What happened to the Palestinians in 1948?

Answer 1

They became refugees because they fled the former Mandate of Palestine either by their own choice or by forced exodus (this is still hotly debated). However, what is clear is that 720,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced from their homes on account of the conflict and found themselves outside the borders of the State of Israel. Israel refused to allow them to return to their homes post-war.

Answer 2

The events during the Jewish-Arab Engagement of 1947-1949 seem to show a general Israeli willingness to prevent the full integration of the Palestinian Arab population into a Jewish State. It's the idea of "we won't force them out, but it wouldn't be so bad if they did". This feeling of casual disregard was a result of the mistrust built up between Israelis and Palestinians. There were numerous instances of Palestinian Arab Civilians giving Palestinian Militants information on Israeli Militia movements, which resulted in successful ambushes against Israeli personnel. Sometimes Israeli Militiamen were attacked in their sleep. It should be incredibly illustrative that in order to gain the Israelis' trust, the Palestinian Arab Sheikh of Abu Ghosh had to give his five daughters over to Israeli custody for the Israelis to believe that he would pose no threat to them. Abu Ghosh is considered by many Israelis to show how Palestinians could easily have become Israelis. So, naturally, due to this mistrust, Israeli soldiers would on a few occasions, commit atrocities against Palestinian towns (like Deir Yassin) to make Palestinians more fearful of betraying Israelis and to make them more willing to abandon their homes.

This played right into the reciprocal Palestinian Arab interest to play up Israeli violence and militancy. They would add casualties to actual events and allege similar acts where none had occurred. This had the dual goals of making Israel appear worse than it was for international consumption and to make Palestinian civilians flee. The reason the Arabs wanted the Palestinian civilians to flee was that they could attack the Israelis more strongly without fear of collateral damage. Additionally, they would look like liberators when they cleansed the Israelis from the land and brought the Palestinians back to their homes.

Therefore, the two sides with wildly disparate motivations led to a general fearmongering among Palestinian Arabs, which led to their mass departure. In 1947-1949, approximately 720,000 Palestinian Arabs fled from Israel. From 1948-1955, approximately 850,000 Jews fled from Arab countries due to acts of retaliation in those countries for Israeli actions.

Answer 3

Simple Answer:Palestinian Arabs became refugees, subject to the jurisdiction of UNRWA. The majority of these populations ended up in UNRWA Refugee Camps in the surrounding nations, especially Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Arab-Occupied Palestinian Territories (after 1948). Because of the intransigence of Arab States, Palestinians have remained eternal non-citizens, often prohibited from working or improving their situation in their host countries.

Complex Answer:

Unique Status

Because the 1948 conflict occurred before the 1951 Refugee Convention, the status of Palestinian Refugees is unique relative to all other refugees in all conflicts since 1951. There are two primary and important differences in Palestinian treatment because of this distinction. First, the Palestinians are subject to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) and not to UNHCR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). The mandate of UNRWA is to protect refugees pending a peaceful resolution in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, meaning that it will be eternally protecting the same people until the conflict is averted. The mandate of the UNHCR is to resettle refugees if returning them to their country of origin is not feasible, with the shortest intervening time. As a result, UNHCR refugees are usually settled within five years of posting their application, but UNRWA Palestinians are still refugees nearly seven decades later. Second, according to the 1951 Convention, refugee status is non-transferable, e.g. the children of a refugee do not become refugees unless they too are fleeing a conflict. Conversely, according to UNRWA, all descendants of Palestinian Refugees are Palestinian Refugees by law. This is why as time has gone on, the number of Palestinian Refugees has only increased, whereas it should decrease since the original refugees are passing away.

General Situation

Palestinian Refugees fleeing Israel ended up in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. In Lebanon and Syria, laws were immediately passed denying them access to citizenship and requiring them to live in Refugee Camps without work papers or documents. These laws have not been changed and the descendants of these original refugees inherited their refugee status. In Jordan, certain Palestinians were allowed to apply for citizenship, but the majority were not and they were forced to live in Refugee Camps. Those who did not become Jordanian citizens remain refugees and their children remain refugees to this day. Those who did become citizens have an identifier in their passports saying that they are Palestinian (which opens them up to discrimination). Palestinians in Egypt were mostly deported to Gaza and placed in Refugee Camps there, but the ones who stayed were integrated into Egyptian society as residents, but not citizens. They also had an identifier in their documents saying that they are Palestinian (which opens them up to discrimination).

Conditions in Jordan and the West Bank

Jordan annexed the whole West Bank on April 24, 1950 in a move that was condemned internationally (save for Great Britain, Iraq, and Pakistan which approved the act). All West Bank Palestinians became Jordanian citizens, but those already in UNRWA camps were not made into Jordanian citizens. Jordan made no overt acts to open up the refugee camps and fully integrate the Palestinian Jordanian refugees into Jordanian society, making the refugees reliant on UNRWA for assistance. Most Palestinian Jordanians made their lives as farmers as Jordan did not invest significantly in modifying the infrastructure of the area.

Since many Palestinian-Jordanians had crossed from the West Bank to the East Bank during Jordan's annexation of the West Bank, they formed a large population within Jordan even after the Six-Day War brought the West Bank under Israeli Occupation. These Palestinians were rounded up and put into UNRWA Refugee camps in Jordan proper. This led to widespread discontent among the Palestinians in Jordan and the formation of a Palestinian pseudo-state on the western Jordanian border. Angered by their historic mistreatment under the Jordanians and the Jordanian failure to hold onto the West Bank, Palestinian Militants rose up against the Jordanian Government in 1970. King Hussein's response was to violently crush the uprising. The two sides fought a war from September 1970 to July 1971 called "Black September" or the "Jordanian Civil War". Estimates of the Palestinian dead are between 300 and 20,000, but typical estimates are around the 15,000 mark, making this event in Jordan nearly as deadly to Palestinians as the entire Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Conditions in Egypt and the Gaza Strip

There was no investment in the Gaza Strip during the All-Palestine Government period (1949-1959) and the infrastructure began to crumble. Additionally, since Egypt made no moves to grant Egyptian citizenship to the Palestinians, all Palestinian refugees (whether in camps or not) were dependent on UNRWA making a Palestinian Crisis in the area. In 1959, Egypt abolished the All-Palestine Government and brought the Gaza Strip under the United Arab Republic (which would later also include Syria). In this way, the Egyptians proceeded to effect a direct military occupation without actually annexing the region, meaning that Palestinians now were under direct Egyptian military occupation. The situation remained like this from 1959 until Israel's conquest of Gaza in 1967.

In 1967 a small number of Palestinians fled to Egypt, but the majority remained under Israeli Occupation in the Gaza Strip. For those Palestinians who became residents of Egypt, a number of laws were passed in Egypt limiting the rights of Palestinian residents in Egypt. According to the new laws, they were denied residency and free-education rights. Those who were allowed to travel using a special Egyptian document for Palestinian refugees were required to enter Egypt every six months so as not to lose their residency rights. It is noteworthy that this document does not allow its holder to travel to other countries without a visa, except for Sudan. It also requires its holder to obtain a visa upon entry to Egypt on the return trip.

Conditions under Israeli Occupation

This refers to Palestinians who fled in 1948, but remained in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip in 1967. Israel attempted some actions to try to open the camps and settle the UNRWA refugees in the general population, but this was decried by Arab States as the destruction of Arabs' homes and, as a result, Israel has desisted from trying to open up the refugee camps. The general situation of Palestinians under Israeli Occupation is well-known, resulting in numerous altercations between Palestinian civilians and Israeli military authorities, the Intifadas, and Palestinian terrorism.

Conditions in Syria and Lebanon

In both of these countries, the rights of Palestinians are virtually non-existent, with most being prohibited from leaving the camps or pursuing any careers in the country proper. In Lebanon, Palestinians have been targeted for violence on several occasions, both by Christian Falangists in the Tel az-Zaatar Massacre and Sabra and Shatila Massacres in the 1970s-1980s and by the Muslim-majority Lebanese Army in attacks on three Refugee camps in Lebanon: Nahr el-Bared, Tripoli, and Ain al-Hilweh in 2007. In Syria, the Syrian Palestinian Refugee population of 500,000 prior to the Civil War, a large number have fled to become "double refugees". While neighboring countries like Jordan have provisions to take care of Syrian Refugees, Syrian Palestinians are not entitled to those benefits. Several Syrian Palestinian Refugee Camps in Syria (like Yarmouk) have been the sites of intense campaigns between the Loyalists and Free Syrian Army. At least 3000 Syrian Palestinians have died, more than the last two Gazan Wars.

Answer 4

Instead of incorporating them into the host countries population and society, they were made to stay in refugee camps under impoverished conditions.