Refugees
The Palestinian refugees constitute the world’s largest refugee population. The majority were displaced between 1947 and 1949, when over two thirds of the Palestinian Arab population were ethnically cleansed by the Zionist forces in order to establish the state of Israel. Significant numbers of refugees were subsequently created within Israel between 1948 and until the mid-1950s, and during the 1967 war, when more refugees were forced to flee their homes in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – some for the second time.
By 2006, the UN’s Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, counted 4,448,429 million officially registered refugees. If those who are not registered are included, the number rises to over 6 million. Indeed, many Palestinian refugees were never registered, as they did not go through the UN camp system. Today, some three-quarters of the Palestinian people are refugees.
The plight of the refugees is the result of the Zionist settler colonisation of Palestine and the mass expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948 by the Zionist forces. The enduring exile of Palestinian refugees is the direct consequence of a system of racist laws and practices introduced by the Israeli state that systematically discriminate, dominate over and perpetuate the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
The right of return of Palestinian refugees is a necessary and intrinsic component of a durable solution based on justice.The right of Palestinian refugees’ to return to their homes is affirmed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194. For 1967 refugees, this right is affirmed in UN Security Council Resolution 237. Similarly, article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights upholds that all people have a right to return to live peacefully in the homes and on the lands from which they came. Israeli membership in the UN was conditional upon its implementation of UN Resolution 194.