The Idea of an Essay, Volume 2

173 of refugees in Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank” (Nachmias). Since most Palestinian refugees have integrated at least somewhat, “only a quarter of the descendants of the Palestinian refugees still live in camps, the majority of these in Lebanon” (Bartal). Furthermore, the “majority of refugees and their descendants listed with UNRWA currently live in Jordan” (Bartal). Over two million refugees are registered in Jordan along with one and a half million other Palestinians, of which ninety-five percent “hold Jordanian citizenship and enjoy its benefits” (Bartal); therefore, the number of Palestinian refugees that would need help resettling is a very small percentage of this five million. The granting of citizenship, which would secure equal rights and identity for Palestinians, would not be significant change for most Arab countries; however, an exception is Lebanon where Palestinian refugees “are barred from numerous professions” (Marx). In contrast, to the perception that millions of refugees are destitute sitting in camps waiting to return to Israel, the facts actually point to a smaller, solvable problem. Even with this historical acceptance and virtual assimilation of many Palestinians, Palestinian refugees and their advocates claim “the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes [remains] firmly anchored in international law” (Weaver 8). Although authorities closer to the establishment of laws, which are used to justify the right of return, accepted the legality of resettlement, actions of the UN, UNRWA, and Arab leaders have led to “the misrepresentation of resolution 194 as solely aimed at repatriation and compensation to the total exclusion of resettlement” (Joffe). This resolution clearly suggested that Palestinian refugees “should be allowed to return to their country of origin;” however, this resolution also extended to Jewish refugees and did not limit the options to only repatriation (Bartal). Payment for damages and resettlement were also possible solutions (Bartal). At the time of this resolution, the accepted solution for refugees was “resettlement in a third country” (El-Abed 535). This method for solving refugee crisis’ can be seen in the millions of Germans, Indians, Pakistanis, Armenians, Greeks, Turks and other people groups who were “driven from their lands and resettled elsewhere” in the twentieth century (Nachmias). This resolution and these examples are evidence that in theory the return of refugees to their country of origin is the ideal of international law, but the real-life application of such laws has historically