Seventy-seven years after the Nakba, the mass expulsion of Palestinians following the creation of Israel in 1948, its impact is still shaping the lives of millions. 

its consequences are still deeply felt. What began as the uprooting of some 750,000 people has become a defining reality for millions of their descendants.

Before that rupture, historic Palestine was home to a diverse population of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Druze, living side by side. But rising tensions — driven by British colonial policy, the Zionist movement’s push to establish a Jewish state, and waves of Jewish immigration fleeing European anti-Semitism — culminated in a violent transformation of the land and the forced exile of much of its Palestinian population.

Today, the legacy of that upheaval endures.

Across Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, generations of Palestinians remain without a state. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), over five million registered Palestinian refugees now live across the Middle East, many in protracted exile. Some are officially stateless; others hold documents that restrict where they can travel, what jobs they can hold, and which rights they can claim, or are forced to give up entirely. Often, where a family ended up in 1948 has defined the contours of their lives ever since, including whether they can pursue an education, own property, or be buried beside their relatives.

Here are some of their stories:

Paper walls and bakeries

In Lebanon’s Shatila refugee camp, an overcrowded patch of land marked with hardship and history, 28-year-old Ziad Adlouni, a tall and soft-spoken man, carries the weight of a broken dream, like so many others from his neighbourhood. 

A mechanical engineering graduate from the Lebanese International University, Adlouni once imagined a life designing machines and building a future shaped by precision and innovation. But those boyhood ambitions have long been set aside.

Today, he spends his days behind the flour-filled counter of a modest, two-room bakery in the camp — one room for kneading dough, the other for selling bread and traditional marqouq, a thin flatbread. Though small, the business meets his daily needs. Still, it falls short of covering broader expenses, especially as Lebanon’s economic crisis continues to deepen.

“It was a struggle just to get into university,” he says. “Not every school accepts us [Palestinians from Shatila]; as if we’re not even human.” He adds that they are not eligible for a free education, and so have to find ways to pay for their university studies.

Aldouni is one of approximately 222,000 Palestinians currently living in Lebanon, including 27,000 who fled from Syria under the Assad regime. Around 248,000 people are registered with UNRWA in the country.

Holding up a palm-sized slip of paper, he shows it with a bitter chuckle. “This is what remains of our identity – a piece of paper that reads ‘Palestinian refugee residing in Lebanon.’ Nothing more,” he tells TRT World.

“Palestinians here face severe legal and social restrictions,” Adlouni says. “We can’t own property. We can’t work in dozens of professions, including law and engineering, the very field I studied.”

Despite living in Lebanon for decades, Palestinians are still legally classified as foreigners.  They are denied citizenship and are excluded from basic rights under Lebanese law. More than 20 professions, including medicine, law, and engineering, remain off-limits. Work permits are difficult to obtain, and those who do work often lack formal labour protections.

They are also barred from owning property, forcing most families to remain in overcrowded, decaying camps where even basic home repairs are tightly regulated. Public services like health care and education are limited, leaving many Palestinian children growing up in camps without consistent access to schools or medical care.

"How can a Palestinian live in Lebanon?" he asks, before answering himself: "Most rely on simple trades, like barbering or selling vegetables."

Shatila’s living conditions are bleak. With no proper sewage system and poor drainage infrastructure, the streets often flood with filthy water. The camp built in 1949, is now home to 14,000 Palestinian refugees who arrived after the Nakba. It has only grown more crowded and fragile with each passing generation.

Clean water is a luxury. Most residents must buy it, while unemployment remains widespread and desperation fuels an underground economy. Crime is rising, Adlouni explains, and Shatila has become a haven for drug dealers, emboldened by the absence of law enforcement. Security forces rarely enter the camp.

Adlouni longs to leave, to build a future elsewhere — but the identification card he holds doesn’t allow him to travel.

“Palestinians can’t live in Lebanon, and we can’t live outside Lebanon - we’re trapped,” he says.

The barriers are more than bureaucratic. “The camp is a trap,” he said. “One with no future and no way out. Being born a refugee in Lebanon means remaining one for life.”

Still, he dreams of Haifa, a city now part of Israel, that he knows only through the stories of his grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They speak of a place by the sea, where sweet water once flowed from fountains, and the air smelled of salt and citrus. 

For Adlouni, and many like him, the struggle is not only to survive exile, but to preserve a vision of return, however distant, and the hope of a life lived with dignity.

That dream, of returning to a lost homeland, is one shared by millions of Palestinians across the world.

The right of return

This yearning is described as a “moral compass” by Sari Orabi, a Palestinian political analyst.  

“For millions of Palestinians exiled from their homeland, the right of return is not simply a clause in international law, it is the spiritual heartbeat of a people suspended between memory and displacement,” he tells TRT World.

The Palestinian right of return is the principle that Palestinians who were displaced or forced to flee their homes during the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 war, along with their descendants, are entitled to return to their original homes in what is now Israel. The right is rooted in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, adopted in 1948, and remains a core demand of the Palestinian national movement and a powerful symbol of identity and justice for millions in the diaspora.

Orabi also highlights the geographical disparities within the diaspora. In Lebanon, Palestinians like Aldouni live in stark limbo, stripped of civil rights, healthcare, and access to quality education. They are “ghosts in a land that denies their presence.” By contrast, Palestinians in Jordan and Syria have experienced fuller integration, enjoying rights nearly equal to those of native citizens.

Syria: A different kind of exile

Karin Al-Abed, a 44-year-old mother of two, has called Damascus home for as long as she can remember. A legally documented Palestinian refugee, she enjoys nearly the same rights as Syrian citizens.

From her modest apartment tucked into an eight-storey building, she stands by the window, her long blond hair swaying gently in the breeze.

“I’ve never felt like a stranger here,” she says. “I studied in the best schools, worked in Syria’s public sector, and retired with a pension. I have full access to healthcare and even a driver’s license.”

Before Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, roughly 560,000 Palestinian refugees were registered in the country, with another 70,000 unregistered. Many, like Al-Abed, had integrated into public life and institutions, enjoying a sense of belonging rarely afforded to Palestinians elsewhere in the region.

Al-Abed was born in Tunisia, where her father worked alongside Yasser Arafat in the Palestinian resistance. In 2000, her family returned to the Palestinian territories through a family reunification program — a limited initiative coordinated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to grant residency to Palestinians living abroad.

She, however, was excluded, having married a Syrian man and started a family, her children carried Syrian passports, and she chose not to leave them behind. While her parents and siblings resettled in the occupied West Bank, Al-Abed was forced to remain in Syria, separated from them ever since.

When asked if her life feels complete, her tone shifts. “I’ve lived like any other citizen,” she says, “but I’ve always wished I could be near my relatives.”

Her thoughts often return to Awarta, her ancestral village near Nablus. The hope of reuniting with her family and one day revisiting her grandparents’ home has never left her.

A refugee at home

In the garden of her modest home west of Ramallah, 48-year-old Taghreed Mafarjah sits quietly, the afternoon light softening the stone walls around her. Her face carries the lines of a long life, but her eyes are fixed on the horizon — on a place just out of reach.

“My family fled Ramallah to Jordan after the Nakba,” she says. “We lived there as refugees. In my twenties, I married Ramzi — kind, gentle, and also from Ramallah.”

In 1994, their shared longing to return took shape. Using her Jordanian ID and his Jordanian passport, they obtained temporary permits and travelled back to the West Bank. But when Mafarjah overstayed to give birth to her son, now a medical student, her Jordanian documents expired. Without a Palestinian ID and unable to renew her status in Jordan, she became stateless.

She chose to stay in Palestine, drawn by a deep connection to what she calls its “sacred soil.” But that choice came at a cost.

“I haven’t seen my family in Jordan for 30 years,” she says. “My mother died while I was here. My father too. I never got to say goodbye.”

Her undocumented status makes life precarious. She fears Israeli checkpoints and avoids travelling between cities. “One stop, one search, and I could lose everything — my home, my family, this life I’ve built.”

In 2022, the Palestinian Civil Affairs Ministry announced that Israel had approved 1,000 identity cards and promised to regularize the status of 10,000 more undocumented Palestinians in the West Bank. Mafarjah believes she may be among them.

“I still hope,” she says quietly. “To be counted. To belong. To live without fear.”

None of the individuals interviewed for this piece agreed to be photographed, citing the stigma and potential consequences associated with their citizenship and documentation status.

This article is published in collaboration with Egab.