Focus On: Palestinian Refugees

This collection of some of the most compelling pieces Al-Shabaka has published contextualizes and discusses the unique difficulties of Palestinian refugees displaced across the Middle East – from becoming refugees a second or third time due to the ongoing Syrian civil war to over-researching camps “famous” for tragedy while under-researching other refugee situations and exile communities.

Facing Double Discrimination

Palestinian Refugees from Syria: Stranded on the Margins of Law

By Mai Abu Moghli, Nael Bitarie, and Nell Gabiam

Al-Shabaka Policy Analysts Mai Abu Moghli, Nael Bitarie, and Nell Gabiam analyze the effects of the war in Syria on Palestinian refugees through a succinct, country by country analysis of the legal and social obstacles they face beyond those faced by other refugee communities, and identify immediate steps that local and international communities should take to address their safety and human rights. Read more…

Palestinians on the Road to Damascus

By Ahmad Diab

Ahmad Diab, in this Al-Shabaka Commentary, focuses on the fate of the besieged Palestinian refugee camp of Al-Yarmuk to illustrate the predicament of Palestinian refugees caught up in the Syrian Nakba. Never allowed to be fully Palestinian or fully Syrian, they are, like the rest of the Syrian people, forced to make harsh political choices to survive, their fate as murky as the fate of Syria itself. Read more…

The Price of Statelessness: Palestinian Refugees from Syria

By Rosemary Sayigh

In this Commentary, Rosemary Sayigh explores how the way neighboring Arab states differentiate between Syrian and Palestinian refugees mirrors a differentiation at the level of the United Nations. She notes, for instance, that while donations have flooded in for displaced Syrians fleeing the civil war, the donations needed to aid the Palestinian refugees of Syria are lacking due to intertwined levels of discrimination. Read more…

Unwelcome and Invisible

Unwelcome Guests: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

By Dalal Yassine

In this Policy Brief, Dalal Yassine examines the legal status of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and argues that the country’s institutional racism not only deprives Palestinian refugees of their human rights but also serves to undermine the right of return. Read more…

The Invisible Community: Egypt’s Palestinians

By Oroub el-Abed

Oroub El-Abed examines the legal status of Palestinians in Egypt, including positive signs of change in the wake of the Egyptian revolution. Read more…

Trapped by Denial of Rights, Illusion of Statehood: The Case of the Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

By Jaber Suleiman

Jaber Suleiman explores the bid by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority to join the United Nations as a member state, complicating the already precarious status of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. This Policy Brief addresses the way in which Palestinian refugees are facing the double-edged challenge of denial of their rights and the illusion of statehood. Read more…

The Mechanics of Dispossession

Decades of Displacing Palestinians: How Israel Does It

By Munir Nuseibah

Al-Shabaka Policy Analyst Munir Nuseibah identifies six of the methods Israel uses to displace Palestinians, and discusses two: displacement by personal status engineering, and by urban planning. He calls on human rights advocates and organizations to apply the more recently developed transitional justice approach to deal with the mass human rights violations carried out as a matter of policy. Read more…

Refugees: Israeli Apartheid’s Unseen Dimension

By Hazem Jamjoum

Hazem Jamjoum explains in this Commentary how the Israeli denial of the Palestinian right to return is a cornerstone of Israel’s colonial-apartheid project, and how there can never be a durable peace without the implementation of this right. Read more…

External Actors

Uneasy but Necessary: The UNRWA-Palestinian Relationship

By Randa Farah

Randa Farah’s Policy Brief explores the United Nations Relief and Works Agency-refugee relationship. Farah argues that UNRWA took on an exaggerated role that mirrored that of a welfare government-in-exile and that it is a unique organization, but neither static, homogenous, nor apolitical. Read more…

Bartering Palestine for Research

By Mayssun Succarie

This Commentary by Mayssun Succarie discusses “research tourism:” the practice of over-researching Palestinian camps with a higher tragedy profile (such as Shatila), as opposed to others that have still faced tragedy but aren’t as famous for it (such as Burj al-Barajneh, 15 minutes away from Shatila). Read more…

Rosemary Sayigh is the author of Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (1979); Too Many Enemies: the Palestinian Experience in Lebanon (1994); Voices: Palestinian Women Narrate...
Randa Farah is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Anthropology Department. Dr. Farah has written on Palestinian popular memory and reconstructions of...
Oroub El-Abed is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Centre for British Research in the Levant (British Academy grant). She holds a PhD in Development...
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nael Bitarie is a Palestinian Syrian. Since 2004, Nael has been working with refugees from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and refugees in...
Nell Gabiam is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Political Science at Iowa State University. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology in 2008 from the University of...
Munir Nuseibah is a human rights lawyer and academic based in Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Palestine. He is an assistant professor at Al-Quds University's faculty...
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mayssun Succarie is a postdoctoral scholar in the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University. Her research covers the Political Culture of Development...
Mai Abu Moghli is senior researcher and Co-Principle Investigator in the Education in Emergencies Program at the Centre for Lebanese Studies. She received a PhD...
Jaber Suleiman is an independent researcher/consultant in Refugee Studies. Since 2011, he has been working as a consultant and coordinator for the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue...
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Hazem Jamjoum is a graduate student in Modern Middle East History at New York University. His writing has focused on political-economy approaches to...
Dalal Yassine is a lawyer and advocate for gender and human rights for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Dalal has previously worked with several Palestinian NGOs...
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Ahmad Diab is a Palestinian writer and Fulbright scholar. He is currently working on his PhD at New York University. His interests...

Latest Analysis

 Politics
In March, Israel shattered the ceasefire in Gaza by resuming its bombing campaign at full force and enforcing a total blockade on humanitarian aid—ushering in a new phase of the ongoing genocide. In response to mounting international criticism, the Israeli regime introduced a tightly controlled aid scheme designed not to alleviate suffering, but to obscure its use of starvation as a weapon of collective punishment. Through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), Israel has transformed humanitarian aid into a tool of control, coercion, and forced displacement. Israeli forces have additionally blocked UN and other aid agencies from accessing over 400 distribution points they once operated throughout Gaza. They consequently forced two million Palestinians to rely on just four GHF sites, most near its southern border in what appears to be a deliberate effort to push mass displacement toward Egypt. Investigations have also revealed how US-based private contractors are actively profiting from the GHF’s deadly operations. In this policy lab, Yara Asi and Alex Feagans join host Tariq Kenney-Shawa to discuss how the GHF fits into Israel’s genocidal strategy—and to expose the network of individuals and companies profiting from what has been a death trap masquerading as humanitarian assistance.
 Politics
​​The October 7, 2023, Al-Aqsa Flood operation aimed to revive Palestinian armed resistance and reassert the cause in Arab and global consciousness after years of marginalization. It dealt a major blow to Israel’s deterrence, rupturing its image as a secure colonial outpost entrusted with protecting Western strategic interests. It also exposed cracks in its militarized social contract that rests on the regime’s ability to protect its settler population. While the operation imposed new political realities on the Israeli regime, it has come at a staggering cost to Palestinian life: Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza has unleashed one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent memory. Yet the anticipated wave of Arab solidarity following the operation failed to materialize or translate into concrete policy shifts. Instead, the moment laid bare the entrenched ties between Arab regimes and Israel’s settler-colonial project that are rooted in mutual interests, regime preservation, and a shared antagonism toward Palestinian resistance. This commentary argues that these alliances—sustained by repression and strategic-economic cooperation and reinforced by Western complicity—transformed a potential turning point for isolating the Israeli regime into an opening for intensified colonial expansion and regional dominance.
Al-Shabaka Tariq Dana
Tariq Dana· Jul 22, 2025
 Politics
The Israeli regime’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has exposed the failure of international legal frameworks to protect civilians, marking an unprecedented breakdown in the protective function of international law. While the Genocide Convention obligates states to prevent and punish genocide, and the Geneva Conventions establish protections for civilians under occupation, these mechanisms have proven powerless without the political will to enforce them. In this context, eight Global South states—South Africa, Malaysia, Namibia, Colombia, Bolivia, Senegal, Honduras, and Cuba—have launched the Hague Group, a coordinated legal and diplomatic initiative aimed at enforcing international law and holding the Israeli regime accountable. This policy memo examines the group’s efforts to challenge entrenched Israeli impunity. It highlights the potential of coordinated state action to hold states accountable for violating international law, despite structural limitations in enforcement.
Al-Shabaka Munir Nuseibah
Munir Nuseibah· Jul 8, 2025
Skip to content