The prohibition on forced displacement, the right to leave, non-refoulement, and the right to return: four sides of the same coin?

The paper is set against the near absence of external protection responses to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Querying the interplay between four recognised international legal norms in the context of armed conflict, it seeks to provide doctrinal clarity in a context where the range and interaction of diverse legal standards may generate uncertainty or claims of apparent norm conflict: the prohibition on forced displacement, the right to leave any territory, non-refoulement, and the right to return to one’s ‘own country’ including as part of the realisation of a collective right to self-determination. The paper posits that a future realisation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination has been co-opted by external actors as a justification for infringing, in an immediate and tangible sense, the individual right of Gazans to leave the strip in order to seek and to enjoy elsewhere protection from rights violations, some of which breach jus cogens norms. This latest manifestation of ‘Palestinian exceptionalism’ has had dire consequences for individual Palestinians and, unless unwaveringly rejected, could detrimentally affect those fleeing future armed conflicts.