The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's mandate encompasses Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the Nakba, the 1948 Palestine War, and subsequent conflicts, as well as their descendants, including legally adopted children. As of 2019, more than 5.6 million Palestinians are registered with UNRWA as refugees.
Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refugees live in or near 68 Palestinian refugee camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2019 more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the United Nations.
Ma'ale Adumim is an urban Israeli settlement organized as a city council in the West Bank, seven kilometers east of Jerusalem. Ma'ale Adumim achieved city status in 1991. In 2015, its population was 38,046. It is located along Highway 1, which connects it to Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area. The international community holds that Israeli settlements in the West Bank, within Israel, termed Judea and Samaria, are illegal under international law. Israel does not agree with this view and the position of successive Israeli governments is that all authorized settlements are legal and consistent with international law.
Palestinian refugee camps were first established to accommodate Palestinians who were displaced by the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight during the 1948 Palestine war. Camps were established by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. A subsequent wave of Palestinian refugees were created in the Naksa after the Six-Day War in 1967.
Qalqilya or Qalqiliya is a Palestinian city in the West Bank which serves as the administrative center of the Qalqilya Governorate. In the 2017 census, the city had a population of 51,683. Qalqilya is surrounded by the Israeli West Bank wall, with a narrow gap in the east controlled by the Israeli military and a tunnel to the Palestinian town of Hableh. Qalqilya is under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority, while remaining under Israeli military occupation.
Prior to the rise of nationalism during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the term Palestinian referred to any person born in or living in Palestine, regardless of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious affiliations. During the British Mandate over Palestine, the term "Palestinian" referred to any person legally considered to be a citizen of Mandatory Palestine as defined in the 1925 Citizenship Order.
Yasser Abed Rabbo also known by his kunya, Abu Bashar is a Palestinian politician and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) Executive Committee.
Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer, human rights activist and writer. He co-founded the award-winning Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in 1979. In 2008, he won the Orwell Prize, a British award for political writing, for his book Palestinian Walks.
Issues relating to the State of Palestine and aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict occupy continuous debates, resolutions, and resources at the United Nations. Since its founding in 1948, the United Nations Security Council, as of January 2010, has adopted 79 resolutions directly related to the Arab–Israeli conflict.
Palestinian people have a history that is often linked to the history of the Arab Nation. Upon the advent of Islam, Christianity was the major religion of Byzantine Palestine. Soon after the rise of Islam, Palestine was conquered and brought into the rapidly expanding Islamic empire. The Umayyad empire was the first of three successive dynasties to dominate the Arab-Islamic world and rule Palestine, followed by the Abbasids and the Fatimids. Muslim rule was briefly challenged and interrupted in parts of Palestine during the Crusades, but was restored under the Mamluks.
Aida, also spelled 'Ayda, is a Palestinian refugee camp situated 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) north of the historic centre of Bethlehem and 1 km (0.62 mi) north of Beit Jala, in the central West Bank, State of Palestine.
'Anata is a Palestinian town in the Jerusalem Governorate of the State of Palestine, in the central West Bank, located four kilometers northeast of Jerusalem's Old City. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 'Anata had a population of 16,919 in 2017. Its total land area is 30,603 dunams, of which over half now lies within the Israeli Jerusalem municipality and 1,654 is Palestinian built-up area. Since 1967, 'Anata has been occupied by Israel. Together with Shu'afat refugee camp, the village is almost surrounded by the Israeli West Bank barrier, cutting it off from Jerusalem and surrounding villages except for a checkpoint in the west and a road in the north-east that gives access to the rest of the West Bank.
Iain John Hook was a British aid worker and military officer who worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as project manager in the rebuilding of Jenin Refugee Camp in West Bank, which was home to 13,000 Palestinian refugees.
Nathan Thrall is an American author, essayist, and journalist based in Jerusalem. Thrall is known for his 2023 nonfiction work A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy, and is a contributor to several literary magazines. As of 2023 he is a professor at Bard College in New York state.
Tourism in the Palestinian territories is tourism in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. In 2010, 4.6 million people visited the Palestinian territories, compared to 2.6 million in 2009. Of that number, 2.2 million were foreign tourists while 2.7 million were domestic. In the last quarter of 2012 over 150,000 guests stayed in West Bank hotels; 40% were European and 9% were from the United States and Canada. Major travel guides write that "the West Bank is not the easiest place in which to travel but the effort is richly rewarded."
The Palestine Papers is a collection of confidential documents about the Israeli–Palestinian peace process leaked to Al Jazeera, which published them between 23 and 26 January 2011. Nearly 1,700 documents from the office of the main PLO negotiator, Saeb Erekat, and his team have been published, dating from 1999 to 2010.
The 2013 raid on Qalandia was an arrest raid by Israeli security forces in the refugee camp of Qalandia, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, that provoked a clash with camp residents protesting the attempted arrest. The fighting left three Palestinian civilians dead and 19 others wounded. Three Israeli security personnel were also injured. According to the Los Angeles Times, the raid was "one most violent clashes in years between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank."
Bassem Eid is a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem who comments on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict for Israeli TV and radio. He has been invited to speak by many pro-Israeli organizations in North America, including on university campuses.
The Halamish attack, or the Halamish massacre was a terrorist attack on a Jewish family in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Halamish, that took place on 21 July 2017, in which three Israelis were stabbed to death and one severely wounded. The victims of the attack were Yosef Salomon, his daughter Chaya and son Elad, the three who were murdered in the attack, and Tova Salomon, Yosef's wife, who was injured but survived.
On 5 February 2018, 29-year-old rabbi Itamar Ben Gal from Har Brakha, was stabbed to death at the Ariel Junction, near the West Bank Israeli settlement and city of Ariel. The assailant had escaped from the scene, but was arrested following a six-week manhunt. A protester was killed during a violent demonstration against searching for the suspect.
