protection. Fundamentally, the chapter explores the exclusion of Palestinian displaced persons from both the general international frameworks and the protective components of the separate legal framework devised for Palestinians, observing particularly that this situation has resulted in a protection gap that has hitherto been unaddressed by the international community. This chapter ends by highlighting the issues faced by Palestinian refugees and IDPs in four case studies across all of Mandatory Palestine. Chapter 4 first discusses the situation of Palestinian refugees in a number of host states and the efforts, or lack thereof, of the international community to act in accordance with its responsibilities. The chapter first outlines Israel’s obligations towards Palestinian refugees and IDPs, then provides an overview of the status and situation of Palestinian refugees in UNRWA’s areas of operations, Arab host states, and Western host states. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the international community’s obligations towards Palestinian refugees, the complicity of powerful Western states, the failure of the international community as a whole, and the role that the international community is able to play in facilitating a just solution to the Palestinian refugee and IDP issue. Chapter 5 is the final chapter and discusses the main issue of this survey: the questionnaire on Palestinian refugee youth’s political participation. The chapter begins with a literature review on prevailing definitions of political participation and develops an understanding of political participation that appropriately corresponds with the Palestinian context. The chapter then delves into the main findings of the questionnaire, comprised of six focused, detailed, and closed-ended questions (see Annex 3). The results illustrated that 95.1 percent of youth have engaged in frameworks, bodies, and mechanisms for political participation over the past three years (2019-2021). The most prominent avenue for youth political participation was by means of expressing personal opinions about public issues on social media platforms, while there is a decline in youth engagement in official and semi-official avenues, such as elections and organized political parties’ activities. The questionnaire also revealed that Palestinian refugee youth believed that contribution to any form of Palestinian cultural intellectual production was the most effective avenue for political participation, while the effectiveness of participation through official, semi-official, and existing political factions’ frameworks, avenues, and mechanisms scored low. Palestinian refugee youth additionally expressed that the objectives of political participation are primarily consolidating democracy as a political behavior within the political system in the place of residence and ensuring fair youth representation. Palestinian youth perceived that the issue that had the largest impact on youth political participation is the Palestinian division, followed by absence of a national liberation strategy. The chapter concludes with an observation on how these results reflect the success of colonial states in debilitating the activation of popular liberation action. xviii