Palestine Refugee
لاجئ فلسطيني
A Palestine refugee, in UNRWA's working definition, is a person whose normal place of residence was Palestine between 1 June 1946 and 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 war. Descendants are also eligible for registration; today some 5.9 million Palestine refugees are registered with the agency.
Palestine refugees are the people displaced in the war of 1948 — more than 700,000 of them — together with their descendants. The United Nations created the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in December 1949 as a temporary body, pending what its mandate calls a ‘just and durable solution’; more than seventy-five years later, that solution has not arrived, and the General Assembly has renewed the mandate ever since.
Palestine refugees are served not by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) but by UNRWA alone, which operates in five fields: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Nearly one-third of registered refugees — more than 1.5 million people — live in 58 recognized refugee camps, some of which have stood since 1948 and grown into dense urban quarters. UNRWA runs one of the region’s largest school systems, educating more than half a million children, alongside health clinics and relief programs.
Their situation remains uniquely unresolved: no other refugee population has remained in camps for generations while the question of return — affirmed by Resolution 194 — stays open. The agency itself has become politically contested, facing recurrent funding crises and, in October 2024, legislation by Israel’s parliament banning its operations in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, a move criticized by much of the international community.
Sources
Cited works
2- unrwa.org — palestine refugees(opens in a new tab)https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees
- un.org — about the nakba(opens in a new tab)https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/
Connected in the archive
3 connected records3 records elsewhere in the archive are linked to this one, each by a piece of evidence you can read below.
names this record — 2 records
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- Gaza, by Name
Evidence — From a recorded field in this archive: The working definition, stated exactly — because almost every argument about Gaza's population is in fact an argument about this paragraph.
- Other Registered Persons (UNRWA)
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Those who meet the Palestine Refugee criteria become Registered Refugees.
named in this record — 1 record
One record names the other. A pointer for reading, not a claim that they belong to each other.
- UN General Assembly Resolution 194
Evidence — Inferred from the text — read the evidence: Their situation remains uniquely unresolved: no other refugee population has remained in camps for generations while the question of return — affirmed by Resolution 194 — stays open.
Cite this page
Every claim above carries its sources — citation is the point.
- Chicago
“Palestine Refugee.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI. Accessed 22 August 2026. https://falasteen.ai/glossary/palestine-refugee.- MLA
“Palestine Refugee.” Glossary, FALASTEEN.AI, 2026, https://falasteen.ai/glossary/palestine-refugee. Accessed 22 August 2026.- BibTeX
@misc{falasteen-palestine-refugee, title = {Palestine Refugee}, howpublished = {\url{https://falasteen.ai/glossary/palestine-refugee}}, organization = {FALASTEEN.AI — A Living Archive for Palestine}, year = {2026}, note = {Accessed 2026-08-22} }