Overview: Little has been written about Palestinians in Egypt. The few thousand who sought refuge in Egypt after the 1948 Nakba were not welcomed by King Farouq’s government. However, with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power, Palestinians came to be treated on par with citizens of Egypt, enjoying basic rights, employment in the public sector, and property rights. After 1978 they were denied the rights once afforded to them by the Egyptian state as well as their rights as refugees. In this policy brief, Oroub El-Abed examines the legal status of Palestinians in Egypt, including positive signs of change in the wake of the Egyptian revolution. She argues that the Egyptian government must do more in order to live up to its responsibilities to this “invisible community,” whose numbers are unknown but who may be as many as 80,000.

My family is originally Palestinian from Haifa. My grandparents (from both sides) were born in Haifa, which is now part of Israel. In 1948, during the conflict that followed the 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (11) ‘Future Government of

The continuing violence against Libyan protesters has forced thousands of refugees to flock to Egypt’s borders in recent days. While many refugees have been granted temporary asylum in Egypt, fleeing Palestinians have gone largely unattended.

A Bahrain-based author hopes his personal account of life as an exiled Palestinian will help drum up global support for fellow refugees. ALICIA DE HALDEVANG reports...