Palestinian refugees in Egypt by Amineh IshtayEgypt hosted approximately 50,000 (now more than 70K) Palestinian refugees. Most of them were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza by the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provided humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees on a case-by-case basis.
The situation of Palestinian refugees in Egypt is insecure. UNRWA serves them only in exceptional cases. This is particularly problematic for refugees because Egypt does not have its own domestic asylum laws, and Cairo depends on UNRWA to determine the refugee status of individual asylum seekers. The U.N. refugee agency has repeatedly urged the Egyptian government to develop its own asylum policy.
Their greatest problem is a lack of stability and security; they all face an uncertain future.
The Palestinian society isn’t integrated to the Egyptian society. The government policy kept them distinctly separates. Their situation became worst after the signing of the peace treaty with Israel in 1978. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) opposed Egypt’s normalization with Israel.
Even more problematic is the general law that prevents children of Egyptian women who marry foreign men from gaining Egyptian citizenship. These children are denied rights that are granted to children of Palestinian women who marry Egyptian men.http://www.jerusalemites.org/crimes/nakba/11.htmThe forgotten Palestinians: how Palestinian refugees survive in EgyptPalestinians fled to Egypt after the wars of 1948, 1956 and 1967. Gazans employed as civil servants when the Gaza Strip was under Egyptian administrative rule and Gazan students in Egypt when it was occupied by Israel in 1967 were also prevented from returning home. Neither group of displaced palestinians has been protected or assisted either by UNHCR or by the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency (UNRWA) – the agency set up to assist Palestinian refugees which began operations in 1950. While UNRWA established relief and assistance projects in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, West Bank and Gaza,
Egypt did not allow UNRWA to operate on its territories.http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR20/FMR2013.pdfUN res 194 is a general assembly resolution which is not binding, the two ress that speak more directly about the conflict and how is should be resolved is UNSCR 242 and 338.