Palestine Refugee

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

• Palestine Refugees — UNRWA
• About the Nakba — United Nations, Question of Palestine