PALESTINE urged the United Nations on Tuesday to press Israel to allow Palestinian refugees caught in the Syrian conflict to travel to the West Bank and Gaza.

Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour (pictured) warned that Israel had “callously rejected this appeal.”

Israel’s “intransigence can neither be accepted nor justified” and should not be allowed “to prevent us from bringing our refugees to safety in their own homeland,” wrote Mr Mansour in identical letters to the UN security council, general assembly and secretary-general.

The country has flat refused to contemplate accepting the refugees, fearing that it would greatly increase the 4.5 million population of the Palestinian territories, which could affect future negotiations on a two-state solution.

Mr Mansour said that at least 480,000 Palestinian refugees remained in Syria, with more than half displaced from their refugee camps and 95 per cent of them in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

Many are stuck in the Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.

UN officials have been unable to reach Yarmouk since March, but reported last month on several suspected cases of typhoid at the camp.

The Islamic State terror group entered the camp in early April.

“Rather than being forced to flee in desperation to neighbouring countries or to attempt the treacherous journey to leave the Middle East region entirely in search of safety, stability and livelihoods, the Palestine refugees should be allowed to join their brothers and sisters in their homeland,” said Mr Mansour.

He urged the UN to support the effort to bring the refugees to the Palestinian territories “as a matter of humanitarian, moral and political urgency.”

He estimated that 80,000 Palestinian refugees had already fled Syria, where the war is now in its fifth year.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that they had just received the letter and had no immediate comment.

The UN Relief and Works Agency, which deals with Palestinian refugees, noted that the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria had been established in 1948, the year of Israel’s creation and Palestinian displacement.