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Egypt hosted approximately 50,000
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.
Many Palestinians stay in Egypt illegally because they don’t have
the money to maintain their legal status. Concerning education they
are treated like the Egyptians who received education in schools,
universities and institutes. However, they are in many cases treated
as foreigners and they have to pay hard currency tuition fees. They
can’t study medicine, economics, journalism, political science, and
pharmacy.
The Egyptian law No. 28 of 1960 allows Palestinians to obtain a
travel document but they have to get a visa to return. The
Palestinians holding such a document who were born in Egypt or who
have lived there for most of their lives have no automatic right to
stay in, or re-enter, the country, but must renew their visas every
six months to three years.
There are cases where Palestinians born in Egypt have been denied
visa entry requests by Egyptian consulates "in summary fashion,
without providing reasons.
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