This section contains 134 documents relating to the effects of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the collective experience of Palestinian Arabs.

Most documents are United Nations resolutions and reports, but others originate from Israel and the Arab states. They narrate the Palestinians’ growing experience of national dispossession and repression resulting from Israeli policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and in Israel.

It should be noted that from 1949 to 1969 the United Nations defined all non-Israeli Palestinians as legal refugees; however, characterization changed with the adoption of General Assembly Resolution 2535 (1969), which recognized Palestinians for the first time as a people with a national identity and collective rights. Palestinians still retain a special status in refugee law, yet fall partially outside the protection of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The recognition of Palestinian national identity was strengthened in 1974 after the United Nations granted observer status to the PLO and invited PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to address the General Assembly as if he were a head of state.

This section is divided into four separate though interrelated sections that reflect the evolution of the Palestinians’ legal status from that of refugees (Section A) to that of a population under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Section B) to their contemporary status as a nascent state (Section C) and, in some cases, as Arab citizens of Israel (Section D).

Documents in this section should be read in conjunction with relevant documents in other chapters, in particular those in: Section 3, Arab-Israeli Wars; Section 6, Jerusalem and the Holy Sites; and Section 7, Israeli- Palestinian Peace Process.