By Jowana Nasrallah

When the state of Israel was established in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homelands to the surrounding region, an event fittingly named “Nakba” in Arabic, meaning catastrophe. The large number of displaced Palestinians, who became refugees, lead the UN to create an agency responsible solely for that refugee population and named it the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This generational refugee population has been displaced ever since, and the descendants of those refugees are still utilizing UNRWA for many of their needs. Today Palestinians are one of the world’s largest diaspora populations and a substantially large refugee population. Continue reading →