Palestinian mass immigration to Jordan started in 1948/49 when approximately 500,000 Palestinians evicted from the territories occupied by the new Israeli state found shelter in the refugee camps on the West and East Bank of the Jordan River. A second wave followed in 1967: approximately 150,000 Palestinian refugees were displaced from their camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a second time, and together with an additional 250,000 newly displaced persons, they found refuge east of the Jordan River in the Kingdom of Jordan. Finally, in the course of the Gulf war, Jordan received over 300,000 Palestinian refugees who were forced to leave Kuwait. As a result of these mass evictions, Jordan today hosts the largest number of Palestinian refugees in the Middle East (1,238,811 refugees registered with UNRWA, i.e. 40,1% of total registered refugee population). 

In 1995, approximately 50% of Jordan’s 4,1 million inhabitants are of Palestinian origin, more than half of them are refugees registered with UNRWA. The rest is made up of persons displaced due to the 1967 war. Palestinians who lost their residency rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip after 1967, Palestinian deportees who found shelter in Jordan and Palestinians who moved to Jordan in order to work or to unite with their families there (Sources: see table 1 and 2 below). 
Palestinians in Jordan live mainly in the northwest and the center of the country, especially in the area of the capital, Amman. This area also hosts the ten UNRWA refugee camps in Jordan, as well as three additional camps hosting mainly Palestinians displaced from the Gaza Strip in 1967, which are not recognized by UNRWA. 
Since 1952, Palestinians living in Jordan have been eligible for Jordanian citizenship and in fact the large majority of the 2,05 million Palestinians are citizens of Jordan. Until today, however, Palestinian Jordanians have retained a double identity as Palestinians and as Jordanians. The separate identity of Palestinians in Jordan cannot be explained only by the Palestinian community’s emotional, social and political ties to Palestine. Jordanian social scientists agree that it results also from official Jordanian policies, such as preferential employment of ethnic Jordanians in state institutions and recruitment to regional bureaucracies on tribal basis. Consequently Jordan’s Palestinians have little access to central state institutions; the majority are working in the private sector. 
The social division of ethnic Jordanians and Palestinians contains a high potential for social conflict and makes Jordan difficult to rule. So far, the Jordanian government has handled the situation by emphasizing the national unity of the Jordanian people and by public statements which underline that Palestinians in Jordan are citizens of equal status. Due to this policy of evading conflictual issues in the Jordanian society, the issue of Palestinian refugees in Jordan is extremely sensitive, precisely because it can only be dealt with efficiently if Palestinian distinctiveness in Jordan is raised. 
Among the Palestinian community, on the other hand, the social division has caused a sense of discrimination, especially among the refugee population in the camps: “Palestinians want to return eventually, because they are exploited by the Jordanian establishment. Their career options are limited to the private sector; they run the economy, but have no access to the decision-making circles and state institutions.” This statement by an UNRWA employee in Amman is a typical expression of this feeling.