Press Releases

(Bethlehem, 19 June, 2026)

On World Refugee Day, we reject every attempt to reduce Palestinian displacement to a humanitarian crisis divorced from its root causes of apartheid and colonial domination and used to shield the Israeli regime from accountability.

For seventy-eight years, the Israeli regime and its allies have displaced and dispossessed over 10.15 million Palestinian refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP’s) of their land and properties, entrenching that dispossession across generations. Palestinian forced displacement is the outcome of the Israeli settler-colonial system sustained through colonial domination and apartheid, escalating into genocide, territorial fragmentation, blockade, and the denial of the right to return and self-determination.

Within Palestine, land theft, movement restrictions, implantation of colonies and colonizers and segregated infrastructure have produced enclaves modelled on the apartheid South Africa bantustan system. This is intensifying through accelerated colony expansion, with dozens of new colonies formalised across the West Bank in 2026, alongside forced displacement of Palestinian Bedouin communities, the forcible transfer of over 33,000 Palestinian refugees from Nur Shams, Tulkarem and Jenin refugee camps, and ongoing displacement in and from Jerusalem. Legislative and administrative measures advancing land registration in the so-called Area C in the West Bank and enabling coloniser acquisition of privately held land in Areas A and B (which should be administered by the Palestinian Authority) formalise land transfer under Israeli authority, accelerating dispossession and entrenching domination.

Since 2008, repeated Israeli assaults on Gaza have destroyed essential infrastructure and collapsed the health system. The result is conditions of genocide under blockade, alongside the systematic weaponisation of aid. No accountability or reparations have followed. “Reconstruction” is now being structured under Trump’s “20-Point Plan,” endorsed through UNSC Resolution 2803, which reframes reconstruction through externally imposed governance arrangements that absolve the Israeli regime’s responsibility as perpetrator, while tying survival and reconstruction to the disarmament of the Palestinian people’s legitimate resistance, deepening cycles of displacement.

Today, genocide continues in Gaza under a so-called ceasefire. Humanitarian access remains obstructed. Only one crossing operates intermittently, and aid remains far below survival needs. Water, sanitation, and healthcare systems have collapsed, with widespread hunger and malnutrition. Since the so-called ceasefire, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza strip, with continued bombings, infrastructure, and “designated zones” with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declaring to use the new “orange lines” and previous “yellow lines’ to take 70% of Gaza. Under the same framework, reconstruction remains deliberately blocked and conditioned through external control mechanisms.

UNRWA, mandated to provide education, healthcare, relief, and protection to Palestinian refugees, is being dismantled through legislative, political, financial, and military measures imposed by the Israeli regime, with no effective action taken by states. Obstruction of services and aid and funding, and attacks on personnel and facilities form part of a coordinated effort to dismantle the institutional framework that upholds Palestinian rights. These measures remove accountability from the Israeli regime and erode legal and political recognition of refugee rights. This is the erosion of one of the last remaining institutions addressing unresolved displacement and the right of return.

Across the region, displacement continues. In Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and beyond, Palestinian refugees and IDPs remain subject to renewed discriminatory policies and practices, exclusion and forced displacement. In the European Union, the Migration and Asylum Pact is expanding draconian detention and deportation frameworks under 2024–2026 reforms.

Refugee camps across Palestine and in exile are cradles of resistance - political infrastructures where collective life is organised under exile and struggle is sustained across generations. Palestinian refugee camps belong to a wider anti-colonial tradition in which exile became a site of political organisation. From Jabalia, Tindouf to Algiers, and Maputo, refugee camps and exile formations turned dispossession into political continuity and resistance. The Palestinian and Sahrawi camps and the African National Congress’s exile structures reflect this trajectory: sustained political endurance under colonial rule. Across these struggles, what connects them is organising life under displacement while refusing its permanence. Return has never been granted through humanitarian mechanisms alone; it has been achieved through resistance, international pressure, and the dismantling of colonial systems through sanctions.

The Palestinian right of return, affirmed in UN Resolution 194, is a legal entitlement grounded in restitution and reversal of dispossession. Its realisation is a precondition for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, including the authority to define political futures and return independently.

This requires dismantling the Israeli regime, thereby ending displacement: ending colonial expansion, enforcing accountability for international crimes, imposing sanctions, ensuring reparations, and restoring material conditions for return.

Across these struggles, refugee camps and exile remain central - not spaces awaiting resolution, but living sites of continuity and refusal. Supporting refugees rights including return means grounding solidarity in Palestinian self-determination, anti-colonial struggle, and accountability.

Return is decolonisation. Return is our right and our will.