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.
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.
Wavel is a Palestinian refugee camp near the city of Baalbeck in Lebanon. It was originally a French army barrack, but in 1948 refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war found shelter there. In 1952, UNRWA took over responsibility for providing services in the camp.
Amman New Camp or Al-Wehdat camp, locally known as Al-Wihdat, which is located in the Hay Al Awdah neighbourhood, in southeast Amman, the capital city of Jordan occupies a 0.48 km2 (0.19 sq mi), Of the ten recognized Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Al-Wehdat is the second largest, with a population of roughly 57,000 registered refugees, which includes 8,400 students. The United Nation body responsible for administrating Palestinian refugee camps, is the Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
The Amal Movement is a Lebanese political party and former militia affiliated mainly with the Shia community of Lebanon. It was founded by Musa al-Sadr and Hussein el-Husseini in 1974 as the "Movement of the Deprived." The party has been led by Nabih Berri since 1980. The Greek Catholic Archbishop of Beirut, Grégoire Haddad, as well as Mostafa Chamran, were among the founders of the movement.
The War of the Camps, was a subconflict within the 1984–1990 phase of the Lebanese Civil War, in which the Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut were besieged by the Shia Amal militia.
Dahieh is a predominantly Shia Muslim suburb in the south of Beirut, in the Baabda District of Lebanon. It has a minority of Sunni Muslims, Christians, and a Palestinian refugee camp with 20,000 inhabitants. It is a residential and commercial area with malls, stores and souks, and comprises several towns and municipalities. It is north of Rafic Hariri International Airport, and the M51 freeway that links Beirut to the airport passes through it.
Deir al-Balah Camp is a Palestinian refugee camp in the Deir al-Balah Governorate of the southern Gaza Strip, located one kilometer northwest of the center of Deir al-Balah city, of which it practically forms part. The camp consists of concrete buildings and has eight schools, sewers, and other municipal services. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the camp had a population of 6,985 in 2017. It is the smallest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Deir al-Balah Camp is built on an area of 0.16 square kilometers. As of July 2023, the population registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was 26,674 persons.
Bourj el-Barajneh is a municipality located in the southern suburbs of Beirut, in Lebanon. The municipality lies between Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport and the town of Haret Hreik.
Burj el-Shemali is a municipality located some 86 km south of Beirut and 3 km east of the Tyre/Sour peninsula, merging into its urban area. It is part of the Tyre Union of Municipalities within the Tyre District of the South Governorate of Lebanon.
Association Najdeh (AN) is a NGO involved with development and educational projects in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It operates more exactly in and around the refugee camps. It defends the Palestinian refugee women who are often victims of discriminations and also participates in different campaigns, in coalitions of local and international organizations, for the right to work in Lebanon and the right of return to Palestine.
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.
Children of the Siege is a book by Pauline Cutting. It was first published in 1988 by William Heinemann.
El-Buss camp – also transliterated Bass, Bas, or Baas with the definite article spelled either al or el – is one of the twelve Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, located in the Southern Lebanese city of Tyre. It had been a refuge for survivors of the Armenian genocide from the 1930s until the 1950s, built in a swamp area which during ancient times had for at least one and a half millennia been a necropolis. In recent decades it has been "at the center of Tyre’s experience with precarity" and "a space that feels permanent yet unfinished, suspended in time."
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.
On 12 November 2015, two suicide bombers attacked Bourj el-Barajneh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, that is inhabited mostly by Shia Muslims. Reports of the number of fatalities concluded that 43 people died directly from the detonation. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Soufra is a non-governmental catering company founded by Mariam Shaar in the refugee camp in Bourj el Barajneh in Beirut, Lebanon. It employs women in the camp where they attempt to revive traditional Palestinian dishes, sell them via their catering business and a food truck, and earn a livelihood.
Irbid Camp is one of the 10 officially recognized UNRWA Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. It is located outside of Irbid.
