The Right to Return through the Palestine Refugee Camp

Samar Maqusi

doi:10.12795/HabitatySociedad.2025.i18.02

Autores

Samar Maqusi University College London https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0821-4295

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.12795/HabitatySociedad.2025.i18.02

Palavras-chave:

refugee camps, right-of-return, forced displacement, spatial resistance, destruction, re-construction

Resumo

The Palestinian right of return to their homes is a legally recognized right since December of 1948. More importantly, it is a physical right that all Palestinians have been working towards achieving while enduring what is now a seventy-seven-year occupation of their homeland and a forced displacement to other lands. This paper will address the most controversial and existential right the international community acknowledges towards the Palestine refugees. To understand the polemical nature of Article 11 of UNGA resolution 194, we must investigate the Palestine refugee camp, its formation, space-making and political operation towards trying to achieve this right. The paper will focus on the intersection of the legal and physical aspect of the Palestinian right of return through a historical understanding of the Palestine refugee camp, alongside its contemporary conditions in creating and maintaining a spatial resistance to forced displacement. The paper further argues that from the onset, the Palestine camp has been one of resistance before it was one of refuge, which is why they have been places of destruction even outside Palestine.

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