The conflict over Palestine has produced one of the most tragic and compelling refugee crises of the post Second World War era. In the Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles, signed at Washington, DC, in 1993, the fate of the 3.4 million Palestinian refugees was identified as one of the outstanding issues to be addressed in subsequent negotiations.

This book explores the status of Palestinian refugees in international law focusing both on the position of Palestinians in the Arab world and in Western countries. It contains a thorough and useful analysis of various areas of international law, including refugee law, the law relating to stateless persons, humanitarian law, and human rights law, and probes their relevance to the provision of international protection for Palestinian refugees within the context of the Middle East peace
process.