has stepped-up the repression and dispossession of Palestinians who are citizens of the Israeli state and those residing in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israeli house demolitions, settlement expansion, theft of water and denial of access to resources for Palestinian livelihood including to their own agricultural lands, has increased exponentially in the last few years, not only in the West Bank, but also in East Jerusalem, particularly since the construction of Israel’s Wall inside Palestinian areas.5 Israel’s euphemistically-named Operation Cast Lead and Operation Protective Edge, under the pretense of defending against Hamas rockets, have taken thousands of Palestinian civilian lives and maimed thousands more, with Palestinian children comprising the highest proportion of casualties.6 Mention is rarely made in the Western press about the seven-plus year complete siege of Gaza that has created an ongoing humanitarian emergency as vital food, infrastructure and other materials necessary for basic survival needs are denied the 1.7 million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza strip.7 BADIL’s phrase, the Ongoing Nakba, encapsulates the current realities for Palestinian refugees throughout the region and the endless cycle of forced displacement of the Palestinian people going into a seventh decade.8 Law is at the heart of the Palestinian refugee condition: from the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne that placed Palestine under British Mandate and League of Nations supervision, to the UNGA Partition Resolution recommending the division of historic Palestine into a ‘Jewish’ and an ‘Arab’ state, to the original framework that set Palestinian refugees apart from other refugees during the drafting of the 1951 Refugee Convention and its companion agencies and instruments. Today, the legacy of those legal decisions at the international level resonates in every individual decision about the status of a Palestinian seeking refugee or asylum status anywhere in the world. 5 6 7 xiv 8 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing as a Component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living, and on the Right to NonDiscrimination in This Context, Ms. Raquel Rolnik,” 2012, http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/ Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=11815; BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, BADIL’s Written Report in Response to Israel’s Fourth Periodic Report to the UN Human Rights Committee, September 2014, (CCPR/C/ISR/4), http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/ Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/ISR/INT_CCPR_CSS_ISR_18329_E.pdf; The Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem (CCPRJ), The Coalition for Jerusalem (CFJ), and The Society of St. Yves, Catholic Center for Human Rights (St. Yves), “De-Palestinization” and Forcible Transfer of Palestinians: A Situation of Systematic Breaches of State Obligations under the ICCPR, 2014, http:// tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CCPR/Shared%20Documents/ISR/INT_CCPR_CSS_ISR_18169_E.pdf. On Operation Cast Lead and estimated number of casualties, see Amnesty International, Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and Destruction, January 2009, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/ asset/MDE15/015/2009/en/8f299083-9a74-4853-860f-0563725e633a/mde150152009en.pdf; OCHA - Occupied Palestinian Territories, Gaza Emergency Situation Report (as of 4 September 2014, 0800 Hrs), September 4, 2014, http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_ sitrep_04_09_2014.pdf. For a recent summary of the effects of the blockade and recommendations, see Oxfam International, Cease Failure: Rethinking Seven Years of Failed Policies in Gaza, August 27, 2014, http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp-cease-failure-gaza-failingpolicies-270814-en.pdf. BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, 2010-2012, vol. VII (Bethlehem, Palestine, 2012), xxi–xxvi. Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees