Widening the Protection Gap: The ‘Politics of Citizenship’ for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, 1948–2008 ARE KNUDSEN Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Bergen, Norway are.knudsen@cmi.no Lebanon has been a reluctant host to Palestinian refugees since 1948. A mainstay of Lebanese policies vis-a`-vis the Palestinian refugees has been preventing their permanent integration and settlement in the country. The ques- tion of naturalizing refugees is one of the most contentious political issues in Lebanon today. Palestinian refugees tend to live in conflict-ridden environ- ments, often at the margins of the host society. This first of all applies to the camp-based refugees, who languish in dilapidated and overcrowded camps. Unable to return to Palestine and marginalized by the host society, they are caught in a legal limbo. In order to understand the complex legal regime that governs their refugee status, it is necessary to examine their rights as refugees in international law, regionally as hosted by Arab League states and nationally as residents of Lebanon. The rights regime is complex and contributes to a critical ‘protection gap’ for the refugees. This article demonstrates how this protection gap was created and widened by historically contingent, international, regional and national legal rights regimes. Keywords: Palestinians, Lebanon, statelessness, citizenship Introduction The outbreak of the first Arab–Israeli war in 1948 led to a massive refugee crisis that continues to this day. Denied return to their homeland in Palestine despite UN General Assembly resolution 194 protecting their ‘right of return’, the refugees remained displaced as residents in neighbouring coun- tries. Nowhere was their presence more contested than in Lebanon, which sought to prevent their permanent integration and settlement in the country. Without any solution to the ‘Palestine problem’, the roughly 300,000 refugees are today Lebanon’s poorest and most disenfranchised community, more than half of them incarcerated in camps resembling urban slums. In the refugee camps, poverty is the norm. Of all Arab countries hosting refugees, Lebanon has the highest number of individuals living in abject poverty. The poverty and social problems facing refugees are well documented Journal of Refugee Studies ß The Author [2009]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org doi:10.1093/jrs/fen047