Chapter 10: Refugees in Their Own Land: The Challenge of Managing a School in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in the Divided City of Jerusalem

One of the catastrophic results of the 1948 war was an influx of Arab refugees from the former Mandate territories of Palestine. From this time until today, Palestinians constitute the largest refugee body in the world (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees – UNHCR, 2017a). While some displaced Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their villages and resettled in other places within Israel, others fled or were expelled to neighbouring Arab states, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, finding what was believed to be temporary refuge in refugee camps (Arar, Haj-Yehia, & Ibrahim, 2017). The war of 1967 led to the second stage of Israel’s growth with the occupation of the Western bank of the Jordan river and Greater Jerusalem was formed, encompassing both Arab and Jewish neighbourhoods with a native and immigrant Jewish population and a large native Muslim Arab population numbering approximately 320,000 persons and a smaller Christian population. Since then, Jerusalem has functioned as a divided city, with clear distinctions between the Western part that functions as Israel’s official capital and the Eastern Arab part considered to be conquered territory by the United Nations (Yair & Alayan, 2009).