Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2021 3(2) It was better for them [Egyptians] to hear that you were Syrian rather than you were from Palestine. So, I rode the wave and said I was Syrian, especially at the checkpoints … We’d cover, you know with your passport you have a cover, like a leather cover. We got covers on our passports just to hide ‘Palestinian Refugee’ … then they’d treat you as a Syrian … It was easier for me to be Syrian. 51 This was a response to the spillover of the Palestinian label into a context where, under international law, it should not apply, and the population should be allowed to apply for asylum as refugees under UNHCR’s mandate: Egypt is outside of UNRWA’s areas of operation. PRS face harassment and even detention for having an ‘irregular’ status in the country as the Egyptian authorities will not allow UNHCR to register them as refugees. 52 The spillover of the Palestinian label also impacted the participants when the moving through Europe, as will be discussed later. B Contesting Their Exceptionalism as Palestinian Refugees In Lebanon, several participants contested being caught in what has been referred to as the ‘protection gap’ between UNRWA and UNHCR’s mandates. 53 While there is not scope here to detail the nuances of this gap in full, to briefly summarise, it results from Palestinians only being able to receive some forms of protection from UNRWA and not benefit from certain forms of protection that UNHCR offers to other refugees (such as resettlement and protection from refoulment). In states where UNRWA operates, or does not, some participants contested the ‘exceptional’ status that meant that they could not be labelled as a refugee and/or stateless. They did so by turning to UNHCR, seeking to be recognised as refugees under UNHCR’s mandate or trying to benefit from certain services reserved for non-Palestinian refugees. The contestation of the exceptionalism of the Palestinian refugees by those labelled as such is not new, with Michael Kegan claiming that Palestinians in the Middle East are ‘increasingly asking to be recognized as just refugees, full stop’. 54 C Contesting the Fractioning of the Palestinian Refugee Label Some participants also contested the labelling of Palestinian refugees as ‘belonging’ to certain areas of operation of UNRWA. This relates to the idea of a spillover of certain labels into new bureaucratic spaces as a result of what Zetter referred to as the ‘fractioning’, or further subdivision, of the refugee label. 55 This fractioning was not a distinction that was envisioned when UNRWA was established, but came later. An example of this fractioning, which impacted many of the participants, was UNRWA’s distinction between Palestinian Syrians and the Lebanese 51 52 53 54 55 Interview with Mohammed, 26 years old from Damascus (Tom Rollins, 26 April 2017). See Claes (n 22). See Noura Erekat, ‘Palestinian Refugees and the Syrian Uprising: Filling the Protection Gap during Secondary Forced Displacement’ (2014) 26(4) International Journal of Refugee Law 581; Rami G Khouri, ‘Sixty Years of UNRWA: From Service Provision to Refugee Protection’ (2009) 23(2–3) Refugee Survey Quarterly 438. Michael Kagan, ‘The (Relative) Decline of Palestinian Exceptionalism and its Consequences for Refugee Studies in the Middle East’ (2009) 22(4) Journal of Refugee Studies 417, 434. Zetter, ‘More Labels, Fewer Refugees’ (n 25) 172. 340