The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law. By Lex Takkenberg. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. xxix, 402. Index. $95.

This chapter explores the legal foundations of the Palestinian refugee question, reviewing their status under various branches of international law – as refugees, stateless persons, civilians protected under international humanitarian law, internally displaced persons, or, simply, as human beings entitled to human rights. International law as it stood in the early twentieth century, is relevant to the Palestinian refugee question. Since 1948, the evolution of its various branches – notably international humanitarian law (IHL), international human rights law (IHRL), international refugee law (IRL), and the frameworks to address statelessness and prevent internal displacement – have consolidated and evolved in ways that should benefit Palestinian refugees. IRL determines the foundation of the legal status of Palestinians as refugees and the standards of treatment specific to that status. IHRL, as the body of international law with the widest application, has the potential to improve significantly the status and conditions of Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile, IHL remains an important, composite protection framework whenever humanity fails. Thus, the failure to bring a just resolution to the plight of Palestinian refugees is ultimately attributable to the protracted lack of political will, rather than inadequacy of the legal framework and the persistence to treat their plight in political terms, as an outcome of war, a humanitarian crisis, and an issue for negotiation.

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The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law.

International Migration Review ◽

10.2307/2547380 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

pp. 1123

Author(s):

Elizabeth Hull ◽

Lex Takkenberg

Keyword(s):

International Law ◽

Palestinian Refugees ◽

The Status

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The Broadening Protection Gap for Stateless Palestinian Refugees in Belgium

10.35715/scr2002.115 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 300-316

Author(s):

Wout Van Doren ◽

Julie Lejeune ◽

Marjan Claes ◽

Valérie Klein

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

International Law ◽

Asylum Seekers ◽

Palestinian Refugees ◽

United Nations High Commissioner ◽

Determination Procedure ◽

High Commissioner ◽

The Status ◽

Definition Of ◽

Stateless Person

This paper reflects upon the issue of statelessness, Palestinians and a recent evolution of Belgian caselaw. When seeking to apply the definition of a ‘stateless person’, as found in art 1 of the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons to Palestinians, judges are confronted with specific challenges. Since 2016, divergent standards are developing as to the question of whether, and in which circumstances, Palestinians may be stateless for the purposes of international law. This evolution takes place in a national landscape characterised by a statelessness determination procedure that falls short of standards set out in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Handbook on Protection of Stateless Persons in a number of areas, while a growing number of asylum seekers originating from Palestine are registered over the period 2016–19. This paper exposes, anno 2020, the protection gaps left open by the remarkably divergent approaches to this question taken by the different national actors involved.

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