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 over the course of the 1947–1949 Palestine war and the 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.
Camps are set up by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to accommodate Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA, who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War or in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967, and their patrilineal descendants. There are 68 Palestinian refugee camps, 58 official and 10 unofficial, ten of which were established after the Six-Day War while the others were established in 1948 to 1950s.
The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 is a resolution adopted near the end of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. The Resolution defines principles for reaching a final settlement and returning Palestine refugees to their homes. Article 11 of the resolution resolves that
refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.
The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights or Al Mezan (ميزان) is a non-governmental organization based in the Palestinian Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Its declared goals are: To promote and protect human rights in the OPT and especially in the Gaza Strip with a focus on economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR); to work towards the realization of Palestinians’ individual and collective human rights, including the right to self-determination through the channels of international law; to enhance democracy and citizen participation in the OPT and press towards good governance that respects human rights. The organization has a special consultative status in the United Nations.
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) is a British charity that offers medical services in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon, and advocates for Palestinians' rights to health and dignity. It is in special consultative status with ECOSOC since 2002.
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.
Al-Shati, also known as Shati or Beach camp, is a Palestinian refugee camp located in the northern Gaza Strip along the Mediterranean Sea coastline in the Gaza Governorate, and more specifically Gaza City.
Front Line Defenders, or The International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, is an Irish-based human rights organisation founded in Dublin, Ireland in 2001 to protect those who work non-violently to uphold the human rights of others as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Usama R. Halabi is a Palestinian Druze lawyer of Israeli citizenship.
In the 1948 Palestine war, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's predominantly Arab population – were expelled or fled from their homes, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of Israel, by its military. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names.
The International Organization for Peace, Care and Relief (IOPCR) is a non-governmental organization based in Tripoli, Libya. Founded in 1999, the organization has special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) and has an independent legal and financial status. The president of the organization is Khaled K. El-Hamedi.
Palestinians in Lebanon include the Palestinian refugees who fled to Lebanon during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, their descendants, the Palestinian militias which resided in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, and Palestinian nationals who moved to Lebanon from countries experiencing conflict, such as Syria. There are roughly 3,000 registered Palestinians and their descendants who hold no identification cards, including refugees of the 1967 Naksa. Many Palestinians in Lebanon are refugees and their descendants, who have been barred from naturalisation, retaining stateless refugee status. However, some Palestinians, mostly Christian women, have received Lebanese citizenship, in some cases through marriage with Lebanese nationals.
Al-Hanajira was one of the five principal Bedouin tribes inhabiting the Negev Desert prior to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Its territory stretched north-south between Deir al-Balah and Gaza and east to the lands of the Tarabin bedouin, straddling the Hejaz Railway line. Under the British Mandate, the territory was divided between its Gaza and Beersheba. The largest clan was Abu Middein. In the 1931 British census of Palestine, Abu Middein numbered 1,419, Nuseirat numbered 1,104, Sumeiri 772, and al-Dawahra 461, bringing the total to 3,735. By the summer of 1946 the population increased to 7,125. In 1981 the population living in the Gaza Strip was roughly 10,000.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was launched in April 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics and intellectuals in Ramallah, in the West Bank. PACBI is part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign calls for BDS activities against Israel to put international pressure on Israel, in this case against Israeli academic institutions, all of which are said by PACBI to be implicated in the perpetuation of Israeli occupation, in order to achieve BDS goals. The goal of the proposed academic boycotts is to isolate Israel in order to force a change in Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, which proponents argue are discriminatory and oppressive, including oppressing the academic freedom of Palestinians.
Present absentees are Arab internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled or were expelled from their homes in Mandatory Palestine during the 1947–1949 Palestine war but remained within the area that became the state of Israel.
Palestinians in Syria are people of Palestinian origin, most of whom have been residing in Syria after they were displaced from their homeland during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. Palestinians hold most of the same rights as the Syrian population, but cannot become Syrian nationals except in rare cases. In 2011, there were 526,744 registered Palestinian refugees in Syria. Due to the Syrian Civil War, the number of registered refugees has since dropped to about 450,000 due to many Palestinians fleeing to Lebanon, Jordan or elsewhere in the region to escaping to Europe as refugees, especially to Germany and Sweden.
The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) is a UK-based advocacy group established in 1996 in London. It is an "independent consultancy focusing on the historical, political and legal aspects of the Palestinian Refugees". In July 2015, PRC was given special consultative status at the United Nations as non-governmental organisation (NGO). The centre specialises in research and analysis of issues concerning the Palestinians who were displaced, and subsequently prevented from returning, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It advocates "their internationally recognised legal right to return."
Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor is an independent, nonprofit organization for the protection of human rights.
"Ongoing Nakba" is a historiographical framework and term that interprets the Palestinian "Nakba" or "catastrophe" as a still emerging and unfolding phenomenon. The phrase emerged in the late 1990s and its first public usage is widely credited to Hanan Ashrawi, who referred to it in a speech at the 2001 World Conference against Racism. The term was later adopted by scholars such as Joseph Massad and Elias Khoury. As an intellectual framework, the "ongoing Nakba" narrative reflects the conceptualisation of the Palestinian experience not as a series of isolated events, but as "a continuous experience of violence and dispossession", or as other have termed it, the "recurring loss" of the Palestinian people.
