• Assisting governmental and private efforts to promote voluntary repatriation or assimilation of refugees within new national communities.226 UNHCR maintains offices in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and within the Agency’s competence are Palestinians who are neither 1948 nor 1967 refugees and who are recognized as Convention refugees under Article 1A(2) on grounds of a well-founded fear of persecution.227 UNHCR extends a minimal level of protection to Palestinians within and outside of UNRWA’s area of operations228 that includes assistance with travel documents, renewal of UNRWA registration cards, facilitation of interim solutions for Palestinian refugees in cases of forced departure from Arab host countries, legal aid for stranded Palestinian refugees seeking asylum and advice to states on the interpretation and application of the Refugee Convention.229At the end of 2012, UNHCR included 97,317 Palestinian refugees within its mandate.230 The Agency was thus providing assistance and protection to approximately 1.3% of the worldwide Palestinian refugee population. 226 UN General Assembly, “Statute of the UNHCR,” para. 8. UNHCR, “2009 Revised Note;” see also UNHCR, “2013 Note,” 3. 228 Abbas Shiblak, “The Palestinian Refugee Issue: A Palestinian Perspective” (Chatham House: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, February 2009), http://www.chathamhouse.org/ publications/papers/view/108973. 229 UNHCR has also intervened on behalf of Palestinians following the Palestine Liberation Organization’s expulsion from Lebanon in 1982, for example, when the agency intervened with the Lebanese authorities on behalf of Palestinian refugees who were experiencing difficulty in obtaining the renewal of Lebanese travel documents. In the 1990–1991 Gulf War, UNHCR extended its protection and assistance to several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees in the Gulf countries, who were subject to detention and expulsion. Between 1995 and 1997, UNHCR (jointly with UNRWA) provided assistance to Palestinian refugees stranded on the Libyan-Egyptian border after their expulsion from Libya, and intervened for a satisfactory solution. As a result of the U.S.-led war and occupation of Iraq, UNHCR secured protection under the Refugee Convention for small numbers of Palestinian refugees in the United States, European (Iceland, Norway, Sweden) and Latin American countries (Brazil, Chile). During the 2008/2009 Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip, “Operation Cast Lead,” UNHCR called for strict adherence to humanitarian principles, including respect for the universal rights of those fleeing war to seek safety in other states. 230 UNHCR, Displacement: The New 21st Century Challenge, UNHCR Global Trends, June 2013, 44, http://www.unhcr.org/51bacb0f9.html. 227 40 Handbook on Protection of Palestinian Refugees