ABSTRACT
In 2010, it was 64 years since the refugees’ fateful exodus from Palestine (al-Nakba, ‘disaster’) and the birth of the refugee problem. The refugee problem has since remained unsolved despite United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolutions demanding their return. Despite six decades of continued struggle for their rights, the bitter fact is that refugees have neither been able to return to their homeland nor obtain basic civil rights in some host states. Today, there are about four million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. A large number of the refugees, especially camp dwellers, suffer from poverty, lack of civil rights and live in the midst of intense social and political conflict. In the longest-standing refugee problem in modern history, refugees are caught between exile and alienation as non-citizens of host states. By advancing a regional approach to contemporary refugee communities, this book highlights the diversity of Palestinian lives across the Levant and examines its causes.
