What is the current number of Palestinian refugees living outside of Palestine and what led to their displacement from Palestine ?
Palestinian refugees are the individuals who have been forced from their homes through deliberate Zionist actions since 1947, and their offspring. There are five primary groups of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons:
The campaign of ethnic cleansing took place before and during the war of 1948, and saw approximately 800,000 Palestinians expelled from their homes, and over 530 villages being demolished. Another large wave of displacement and expulsions of at least 350,000 followed the war of 1967. Israel depends upon the displacement of these refugees and their descendants to maintain itself as an ethnocracy.
The largest group is comprised of Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1947–1950. This includes Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), created in 1949 to aid Palestinians forced from their homes, and others who either were not eligible for international assistance or chose not to receive it.
The second major group is comprised of those Palestinians ethnically cleansed for the first time in the June 1967 war from their places of origin in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
The third group of refugees includes Palestinians who left the Occupied Territories since 1967 and have been prevented by Israel from returning due to revocation of residency rights, denial of family reunification, or deportation. Some are simply unwilling to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution.
In addition, there are two groups of internally displaced Palestinians. The first includes those who left their homes or villages but remained in the area that became the state of Israel in 1948. The second group includes Palestinians internally displaced in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
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 the 1940s 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.
As of 2021, it is estimated that there are over 7 million Palestinian refugees worldwide, most of which are registered through UNRWA.
As with any other refugee population Palestinians are entitled to return to their homes. There are also United Nations resolutions specifically affirming the Palestinian right of return. Israel, however, contends that no such right exists.
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.“
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.