How do refugees make up a large percentage of the Palestinian population ?
The main bulk of Palestinian refugees were created through the ethnic cleansing of Palestine at the hand of Zionist militias between 1947-1948 and the subsequent establishment of the state of Israel. This campaign of ethnic cleansing took place before and during the war of 1948, and saw approximately 800,000 ( ~80% of the Palestinian populace at that time) Palestinians expelled from their homes, and over 530 villages being demolished. Another large wave of displacement and expulsions followed the war of 1967. Israel depends upon the displacement of these refugees and their descendants to maintain itself as an ethnocracy.
According to Salman Abu Sitta, and based on a wide array of sources, the majority of Palestinian villages (54%) were abandoned due to military assaults by Zionist militias. The second largest reason was direct expulsion by Zionist forces (24%). Panic caused by the atrocities committed in other fallen villages inspired mass panic that resulted in the abandonment of (10%) of the villages. Fear of Zionist attack resulted in a further (7%) of the villages being abandoned, while (2%) were abandoned due to psychological terror campaigns, dubbed “whispering” campaigns.
It should be stressed, however, that the technicalities or reasons why the refugees left are irrelevant, as they have a right to return to their homes regardless.
As of 2021, it is estimated that there are over 7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, most of which are registered through UNRWA.
Most Palestinian refugees live in refugee camps in Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The rest are scattered all across the globe.
Israel prevents Palestinian refugees from returning because it claims they are a security threat. However, seeing as Israel is a settler colony built on stolen land, it did not have the population numbers to sustain itself. It could only be established by creating new demographic realities on the ground, these new realities necessitated that approximately 80% of the Palestinians in what is today considered Israel be ethnically cleansed to maintain a demographically stable Zionist ethnocracy. In short, Israel can only exist because millions of Palestinians are scattered refugees all over the world, simply because they are not Jewish.
Palestinian refugees are special in the sense that they are overseen by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) rather than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is because (UNHCR) did not exist as an organization when the ethnic cleansing of Palestine occurred. This, however, confers no special privileges to Palestinians, and can in fact be detrimental to Palestinian refugees compared to refugees from other contexts.
According to the official United Nations website:
“Under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found. Both UNRWA and UNHCR recognize descendants as refugees on this basis, a practice that has been widely accepted by the international community, including both donors and refugee hosting countries. Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises.“
According to international law, refugees have a right to return to their homes and they should not be used as sacrificial lambs so that Israel can pursue its racist, artificial demographic aims.
The expulsion of the Palestinians forms a cornerstone of the question of Palestine and the Palestinian revolution. The refugees expelled by Israel still languish in refugee camps simply for not being Jewish. For any lasting solution to materialize justice must be taken into account. There can be no justice without the right of return.
Thousands of residents of Yarmouk Palestine refugee camp in Syria line up to receive humanitarian aid after UNRWA regains access to the camp in January 2014, providing a limited quantity of food and hygiene items at a distribution area inside the camp.