Historical Background

The Department of Palestinian Affairs was established after the legal and administrative disengagement with the West Bank in 1988

In accordance with the royal decree, several legal and administrative issues were annulled, such as "the Ministry of Occupied Territory Affairs", to be replaced by the Department of Palestinian Affairs, which until now supervises and manages the Palestinian refugees' camps in Jordan.

Based on these changes and events, the Council of Ministers set the responsibilities and tasks of the Department of Palestinian Affairs as follows:

• Supervising the affairs of refugees and the displaced and managing the affairs of the camps.

• Supervising the activities and programs of UNRWA and enhancing partnerships with international donors.

• Follow-up, study, and analysis of matters relating to the Palestinian issue at the Arab, Islamic, and international levels

Main services:

• Working to maintain the infrastructure of Palestinian refugee camps in collaboration with the ministries and concerned government institutions.

• Facilitating the work, activities, and programs of international organizations and NGOs, especially UNRWA, to improve the living conditions of the Palestinian refugee community. This is done in coordination with all relevant parties while also searching for new partnerships and enhancing existing ones.

• demonstrating diplomatic, political, and technical efforts to support the Palestinian issue locally, regionally, and internationally in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions.

• Following the latest developments on the Palestinian issue and the study and analysis thereof and issuing studies related thereto, in addition to following the developments of the peace process and Israeli violations, especially in Jerusalem, and providing the relevant entities with this information

The Department of Palestinian Affairs came as an heir to several Jordanian government institutes established to manage the affairs of Palestinian refugee and displaced camps in Jordan. Since the Palestinian catastrophe in 1948, they have been:

1. Ministry of Refugee Affairs:

 established in 1949 in order to provide care and attention to Palestinian refugees who were forced to leave their homes during and after the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948

2. Ministry of Construction and Restoration:

Established in 1950 and was entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of the affairs of Palestinian refugees in the Kingdom, including contributing to the establishment of camps for them in the West and East Banks, in addition to contributing to the great efforts in the educational, health, and social aspects in cooperation with the UNRWA.

3. The Higher Ministerial Committee for Displaced Relief Affairs

formed after 1967, headed by the late King Hussein bin Talal and with the membership of nine ministers, to oversee the affairs of the West Bank and the affairs of the displaced Palestinians after the 1967 war.

4. The Higher Committee for the Occupied Territories Affairs

formed after 1967 to deal with the affairs of the occupied West Bank

5. Executive Office for Occupied Territory Affairs

established in 1972 as a secretariat office for the Higher Committee of the Occupied Territories Affairs and attached to the Council of Ministers.

6. Ministry of Occupied Territory Affairs

established in 1980 to replace the Ministry of Construction and Development and the Executive Office for Occupied Territory Affairs to care for Palestinian refugees and displaced persons

In 1948, with the outbreak of the first Arab-Israeli war (the Palestinian Nakba), about 750,000 Palestinians were forced to abandon their homeland as a result of forced displacement operations carried out by the Israeli forces against the Palestinians.

Jordan had the largest share of these Palestinian refugees, as the official statistics of UNRWA in 2015 indicated that the number of Palestinian refugees in Jordan reached about 2.2 million, constituting 40% of the total number of Palestinian refugees registered in its five areas of operation: Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

Those statistics also indicate that approximately 380,000 of these Palestinian refugees reside in thirteen camps that were established in the Kingdom by the Jordanian government in coordination with the UNRWA, five of which were established during the first refugee wave after the 1948 war, and eight others were established during the second refugee wave after the 1967 war, while the rest lived in the cities and villages of the Kingdom. Their establishment was as follows:

The first five refugee camps, established after the 1948 war, are:

1. Zarqa camp

2. Irbid camp

3. Al-Hussein camp

4. Al-Wihdat Camp

5. *Madaba camp

Camps for displaced people and refugees, established after the 1967 war, are:

1. Talbiyah camp

2. Baqa'a Camp

3. Souf Camp

4. Jerash camp

5. Martyr Azmi Al-Mufti camp

6. *Prince Hassan camp

7. Hitteen camp

8. * Sukhneh Camp

Camps with this mark (*) are not official camps according to UNRWA, and this means that UNRWA does not have an official office in these camps and does not carry out its duties about cleaning and waste collection, but it has educational and health facilities in them.