Part Two Seventy Years of Exile Palestinian Refugees Around the World, V Palestinian ‘Diaspora’ in Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Africa

This chapter highlights Palestinian dispersal in Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, and Africa. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, members of the Palestinian (refugee) ‘diaspora’ have progressively found roots in all continents. Palestinians who were abroad at the end of the British Mandate and in 1948 were not allowed to return effectively became the first Palestinian refugees sur place. In the 1950s and 1960s, Palestinian refugees (including descendants) moved further afield from their places of residence (often de facto asylum), namely Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and present-day occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). They moved primarily to MENA countries, but also, to Western Europe and North America, looking for better life opportunities and increasingly, from the 1980s and 1990s, for international protection. This triggered the application of Article 1D(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention discussed in Chapter II. In many countries, however, Article 1D continues not to be applied (or not applied properly), with claims of Palestinian refugees being assessed under Article 1A(2), downplaying the distinctive regime set up for them under the 1951 Convention, and the continuity of protection incorporated therein. Countries that offer more robust protection – including through accessible naturalization procedures – have steadily represented important destinations for Palestinians fleeing various parts of the Middle East in search of safe haven. However, in recent years restrictive asylum policies in Western countries (rectius, the Global North) may have contributed to an unprecedented rise in numbers of Palestinian refugees seeking sanctuary in new destinations. Ultimately, the growing Palestinian dispersal around the world, marked by growing vulnerability to protection therats, is a direct result of the failure to find a just solution to their plight.

Part Three Protection and Solutions, VI Focusing on Specific Rights

This chapter focuses on a number of specific rights and entitlements of Palestinian refugees under international law, including the rights to self-determination, return, and compensation, as well as a number of civic, cultural, economic, political, and social rights, relevant because of the protracted nature of Palestinians’ exile and the main vulnerabilities to protection threats, as discussed in Part II. Despite being firmly established in international law, and being reaffirmed multiple times by the United Nations, both the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, and the right to return and compensation of the refugees, remain unmet. This is largely because of the lack of a solution in accordance with international law. The chapter argues that recognizing other fundamental rights of the Palestinians as refugees, stateless persons, and/or protected persons under international humanitarian law, and above all, as human beings, does not undermine the right to return and rather helps ensure human dignity while a just and lasting solution remains pending. These rights remain an important benchmark for assessing the treatment of Palestinian refugees in the MENA region and beyond, for as long as the more fundamental rights to self-determination, return, restitution, and compensation remain unrealized.

Part Two Seventy Years of Exile Palestinian Refugees Around the World, IV The Status of Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East and North Africa: Unpacking an Unsettling Solidarity

This chapter looks at the history, status, and treatment of Palestinian refugees in the Arab world. Arab countries have generally supported Palestinians, including refugees, in the name of Arab brotherhood and solidarity, but at times also despised them, as a result of political factors and interests. In general, they have been granted varying status and treatment, often within the same country, depending on a variety of factors, including: time of arrival and predominant political climate toward them; their socio-economic status and family, political, or religious affiliation; shifting attitudes toward the Palestinian leadership. The citizenship that Jordan granted to most 1948 Palestinian refugees, has proven carrying inequality. In Lebanon, Palestinian arrivals, largely Sunni Muslims, were perceived as a threat to the delicate balance between different religious groups and the related political status quo; discrimination has been the daily reality for three generations of Palestinians. In Iraq and Syria, Palestinian refugees were well treated until the wars of 2003 and 2011, respectively. In Egypt political shifts have dramatically marked the fate the Palestinians in the country. While welcoming Palestinians as an extraordinary work-force in the 1950s and through the 1970s, Arab rulers – from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula – also perceived their unwavering Palestinian identity and the political message it encompassed as a possible destabilizing factor for their regimes. Vindictive policies, often aiming at targeting the PLO, have made Palestinians in the region vulnerable to abuses and further displacement. About 700,000 Palestinians, mostly children and grandchildren of the 1948 refugees, have been cumulatively displaced from Arab countries from the 1970s onward.

Part One Historical and Legal Foundations, III On the Application of International Law to Palestinian Refugees

This chapter explores the legal foundations of the Palestinian refugee question, reviewing their status under various branches of international law – as refugees, stateless persons, civilians protected under international humanitarian law, internally displaced persons, or, simply, as human beings entitled to human rights. International law as it stood in the early twentieth century, is relevant to the Palestinian refugee question. Since 1948, the evolution of its various branches – notably international humanitarian law (IHL), international human rights law (IHRL), international refugee law (IRL), and the frameworks to address statelessness and prevent internal displacement – have consolidated and evolved in ways that should benefit Palestinian refugees. IRL determines the foundation of the legal status of Palestinians as refugees and the standards of treatment specific to that status. IHRL, as the body of international law with the widest application, has the potential to improve significantly the status and conditions of Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile, IHL remains an important, composite protection framework whenever humanity fails. Thus, the failure to bring a just resolution to the plight of Palestinian refugees is ultimately attributable to the protracted lack of political will, rather than inadequacy of the legal framework and the persistence to treat their plight in political terms, as an outcome of war, a humanitarian crisis, and an issue for negotiation.

Part One Historical and Legal Foundations, I A Historical Overview of the Palestinian Refugee Question

This chapter traces the history of the Palestinian refugee question and discusses the main events that created the conditions that enabled the mass displacement of most of the Arab population of Mandate Palestine. The events that befell Palestine between 1947 and 1948, i.e. the decision of the United Nations to partition Palestine and the resultant war, are defining moments of the Palestinian refugee question. Its roots, however, are to be found in the events that preceded and enabled it–starting with the socio-political and economic transformation that occurred in Palestine during the Ottoman Empire (1808–1917) and intensified during the thirty years of the British control over Palestine (1918–1948). It can also be found in the way the League of Nations first, and the United Nations after, attempted to resolve the dispute over Palestine. This historical account is crucial to understanding how international law was central to early attempts at resolving the refugee issue, and how it subsequently became effectively side-lined. The chapter also identifies some elements of continuity between the original displacement (in 1948 and 1967) and the current situation of Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and beyond.

Part Three Protection and Solutions, VIII The Quest for Durable Solutions

This concluding chapter focuses on the quest for just and durable solutions, exploring the challenges and opportunities that have emerged through the various attempts at resolving the Palestinian refugee question. Solutions for Palestinian refugees have been sought since May of 1948. The work of the General Assembly; the UN Mediator for Palestine; the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP); the Security Council in the aftermath of the Six Day War; the various peace initiatives and negotiations since the Madrid peace conference in 1991, have all included attempts to find solutions to the plight of the refugees. However, decades of Arab–Israel and Israeli–Palestinian peace efforts have not succeeded in bringing a resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue within reach. The chapter argues that a fundamental paradigm shift is necessary to advance solutions for Palestinian refugees. Moving the question from the essentially bilateral approach of the last decades back to the multilateral arena of the United Nations; ensuring respect for the international law governing the resolution of refugee problems, as informed by international practice; and moving beyond the ‘politics of suffering’ that dominate the Palestinian refugee discourse are key elements to progress towards just and durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. The New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants, which called for the development of a Global Compact on Refugees, offers an opportunity to pursue solutions for Palestinian refugees.

Part Three Protection and Solutions, VII Protection of Palestinian Refugees

This chapter examines the protection dimension of the distinctive regime set up for Palestinian refugees in an historical and comparative fashion. It then addresses the need for international protection of Palestinian refugees. As Palestinian refugees in need of protection have spread outside UNRWA’s area of operations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) became increasingly involved. Since the mid-2000s, cooperation between UNHCR and UNRWA has become more structured. As awareness of the protection needs of Palestinians has increased, so have the contributions of others, including UN agencies and human rights mechanisms, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and the Palestinians’ own embassies. These developments reflect a profound change: a shift from treating protection of Palestinians as something exceptional and separate from the global regime for refugees to a recognition that their protection is and should be treated as an integral, albeit distinct, part of that regime. Ultimately, a major improvement in the protection of Palestinian refugees would occur if states and regional bodies fully honoured their commitments and obligations under international law, and, for those state parties to the international refugee regime, the obligations stemming from it. For this to happen and to ensure continuity of protection, the partnership between UNRWA and UNHCR should be upgraded through a comprehensive approach aimed at ensuring that practices fully align with the provisions of relevant UN resolutions, Article 1D of the 1951 Convention and human rights norms.

Introduction to the Question of Palestinian Refugees and the Second Edition

This chapter introduces the readers to both rationale and content of the new expanded edition of Palestine Refugees in International Law. It underscores the legal and factual developments that motivated the authors to write what is in essence a new book on the foundations of the first edition. It provides an overview of its structure and key messages, the methodology and some of the key terminology used in the book (e.g. ‘Palestine refugee’ vs ‘Palestinian refugee’). It explains how international law is used throughout the book and why a holistic approach to the Palestinian question is necessary not only to effectively grant them the protection they are entitled to under international law but also to advance toward just a durable solutions to their plight.

Part One Historical and Legal Foundations, II Palestinian Refugees: A Distinctive Normative and Institutional Regime

This chapter examines the foundation of Palestinian refugees’ status in international law, as well as the characteristics of their distinctive institutional and normative regime compared to other refugees around the world. This distinctiveness stems from special arrangements the United Nations (UN) has made for them. This includes ad hoc UN agencies mandated to protect and assist Palestinian refugees, namely the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as well as, under certain circumstances, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The chapter then considers both the genesis and meaning of Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the provision specifically included with the Palestinian refugees in mind, including its recent interpretation and application, and various defintions of Palestine/Palestinian refugee offered for various purposes (i.e. assistance and relief, protection and durable solutions). It shows how the special arrangements for this group of refugees, put in place due to the circumstances of their displacement, were meant to ensure continuity of protection and how, the lack of durable solutions has made the arrangements set up for them, inclreasingly looking as an anomaly.