational Report 2017, 1 January–31 December 2017, Amman, 2018, p. 81, https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/2017_annual_operational_report_final_lr.pdf.
- 10.
For the exceptionality of the situation, the data vary according to the sources and even UNRWA offers different data in different documents. For example, the Palestinian Badil Center (2015b) mentioned at least 280,000 displaced people as of 2014.
- 11.
References
Aguirre, M. (2019). Is the US retiring from the Middle East? Foreign Policy, 33(189), 90–100.
Al-Awda The Palestine Right to Return Coalition. (2019). Al-Awda salutes the Great Return March: The right of return is the key to justice in Palestine. https://al-awda.org/al-awda-salutes-the-great-return-march-the-right-of-return-is-the-key-to-justice-in-palestine/. Accessed 17 April 2019.
BADIL. (2000). What Role for UNRWA? Opportunities and Constraints A Durable Solution to the Palestinian Refugee Issue. Recuperado de www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/papers/unrwa-role.html. Accessed 29 March 2019.
BADIL. (2015a). Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Dispaced Persons 2013–2015, Vol VIII 2013–2015. http://www.badil.org/phocadownloadpap/badil-new/publications/survay/Survey2013-2015-en.pdf. Accessed 29 March 2019.
BADIL. (2015b). Editorial. Al-Majdal, (57), 2–3. https://www.badil.org/en/publication/periodicals/al-majdal/item/2071-article-1.html.
Cervenak, C. (1994). Promoting Inequality: Gender-Based Discrimination in UNRWA’s Approach to Palestinian Refugee Status. Human Rights Quarterly, 16(2), 300–374.
Efrat, M. (2001). The Palestinian Refugees: The Socio-Economic Integration in their Host Countries. Orient–Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Politik, 42(1), 45–70.
Espín, J. (2004). La evolución del Organismo de Obras Públicas y Socorro de Naciones Unidas para el Cercano Oriente (OOPS) en el marco del proceso de paz (1991–2000) (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
Espín, J. (2019). Los refugiados palestinos en la guerra de Siria. In C. Barona & M. El Yattioui (Eds.), Derecho y Política en el Islam contemporáneo (pp. 261–281). Mexico: VLex.
Hiro, D. (2018). US Ends Humanitarian Aid for Palestinian. YaleGlobal Online. https://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/us-ends-humanitarian-aid-palestinians. Accessed 9 April 2019.
Karmi, G., & Cotran, E. (Eds.). (1999). The Palestinian Exodus 1948–1998. Lebanon: Ithaca Press.
Lazzartof, T., & Wilner, M. (2018, September 1). Israel welcomes U.S. defunding of UNRWA as step for peace. The Jerusalem Post. https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-welcomes-US-decision-to-cut-UNRWA-funding-566290. Accessed 10 June 2019.
Morrison, L. (2014). The Vulnerability of Palestinian Refugees from Syria. Forced Migration Magazine, (47), 41–42. http://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/FMRdownloads/es/siria/Morrison.pdf Accessed 2 March 2019.
Palestinian Return Center. (2018). Voices of Return. Documenting Israel’s Repression of the Great March of Return. https://prc.org.uk/upload/library/files/GRMvoices.pdf. Accesed 14 May 2019.
Rangel, C. (2018, September 7). El tijeretazo a la UNRWA, la enésima reverencia de Trump ante Israel. Huffington Post. https://www.huffingtonpost.es/2018/09/05/el-tijeretazo-a-la-unrwa-la-enesima-reverencia-de-trump-ante-israel_a_23518070/?utm_hp_ref=es-unrwa. Accessed 17 June 2019.
Said, E. W. (1993). The Real Cultural and Political Meaning of Palestine. Afaq Filistiniyyah, 7, 1–5.
Silverberg, R. (1970). If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem: American Jewish and the State of Israel. New York: Pyramid Books.
United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. (2012). Report of the Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, 1 January–31 December 2011. https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/201306244017.pdf. Accessed 5 June 2019.
United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. (2018). UNRWA Annual Operational Report 2017, 1 January–31 December 2017. https://www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/content/resources/2017_annual_operational_report_final_lr.pdf. Accessed 15 April 2019.
United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. (2019a). Syria Crisis. https://www.unrwa.org/syria-crisis. Accessed 15 March 2019.
United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. (2019b). Where we work. Gaza Strip. https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip. Accessed 20 April 2019.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. (1952). Annual Report of The Director of The United Nations Relief And Works Agency For Palestine Refugees in The Near East Covering the period 1 July 1951 to 30 June 1952. https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/0E598B25FF3267E20525659A00735EA7. Accessed 10 March 2019.
United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East. (2020). Who we are. https://www.unrwa.org/who-we-are. Accessed 29 January 2020.
Zureik, E. (1996). Palestinian Refugees and the Peace Process. Washington: Institute for Palestinian Studies.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Espín Ocampo, J. (2021). Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems, New Challenges. In: Cedillo González, C., Espín Ocampo, J. (eds) Human Displacement from a Global South Perspective. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64819-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64819-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-64818-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-64819-0
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)