1. According to the PLO Department of Refugee Affairs, in 1999 the total number of Palestinian refugees worldwide amounted to 5.2 million (1.8 million resided in Jordan, 0.38 million in Lebanon and 0.4 million in Syria). 3.6 million were registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The Palestinian Refugees Factfile. Department of Refugee Affairs (PLO), Jerusalem/Ramallah, April 2000. The number of refugees currently registered with UNRWA amounts to 4.2 million, 62.1 per cent of whom are registered in the Arab states, outside Palestine: 42 per cent in Jordan; 9 per cent in Lebanon and 10 per cent in Syria. See: UNRWA, Figures. as of 31 December 2004, Public Information Office, UNRWA Headquarters (Gaza), April 2005.
2. See E. Zureik, Palestinian Refugees and the Peace Process, 1996; L. Takkenberg, The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law, 1998; Constructing order: Palestinian Adaptations to Refugee Life, (coll.), FAFO Report 236, 1997, 19 et seq.; and B. Kodmani-Darwish, La diaspora palestinienne, 1997. Most of these studies highlight the more or less unsatisfactory situation of the Palestinian refugees in the Arab host countries.
3. This refers mainly to the differences between Jordan, which sought to annex the West Bank of the Jordan River and to secure access to the Mediterranean Sea, and Egypt, that opposed Jordan’s designs. Following informal talks, the delegations agreed that Jordan would postpone its territorial claims, while Egypt committed itself to lend its support to the Jordanian claims at any appropriate time. See “E. Sasson (Lausanne) to M. Sharet”, 8 May 1949, in: Israel State Archives (ISA), Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, May–December 1949, 1949 (companion volume), No. 12, 10 et seq.
4. The Arab states suggested on 18 May that repatriation schemes should firstly benefit the main Arab economic actors in Palestine, namely the landowners and their personnel, the religious authorities and all those refugees eligible for family reunification schemes. A week later, they demanded the immediate repatriation of all those refugees who lived in the regions of Palestine attributed to the Arab State in the Partition Plan (A/RES/181 (II) of 29 November 1947, in addition to Israeli defense force withdrawal from these regions. See “Editorial note: Memorandum on the refugees by the Arab delegations and by the Conciliation Commission”, in: ISA 1949 (companion volume), No.26; and “W. Eytan to C. de Boisanger”, 25 May 1949, in: ISA 1949 (companion volume), No. 35, 27; and “Third Progress Report [of the CCP]” (A/RES/927), 21 June 1949, para. 17.
5. Proposal put forward on 15 August 1949. See “Fourth Progress Report [of the CCP]” (A/RES/992), 22 September 1949, para. 10.