ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the Palestinian refugees’ legal status in the Near East: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It will focus more particularly on the ‘Palestine refugees’, namely those Palestinian refugees (and their descendants) living in the above-mentioned countries/territories registered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestine Refugees in the Near East (see Table 8.1).1 The 4.6 million Palestine refugees constitute about four-fifths of the total number of Palestinian refugees living in the Near East and two-thirds of the total number of Palestinian refugees around the world, estimated at about 7.5 million (Badil 2006: 49). The Palestine refugees have lived under a variety of different national jurisdictions. Formal citizens in Jordan since 1949, the majority of those residing in the other host countries have remained stateless. On the socioeconomic level, they have been subjected to various discriminatory systems, from quasi-parity in Syria to sheer marginalization in Lebanon. Beyond these differences, two patterns have nevertheless contributed to define them as one cohesive, transnational, refugee category.
