Introduction
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BADIL) has produced
the Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) since 2002. This
edition of the Survey, Volume X, focuses on Palestinian refugees and IDPs in the period
between 2019-2021, unless stated otherwise.
In the three years since the last survey, the Palestinian people have experienced an ever more
repressive and limited space within which to collectively demand and exercise their national and
individual rights. This has been characterized principally by the rapid advancement of Israeli
repressive colonial-apartheid policies throughout Mandatory Palestine, and coupled with the
renewed attacks on the rights and capabilities of Palestinian refugees and political and human
rights activists, particularly via the increase of conditional funding requirements placed on
UNRWA and Palestinian civil society organizations (CSOs), along with the criminalization of
six Palestinian CSOs and the aggressive escalation of murder, harassment, arrest and torture
of Palestinian youth.
It is in this context that BADIL elected to focus this survey on one of the most essential
tools used in the realization of Palestinian rights and in the struggle against Zionist-Israeli
colonization: the political participation of Palestinian youth, particularly refugee youth. The
Palestinian people have a rich history of political participation as a form of anti-colonial
resistance, and Palestinian youth specifically have consistently influenced the fight for justice,
dignity, and liberation. However, the available data that focuses on the political participation of
Palestinians, particularly Palestinian youth, is scarce. This is primarily because current research
on political participation often does not consider the specific context of the Palestinian people
as a people who not only suffer from protracted, prolonged displacement but are also subject
to perpetual Israeli colonization and are consistently denied their inalienable right to selfdetermination and reparations (including return). Thus, BADIL’s survey intends to fill this
gap and provide data to facilitate an adequate understanding of political participation that
aligns with the Palestinian context.
As in the previous surveys, BADIL embarked on a thematic field study targeting the perceptions
of the Palestinian population, as highlighted by the questionnaire in Chapter 5. The purpose
of this study is to shed light on the avenues and activities that Palestinian youth engage in,
the objectives and reasons for their participation, and what they perceive as obstacles that
prevent them from engaging in political participation and achieving their goals. The report on
this questionnaire reviews the levels, avenues, and effectiveness of Palestinian youth political
participation from their own point of view. It explores how to achieve political participation
in an effective and influential manner, especially against the backdrop of numerous research
projects and studies having indicated that the political participation of Palestinian youth
through official institutions and bodies is almost non-existent.
The questionnaire first delves into desk research which reviewed relevant literature on the
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