As of 2019. UNRWA's registration figures are from 31 December 2019 and its resident estimate is a planning figure; both have been further unsettled by Lebanon's economic collapse and the 2023-24 war.
Palestine refugees who arrived in Lebanon from 1948 and their descendants have never been naturalised and are treated as foreigners without the reciprocity rights that Lebanese law grants nationals of other states, so that they cannot claim the protections available to ordinary foreign residents. UNRWA records that they are barred from as many as 39 professions, including the syndicated professions such as law, medicine and engineering, and a 2001 amendment to the property law effectively prevents them from acquiring or inheriting registered real property. Most live in or around 12 camps that the Lebanese army does not enter under a long-standing arrangement dating from 1969, leaving internal administration to Palestinian factions; several camps, notably Ein el-Hilweh and Nahr al-Bared, are surrounded by army checkpoints where residents and construction materials are inspected on entry and exit. The camps cannot be expanded, so growth has been vertical and densities are extreme; Nahr al-Bared was largely destroyed in 2007 fighting and its reconstruction has been prolonged. Lebanese governments justify the restrictions by reference to the country's sectarian balance and to a constitutional rejection of tawtin, the permanent settlement of Palestinians, which they present as protecting the right of return; UN human rights bodies and refugee organisations describe the cumulative effect as institutionalised marginalisation that confines a population to camps without lawful means of livelihood.
The Lebanese state restricting Palestine refugees' employment, property ownership and, at several camps, physical entry and exit, with camps administered by Palestinian factions rather than the state
UNRWA recorded 476,033 registered Palestine refugees in Lebanon as of 31 December 2019, about 45 per cent of them in the country's twelve camps. UNRWA itself plans on the basis that only around 180,000 are actually resident, and a 2017 Lebanese government census of the camps and gatherings counted 174,422 — the gap reflects emigration by registered refugees whose registration is never cancelled.
No significant direct death toll attaches to the legal regime itself; the harm is exclusion and confinement. UNRWA registers 476,033 Palestine refugees in Lebanon across 12 camps and records that they are barred from as many as 39 professions and from owning real estate. Two lethal episodes inside the camps are frequently folded into this entry and should be separated: the Sabra and Shatila massacre of September 1982, which the UN General Assembly in resolution 37/123 D described as an act of genocide, and the 2007 Lebanese Army siege of Nahr al-Bared, in which at least 446-457 people died — 168-179 soldiers, 226 Fatah al-Islam fighters and about 47 Palestinian civilians — and roughly 31,000 camp residents were displaced.
Lebanon