Palestinian refugees

In 2019, more than 5.6 million **Palestinian refugees** were registered with the United Nations. Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village, or house during 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 1949, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) defined Palestinian refugees to refer to the original "**Palestine refugees**" as well as their patrilineal descendants. However, UNRWA's assistance is limited to Palestine refugees residing in UNRWA's areas of operation in the Occupied Palestinian Territoriy, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

During the 1948 Palestine War, around 85% of the population or 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, living in the area that became Israel fled or were expelled from their homes, to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and to the countries of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. They, and their descendants who are also entitled to registration, are assisted by UNWRA in 59 registered camps, ten of which were established in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967 to cope with the new wave of displaced Palestinians. They are also the world's oldest unsettled refugee population, having been under the ongoing governance of Arab states following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the refugee populations of the West Bank under Israeli governance since the Six-Day War and Palestinian administration since 1994, and the Gaza Strip administered by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) since 2007.

Today, the largest number of refugees, over 2,000,000, live in Jordan, where by 2009 over 90% of UNWRA-registered Palestinian refugees had acquired full citizenship rights. This figure consists almost exclusively of West Bank–descended Palestinians; however, as of December 2021, Palestinians with roots in the Gaza Strip are also still kept in legal limbo. In 2021, Jordanian politician Jawad Anani estimated that roughly 50% of Jordan's population had West Bank–Palestinian roots. Another approximately 2,000,000 refugees live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, under Israeli occupation and blockade. Approximately 500,000 refugees live in each of Syria and Lebanon respectively, albeit under very different circumstances. While Palestinian refugees in Syria maintained their stateless status, the Syrian government afforded them the same economic and social rights enjoyed by Syrian citizens; they are also drafted into the Armed Forces despite not being citizens. Citizenship or legal residency in some host countries is denied, most notably for the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, where the absorption of Palestinians would upset a delicate confessional balance. For the refugees themselves, these situations mean they have reduced rights: no right to vote, limited property rights and access to social services, among other things.

## Places and populations

|District|Number of depopulated villages|Number of refugees in 1948|Number of refugees in 2000|||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|style="text-align:left;"|Beersheba|align="right"|88|90,507|590,231|
|style="text-align:left;"|Beisan|align="right"|31|19,602|127,832|
|style="text-align:left;"|Jenin|align="right"|6|4,005|26,118|
|style="text-align:left;"|Haifa|align="right"|59|121,196|790,365|
|style="text-align:left;"|Hebron|align="right"|16|22,991|149,933|
|style="text-align:left;"|Ramle|align="right"|64|97,405|635,215|
|style="text-align:left;"|Safad|align="right"|78|52,248|340,729|
|style="text-align:left;"|Tiberias|align="right"|26|28,872|188,285|
|style="text-align:left;"|Tulkarm|align="right"|18|11,032|71,944|
|style="text-align:left;"|Acre|align="right"|30|47,038|306,753|
|style="text-align:left;"|Gaza|align="right"|46|79,947|521,360|
|style="text-align:left;"|Jerusalem|align="right"|39|97,950|638,769|
|style="text-align:left;"|Nazareth|align="right"|5|8,746|57,036|
|style="text-align:left;"|Jaffa|align="right"|25|123,227|803,610|
|**531**|**804,766**|**5,248,185**||||
|colspan="7" style="background:#e9e9e9;font-size:90%;"|Demography of Palestine|||||

The number of UNRWA registered Palestine refugees by country or territory in January 2015 were as follows:

||2,117,361|
| --- | --- |
||1,276,929|
||774,167|
||528,616|
||452,669|
|**Total**|**5,149,742**|

## Related pages

- Nakba
- Gaza genocide