(1) Resources (oldest first):
(2) Articles: below (latest first)

Francesca P ALBANESE & Lex TAKKENBERG: « UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees: Protecting refugee rights while structurally addressing the agency’s financially unsustainable modus operandi. » Refugees Study Centre, Working Paper, Series 138, 27/02/2023, 18p. download here.

The 73-year-long failure to resolve the Palestinian refugee question, and the discourse around it, especially since Madrid and Oslo, combined with the unsustainability of UNRWA’s current modus operandi – essentially a means to manage the humanitarian dimension of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict – prompt a critical re-examination of the way the Palestinian refugee question has been approached and how UNRWA has interpreted and implemented its mandate over the past decades. This paper calls for a fundamental paradigm shift in the approach to protection of and solutions for the Palestinian refugees...

• Eman ALHAJ ALI: "Drowning in despair amid a sea of tents " (The Electronic Intifada, 14 Jan 2024): click here!

  We could hear the anxiety in my uncle’s voice. “Get up,” he shouted. “We must leave.” He informed us that leaflets had been dropped in the area of Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza, where we were staying. Israel had ordered the evacuation of this zone. It had been a week since we had left our own home in Maghazi and gone to stay with my aunt and uncle. Our lives had fallen into disarray beneath an oppressive darkened sky. We had left our own street after Israel had carried out a massacre there. The massacre took place on 24 December – at a time when people in many countries were celebrating or preparing to celebrate Christmas. At least 70 people were killed...

• Amena EL ASHKAR: "Refugees pick up pieces after Ein al-Hilweh fighting" (The Electronic Intifada, 2 Oct 2023): click here!

  After months of intermittent but deadly clashes and failed ceasefire agreements, mid-September saw yet another such truce agreed in the Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp in Southern Lebanon.

• Ramzy BAROUD & Romana RUBEO: "Why We Should Be Talking about Ain Al-Hilweh – ANALYSIS" (The Palestine Chronicle, Aug 14, 2023): click here!

  Starting on July 30, fighting erupted in Ain Al-Hilweh, one of the most crowded Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon. What is the bigger picture and why should Palestinians be talking about it? Since the start of the fighting, at least 28 people have been killed and many others wounded. How Did the Fighting Affect Life in the Camp? The latest round of fighting, starting in late July, has forced thousands of Palestinian families to flee Ain Al-Hilweh, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)...

• Ramzy BAROUD: "‘Capital of Shatat’ and Palestinian Agony: The Uncomfortable Truth about Ain Al-Hilweh" (The Palestine Chronicle, Aug 11, 2023): click here!

  Trapped in the middle are 120 thousand people, the estimated population of Ain Al-Hilweh – and, by extension, all of Lebanon’s Palestinian refugees. Ain Al-Hilweh is known as the “Capital of Palestinian Shatat ['exile'].” The term might not stir many emotions among those who do not fully understand, let alone experience the harrowing existence of ethnic cleansing and perpetual exile – and the tremendous violence which followed.

• Thomas SUÀREZ: "Palestinians remain holed up in internment, not 'refugee', camps" (MEMo, Aug 2, 2023): click here!

  During much of 1948, Palestinians driven from their homes by the violence of that terrible year took safety in what could reasonably be called refugee camps; camps for people who have fled ongoing violence or natural disaster and are unable or fearful to return. They ceased to be refugee camps by January, 1949.

• "Lebanon: Clashes in Ain al-Hilweh camp deepen Palestinian refugees’ distress, require radical solution" (Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, August 2, 2023): click here!

  Geneva - Concerned parties in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp must cease fire, said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor in a statement, stressing the need to make every possible effort to prevent a resurgence of violence. Euro-Med Monitor followed with grave concern the clashes that erupted between armed groups in Ain al-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon [Ain al-Hilweh camp, Lebanon's largest Palestinian refugee camp, near the southern coastal city of Sidon] over the past three days. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), 11 people were killed and dozens were injured as a result of the violence. Nearly 2,000 Palestinian refugees have been forced to flee the camp in search of safety. UNRWA has also announced a temporary halt to operations in the camp after one of its employees was injured and two of its schools were damaged during the clashes.

• "Masar Badil : A propos de la crise dans le camp de réfugiés d’Ain el-Helweh au Liban" (Collectif Palestine Vaincra, Août 1, 2023): click here!

  Depuis le 29 juillet dernier, des affrontements armés ont lieu dans le camp de réfugiés palestiniens d’Ain el-Helweh au Liban entre des groupes islamistes armés et des membres du Fatah. Cette violence a provoqué la mort d’au moins 11 Palestiniens et le déplacement de deux mille personnes. Membre de ce mouvement, le Collectif Palestine Vaincra relaie ci-dessous le communiqué de Masar Badil sur cet événement.

• Beatrice FARHAT: "What’s behind Palestinian violence in Lebanon’s Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp?" (Al-Monitor, July 31, 2023): click here!

  Violent clashes that erupted over the weekend between rival Palestinian factions at a refugee camp in southern Lebanon are continuing on Monday, the official National News Agency (NNA) reported, with at least six people reported killed so far.

• "Top Israeli Diplomat Just Cancelled the Palestinian Right of Return" (The Palestine Chronicle, July 28, 2023): click here!

  “Let me be clear, there is no right of return. You all know this,” Gilad Erdan told a UN Security Council meeting, Anadolu Agency reports. “The demand of millions of descendants of refugees returning to obliterate the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and this will never happen.” According to UNRWA, the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, there are currently 5.9 million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank as well as neighboring countries in the Middle East.

• Anne IRFAN (University College London): "Jenin attack created 4,000 new refugees, part of the endless cycle of Palestinian displacement since 1948" (The Conversation, 7 July, 2023): click here!

  While this mass displacement has received less media attention than other aspects of the Israeli operation, it is central to understanding the region’s politics. Forced migration has always been core to the dynamics of modern Palestine and Israel. Most Palestinians are refugees, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is organised around control of movement.

• Tareq S. HAJJAJ: "UNRWA to stop services to Palestinian refugees in August due to financial crisis" (Mondoweiss, 24 June 20, 2023): click here!

  UNRWA is facing a dire financial crisis that could end all services to Palestinian refugees as soon as August. This would be devastating to the millions of Palestinians who rely on the agency for essential services.

• Dalal YASSINE: "UNRWA cuts set to worsen in September" (The Electronic Intifada, June 20, 2023): click here!

  On 2 June, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) held its annual donors conference in New York. The conference failed to raise the funds necessary to cover UNRWA’s financial needs for the rest of the year. As of mid-May, the agency still needed $1.3 billion to ensure the continuity of its services and its future is again at risk.

• Hadeel ASSALI: "Palestinians in Paraguay" (London Review of Books, Vol. 45 No. 10 · 18 May 2023): click here!

  Re-published, with intro, in: Jewish Voice for Labour (18 June, 2023), click here!

• Yumna PATEL, « The people of ‘the camp’ » (Mondoweiss, May 20, 2023): click here!

  Over 75 years, the number of Palestinian refugees has surpassed 6 million worldwide and many still live in refugee camps. This is a look at the people who make up the camp, and the names and faces behind the term "refugee."

• « Palestijnse vluchtelingen wachten al 75 jaar op terugkeer » (The Rights Forum, 19 mei 2023): click here!

  Al 75 jaar weigert Israël de tot vluchten gedwongen Palestijnen te laten terug­keren naar hun woonplaatsen. Slechts een derde van alle Palestijnen leeft nog op de plek van zijn of haar roots.

• AL MEZAN: "Nakba survivors in Gaza mark 75 years of ongoing refugeehood, settler-colonialism and apartheid amid Israel’s renewed military assault on the Strip" (May 15, 2023, pdf, 8p.): click here!
• « UNRWA Launches US$ 16 Million Appeal for Palestine Refugees Impacted by Turkiye-Syria Earthquake » (March 6, 2023): click here!

  Damascus, 6 March 2023 – Today, on the one-month anniversary of the Turkiye-Syria earthquakes, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) launches an updated flash appeal for US$ 16.2 million to meet the humanitarian and early recovery needs of Palestine refugees who were affected by this natural catastrophe in Syria and Lebanon.
  Among the first humanitarian organizations on the ground, UNRWA provided emergency relief services, including health, psychosocial and mental health care, food and cash assistance, non-food items, and rental subsidies and housing to Palestine refugees in Aleppo and Lattakia. The earthquake also caused damage to an already weak housing and infrastructure in Palestine refugee camps in Lebanon, including medical and educational facilities and water towers.

• "European Union lawmakers criticize UNRWA chief over Palestinian textbooks" (Jewish News Syndicate, Sept 4, 2022): click here!

  The chair of the E.U. Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, MEP David McAllister, called UNRWA’s failure to address hate education an “endless saga” and demanded “sustainable improvements.”

• "UNRWA textbooks still include hate, antisemitism despite pledge to remove — watchdog" (Times of Israel, 7 July 2022): click here!

  Israeli organization says that rather than taking the material out of the 2022 curriculum, the UN Palestinian refugee agency has merely taken it off its public education portal.

• Peter BEINART, "Teshuvah: A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return" (Jewish Currents, May 11, 2021): click here!

  Given our history, how can Jews deny another people the right to return to their homeland?

• "United States Announces Restoration of U.S. $150 Million to Support Palestine Refugees" (UNRWA, 7 April 2021): click here!

  The United States announced today that it is contributing US $150 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), restoring its role as a decades-long friend and supporter of the UN agency that provides life-saving human development and humanitarian aid assistance to Palestine refugees across the Middle East. 

• Gideon LEVY & Alex LEVAC: "Tragic Days in the Annals of a Palestinian Refugee Camp" (Haaretz, March 31, 2021): click here!

  The moped driver who was shot and snatched away from paramedics. The mother who went to visit her wounded son and discovered that the patient in the bed was someone else, who’d been declared dead. The toddlers used as human shields. Stories from Aqabat Jabr.

• "UNRWA to Arab donors: Your historic solidarity now more needed than ever" (UNRWA, March 8, 2021): click here!

  The Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini concluded an official visit to Cairo on 7-8 March to meet with Egyptian and Arab League officials and renewed his call to support the Agency.