This paper critically examines the term “diaspora” to describe contemporary Palestinian society. Exploring academic scholarship on diaspora more generally, and theway Palestinians can or cannot be subsumed by this conceptualization, opens the way for a critique of the concept itself. The goal is to complicate the notion of a Palestinian diaspora rather than to accept it as an unquestioned categorization. Focusing on demographic, spatial, and legal phenomena, in particular refugees' legal identity, provides a broad lens through which to probe the term's appropriateness in the Palestinian context. What are the political ramifications of assuming a Palestinian diaspora? Does an insistence on the right of return represent a refusal of diaspora?