This chapter critically examines the distinctive institutional and normative regime created by the UN for the Palestinian refugees in the immediate aftermath of the Nakba in the form of the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. It juxtaposes that regime against the international institutional and normative regime applicable to all other refugees in the world, as administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The special regime for Palestinian refugees is widely regarded as reflective of the UN’s unique responsibility for their plight. Yet, a critical examination of the UN record on the early history, mandate, and regulatory framework underpinning this regime reveals that it was never intended to give effect to Palestinian refugee rights as established under prevailing international law, including as affirmed by the UN itself. The resulting ‘protection gap’ that has consequently emerged for Palestinian refugees, marked by uneven and confused state practice concerning their plight as well as ongoing gender discrimination against them by the UN, is demonstrative of the Organization’s role in the maintenance of Palestinian legal subalternity on the international plane.

The introduction to A Battlefield of Memory provides the reader with an understanding of the societal importance of the foundational pasts under review while highlighting existing trends of denial. Readers are also familiarized with polls conducted among Palestinians and Israeli-Jews on attitudes toward the other’s foundational trauma and failed reconciliatory attempts, which shed light on the materialization of mnemonic delegitimization efforts. Interviews conducted with the Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian individuals responsible for these initiatives demonstrate that they have, ironically, been accused of the same perfidious conduct, namely “selling out to the enemy.” The introduction further provides a synopsis of scholarly approaches to collective memory theory and the key research methodologies that have been applied in the collection of primary source material. It is in this particular context that the reader is informed of important caveats that should be taken into account during the reading of this work. One such provision concerns this work’s simultaneous deliberation of the Holocaust and the Nakba, which does not mean equating them or promulgating a causal linkage. Such a conflation would not only be historically – and ethically – erroneous, but equally fail to recognize the divergence in historical culpability. Nevertheless, as this work illustrates, a more relational linkage does exist: as dominant national metanarratives, the Holocaust and the Nakba have bolstered exclusive identities within the two groups, both centering on unique claims of ongoing victimhood and loss and a consequential devaluation – if not denial – of the other’s catastrophe

The process of Israel’s birth in 1948 created a set of structural impediments that made impossible a harmonious relationship between Jewish internationalism and human rights. The creation of the Palestinian refugee problem and the absorption of a large Arab minority combined to circumscribe the range of action of Jewish advocates. They found themselves forced to deploy human rights as a counterclaim to neutralize demands for repatriation and compensation, a dynamic that first revealed itself when petitioning the UN to seek redress for embattled Jews in Arab countries. Human rights, often understood as a moral claims-making language, could also function to neutralize the claims of others. The potential of a restless Arab minority appealing to the UN acted as a break on limitless ambitions for capacious enforcement mechanisms. Even more traumatic was discovering the impact of Israeli military actions: the exercise of Jewish sovereignty could undermine the moral status of claims to authority by Jewish internationalists on human rights.

The case of Palestinians and Palestinian refugees from Syria (PRS) in Jordan raises the question of how a host society addresses transgenerational displacement. This essay examines how the policy of nonforcible return has been carried out in practice. It argues that the security aspect of refugee assistance has determined the mechanisms that facilitate integration.Security in this context needs to be viewed in two ways: in terms of the state’s perception of the movement of refugees through the borders of the state and the boundaries between the camp and the cities, and from the perspective of the refugees’ personal security, in terms of welfare and socioeconomic stability. The essay analyzes the significance of identity in Jordan. As the Palestinian community has steadily grown since 1948, a schism has emerged between the East Bank Jordanian and the Palestinian-Jordanian communities as the Jordanian population became the minority community. The essay considers how far the insecurity experienced by the host state impacts its refugee policies and whether the country can sustain a policy of integration once the postwar period arrives.