Factsheet

What you need to know about Palestinian refugees and Internally Displaced Persons

• Q: Who is a Palestinian refugee?

A: Generally, the term Palestinian refugee refers to those Palestinians who were displaced from their places of origin in British Mandate Palestine (today Israel and the 1967 occupied Palestinian territory) and are unable to exercise their basic human right to return to their homes and properties.

 The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which provides basic health, education and relief services, has a working definition of Palestine refugees. This definition, however, does not fully encompass the range of Palestinians displaced by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; it only includes 1948 Palestinian refugees who are entitled to register for assistance with UNRWA.

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• Q: Who is a Palestinian internally displaced person (IDP)?

A: Internally displaced persons are persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or leave their homes as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, and violations of human rights, and who have not crossed an internationally-recognized state border.

 Most of the refugees of the 1948 Nakba (Arabic for ‘Catastrophe’) were displaced to Arab states and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which until Israel’s 1967 occupation were under Jordanian and Egyptian control, respectively. But at the end of the war, some 150,000 Palestinians remained in the areas of Palestine that became the state of Israel. Around 40,000 of these were internally displaced.

 Like the approximately 800,000 Palestinian refugees who were displaced beyond the borders of the new state, Israel refused to allow these IDPs to return to their homes and villages.

 Internal displacement of Palestinians continued following the establishment of Israel. IDPs who had returned spontaneously to their villages, and Palestinians who had not been displaced during the 1948 war were expelled. Israeli officials also transferred Palestinians from one village to another within the borders of the state in order to facilitate colonization of these areas. In the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, more Palestinians have been displaced as a result of war, house demolition, revocation of residency rights in Jerusalem and construction of illegal Jewish settlements, as well as the Wall and its associated regime.

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• Q: How many Palestinian refugees and IDPs are there in the world?

A: It is difficult to give exact numbers of Palestinian refugees and IDPs because no comprehensive registration has ever been undertaken. Available global estimates rely on partial registers of UN agencies, research information, census data released by host countries, and estimates by Palestinian communities themselves.

 Today it is estimated that there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees and IDPs. This number includes:

- 4.5 million Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 and registered for assistance with the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA);

- An estimated 1.5 million Palestinian refugees displaced in 1948 but not registered for assistance;

- 950,000 refugees displaced in 1967;

- An estimated 338,000 internally displaced Palestinians in Israel; and

- An estimated 115,000 internally displaced Palestinians in the OPT.

 In total, the Palestinian refugee population comprises approximately three-quarters of the entire Palestinian population worldwide, numbered today at some 9.8 million. Palestinian refugees are the largest single group of refugees in the world; in fact almost two in five refugees are Palestinian.

 The number of Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA (UNRWA refugees or registered refugees) is often and incorrectly cited as the total Palestinian refugee population. Many refugees were not registered with UNRWA either because they did not qualify for assistance or because they had been displaced to countries where UNRWA does not provide assistance. Other refugees, such as IDPs who are citizens of Israel, were subsequently dropped from UNRWA’s registration system. The refugees displaced in 1967 and as a result of subsequent hostilities, while they may receive emergency assistance from UNRWA, were never registered as UNRWA refugees.

• Q: Why are descendants of refugees and IDPs counted in today’s figures?

A: In short, the international community continues to classify children and grandchildren of Palestinian refugees as refugees because their entitlement to international assistance and protection and reparations is the same. This situation will remain until old and new generations of Palestinian refugees and IDPs have access to voluntary durable solutions (repatriation, integration in their current host country and resettlement in third states) and reparations (including return, restitution and compensation) in accordance with international law. The same approach is applied by the international community to other refugee situations in the world (such as with Bosnian and Guatemalan refugees) as well as to IDPs worldwide.

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• Q: Where do Palestinian refugees live today?

A: Today Palestinian refugees live in forced exile in most areas of the world. The majority of the refugees, however, still live within 100 km of the borders of Israel where their homes of origin are located. Some were displaced twice from their homes of origin; UNRWA estimates that half of the refugees forced out of the occupied Palestinian territories in 1967 had already been made refugees in 1948. Approximately one-third of UN-registered Palestinian refugees or 20% of the total refugee population reside in 59 official UN camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

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• Q: What do Palestinian refugees want?

A: Sixty years after their displacement and dispossession, Palestinian refugees continue to demand their right to return to their homes and properties. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish said in a 2001 interview:

I dream of us no longer being heroes or victims; we want to be ordinary human beings. When a man becomes an ordinary being and pursues his normal activities, he can love his country or hate it, he can emigrate or stay. However, for this to apply there are objective conditions which are not in place. As long as the Palestinian person is deprived of his homeland, he is obliged to be a slave for that homeland.

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• Q: What do refugees mean when they talk about the right of return? Why do refugees want to return to Israel?

A: Palestinian refugees are no different than other refugees around the world. Just as other refugees have sought to return to the places they call home, as difficult as that may be following persecution, armed conflict and destruction of the very threads of life, so too do Palestinian refugees regard return as the main solution to their plight. According to the Office for the UN High Commissioner of Refugees, return (or repatriation) is the preferred durable solution to the plight of refugees in the world.

 Recognition of Palestinian refugees’ right of return is also a recognition of what happened to them, their individual and collective history, and of the injustice that they have experienced. For 60 years, Palestinian refugees have made clear that they will not accept financial compensation instead of full reparations, which include the right to return and property restitution.

 The creation of a Palestinian state without full recognition of the right of return to their homes of origin offers no remedy and reparations to Palestinian refugees; it limits self-determination by restricting Palestinian nationhood and abandoning many Palestinians to a state of permanent exile. Thus, the issue of the right of return of the refugees is tied to who Palestinians are as a people, and who they will be.

 A comment often heard by refugees is that they can’t turn back the clock. What happened in 1948 is history. There’s no going back. The right of return, however, is not about going back in time. Return is much more about the future. It is really about starting to live, answering the deep sense of belonging to the land from which refugees were torn decades ago, and about building relations between Palestinians and Jews that are based on justice and equality. Return is thus about the return of rights, all rights.

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• Q: Why did the refugees leave? Didn’t Arab leaders tell them to leave?

A: The majority of Palestinians became refugees as a result of war crimes and serious human rights violations committed by Zionist forces, and later Israel, which sought to induce the flight of the indigenous population of Palestine. Documented incidents include attacks on civilians, massacres, looting, destruction of property (including entire villages), and forced expulsion by Zionist fighters. In some cases, refugees were forced to sign papers that they were leaving voluntarily. Israeli forces adopted a ‘shoot to kill’ policy along the armistice lines to prevent the return of refugees.

 It is estimated that approximately 50% fled under the assault of Zionist forces before the 1948 war had even started. Sixty percent of refugees displaced to Jordan in 1967 fled as a result of direct military assault.

 In 1948, 85% of Palestinians living in what is now the state of Israel became refugees. More than 500 Palestinian villages were depopulated and later destroyed to prevent the return of the refugees. In the districts of Jaffa, Ramla and Bir Saba’ not one Palestinian village was left standing. In the 1967 war, approximately 35% of the Palestinian population of the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip was expelled. Villages in Latroun and Jerusalem were destroyed, as well as several refugee camps.

 Claims have been made that, in 1948, the Arab Higher Committee called on Palestinians to leave their homes until its invading armies could defeat the Zionists. No evidence of such a call has ever been found. Even if this had happened, international law requires Israel to allow refugees and IDPs to return to their homes.

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• Q: How can we solve the Palestinian refugee and IDP problem?

A: The international community has established three ‘durable solutions’ for resolving refugee crises: repatriation (implementation of the right of return and the only solution that is a fundamental right), resettlement in a third country and local integration in the host country. Voluntary repatriation - returning to one’s home country - is considered the most desirable solution. Return, property restitution and compensation are part of durable solutions, in particular where refugees have been victims of population transfer, i.e. ethnic cleansing.

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• Q: What does international law say?

A: The rights of Palestinian refugees and IDPs are enshrined in the law of nations, international humanitarian and human rights law, the law on state responsibility and international best practice, as well as numerous UN resolutions.

 The framework for durable solutions for all persons displaced in 1948, including IDPs inside Israel, is set forth in Article 11 of UN General Assembly Resolution 194, passed on 11 December, 1948. Resolution 194 resolves that the refugees be allowed to return to their homes at the earliest practicable date and that compensation be paid to those choosing not to return and for loss or damage to property.

 Palestinian refugees and IDPs displaced in 1967 have a similar framework provided in Paragraph 1 of UN Security Council Resolution 237, passed on 14 June, 1967 and calling on Israel to allow the immediate return of all who had fled the hostilities.Other references are:

Human Rights Law (selected instruments)

- Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 13: Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

Article 2(3): Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes:

(a) To ensure that any person whose rights or freedoms as herein recognized are violated shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed by persons acting in an official capacity;

(b) To ensure that any person claiming such a remedy shall have his right thereto determined by competent judicial, administrative or legislative authorities, or by any other competent authority provided for by the legal system of the State, and to develop the possibilities of judicial remedy;

(c) To ensure that the competent authorities shall enforce such remedies when granted.

Article 12: No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.

- International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination

Article 5: State parties undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of the right to leave any country, including one’s own, and to return to one’s country.

Article 6: States Parties shall assure to everyone within their jurisdiction effective protection and remedies, through the competent national tribunals and other State institutions, against any acts of racial discrimination which violate his human rights and fundamental freedoms contrary to this Convention, as well as the right to seek from such tribunals just and adequate reparation or satisfaction for any damage suffered as a result of such discrimination.

International Humanitarian Law (selected instruments)

- Hague Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land

Article 3: A belligerent party which violates the provisions of the said Regulations shall, if the case demands, be liable to pay compensation. It shall be responsible for all acts committed by persons forming part of its armed forces.

- Fourth Geneva Convention

Excerpt from Article 49: Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.

- Additional Protocol 1

Article 74: The High Contracting Parties and the Parties to the conflict shall facilitate in every possible way the reunion of families dispersed as a result of armed conflicts and shall encourage in particular the work of the humanitarian organizations engaged in this task in accordance with the provisions of the Conventions and of this Protocol and in conformity with their respective security regulations.

Article 91: A Party to the conflict which violates the provisions of the Conventions or of this Protocol shall, if the case demands, be liable to pay compensation. It shall be responsible for all acts committed by persons forming part of its armed forces.

Law of Nations

- International Law Commission Articles on Nationality/ State Succession (customary international law)

Article 5: Subject to the provisions of the present draft articles, persons concerned having their habitual residence in the territory affected by the succession of States are presumed to acquire the nationality of the successor State on the date of such succession.

Article 14: The status of persons concerned as habitual residents shall not be affected by the succession of States. A State concerned shall take all necessary measures to allow persons concerned [i.e. habitual residents] who, because of events connected with the succession of States, were forced to leave their habitual residence on its territory to return thereto.

International Court of Justice (ICJ)

- Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Israel must further make reparation for all damage suffered by all natural or legal persons affected by the walls construction. Reparation includes restitution and return...

150. The Court observes that Israel also has an obligation to put an end to the violation of its international obligations flowing from the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The obligation of a State responsible for an internationally wrongful act to put an end to that act is well established in general international law, and the Court has on a number of occasions confirmed the existence of that obligation.

International Criminal Law

- Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)

Article 75 (1): The Court shall establish principles relating to reparations to, or in respect of, victims, including restitution, compensation and rehabilitation. On this basis, in its decision the Court may, either upon request or on its own motion in exceptional circumstances, determine the scope and extent of any damage, loss and injury to, or in respect of, victims and will state the principles on which it is acting.

Law of State Responsibility - UN Guiding Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law, 16 December 2005:  "In accordance with domestic law and international law, and taking account of individual circumstances, victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law should, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, be provided with full and effective reparation, which include the following forms: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non -repetition.  Restitution should, whenever possible, restore the victim to the original situation before the gross violations of international human rights law or serious violations of international humanitarian law occurred. Restitution includes, as appropriate: restoration of liberty, enjoyment of human rights, identity, family life and citizenship, return to one’s place of residence, restoration of employment and return of property.  Compensation should be provided for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, resulting from gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law, such as: Physical or mental harm; Lost opportunities; Material damages and loss of earnings; Moral damage; Costs required for legal or expert assistance, and medical, psychological and social services.  Rehabilitation should include medical and psychological care as well as legal and social services.  Satisfaction should include: Effective measures aimed at the cessation of continuing violations; Verification of the facts and full and public disclosure of the truth ...; An official declaration or a judicial decision restoring the dignity, the reputation and the rights of the victim and of persons closely connected with the victim; Public apology, including acknowledgement of the facts and acceptance of responsibility; Judicial and administrative sanctions against persons liable for the violations; Commemorations and tributes to the victims; Inclusion of an accurate account of the violations that occurred in international human rights law and international humanitarian law training and in educational material at all

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• Q: What is the role of refugees in implementing a durable solution?

A: International best practice insists that refugees be offered their choice of a solution in a voluntary and informed manner.

 A rights-based approach to assistance and protection, moreover, requires that refugees are consulted and given a right to participate in the design and implementation of national and international interventions. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has adopted both the principle of voluntariness (refugee choice) in the search for durable solutions, and a participatory approach in its operations. In the case of Palestinian refugees, UNGA Resolution 194 (1948) affirms that the refugees should choose their preferred solution (return or resettlement), and it obligates those who have chosen to return to their homes to live at peace with their neighbours.

• Q: How do refugees envision a future relationship with Israelis?

A: One of the common fears raised about the return of Palestinian refugees is that decades of exile have taught them to hate Israel. Thus, the right of return becomes no more than a code word for the destruction of Israel. Here one refugee responds:

We should not repeat the mistake of the Israelis and make our existence in our land dependent on the non-existence of the people who are already living there. Israelis or Jews thought that their existence on the soil of Palestine meant the non-existence of the other. We do not believe that.
   - Ismail Abu Hashash from pre-1948 Iraq al-Manshiya, now a refugee in the West Bank

 In numerous workshops and public debates conducted in Palestinian refugee communities since the early 1990s, moreover, Palestinian refugees have clarified that they envision a future where they can return and build a society where relations between Palestinians and Israeli Jews are defined by the principles of dignity and equality.