Secondary Forced Displacement in Host Countries:
Palestinian refugees and displaced persons frequently face additional forced
displacement within and from their Arab host countries (first country of refuge), most
recently in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. The major causes of such secondary Palestinian
displacement inside and outside the Arab world are the political and socio-economic
changes, instability, and crises, as well as international and non-international armed
conflicts; the following are a few critical examples:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mid-1950s: Palestinian oil industry workers were expelled from the Gulf
States;54
1970: Numerous Palestinian refugee families were expelled from Jordan as
part of the expulsion of the nascent Palestinian resistance movement (the
Palestinian Liberation Organization) in the events termed “Black September.”
Most of them settled in Lebanon;55
1976–1991: During the civil war in Lebanon, more than 100,000 Palestinians
were forced to leave the country;56
1990–1991 Gulf war: More than 400,000 Palestinians were expelled from
Kuwait in response to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s political
support for Iraq;57
1995: Libya expelled some 30,000 Palestinians from its territory (some were
subsequently re-admitted);58
2003–2011: Several thousand Palestinian refugees were displaced, and
many more remain threatened, in the context of the US-led war against and
occupation of Iraq;59
2006-2010: Internal displacement of Palestinian refugees inside Lebanon as
a consequence of the 33-days-war between the Israeli army and Hezbollah
and the siege and bombardment of the Palestinian Nahr el-Bared camp by the
Lebanese army;60
Laurie A. Brand, Palestinians in the Arab World: Institution Building and the Search for a State
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 126–127: “In the mid-1950s, Palestinian workers
supported by indigenous nationalist elements who opposed the continuation of Western economic
domination led a series of strikes throughout the Gulf to protest conditions in the oil sector.
Deportations of Palestinians from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, and Kuwait followed.”
55
Lex Takkenberg, The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford : New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 17.
56
Ibid., 18.
57
Ibid.
58
Ibid.
59
UNHCR estimates that by December 2015, 12,400 Palestinians will remain at risk in Iraq. See
UNHCR, “2014 UNHCR Country Operations Profile - Iraq,” UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency, 2014,
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486426.html.
60
See IDMC, “No New Displacement but Causes of Past Conflicts Unresolved,” Internal Displacement
Monitoring Center, December 2010, http://www.internal-displacement.org/middle-east-and-northafrica/lebanon/2010/no-new-displacement-but-causes-of-past-conflicts-unresolved/ and Noura
Erakat, “Palestinian Refugees and the Syrian Uprising: Filling the Protection Gap During Secondary
Forced Displacement,” Oxford Journal of International Refugee Law, Forthcoming, 24–25.
54
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Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees
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