Palestinians on the 74th Anniversary of the Nakba

The Palestinian Statistics Authority said that the records of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees “UNRWA” indicate that the number of refugees registered with it until December 2020, amounted to about 6.4 million Palestinian refugees, 28.4% of whom live in its 58 official camps, distributed in 10 camps in Jordan, 9 in Syria, 12 in Lebanon, 19 in the West Bank, and 8 in the Gaza Strip.

These estimates represent the minimum number of Palestinian refugees, given the presence of unregistered refugees, as this number does not include the Palestinians who were displaced after 1949, even on the eve of the June 1967 war, “according to UNRWA’s definition”, nor does it include the Palestinians who left, or were deported. In 1967 against the background of the war, who were not refugees in the first place.

The population of historical Palestine in 1914 amounted to about 690,000 people, of whom only 8% were Jews. In 1948, the population reached more than 2 million, about 31.5% of whom were Jews. Between 1932 and 1939, the largest number of Jewish immigrants flowed in. Their number reached 225 thousand Jews, and between 1940 and 1947, more than 93 thousand Jews flowed into Palestine. Thus, between 1932 and 1947, about 318,000 Jews came to Palestine, and from 1948 until 1975, more than 540 thousand Jews flowed.

Despite the displacement of more than 800,000 Palestinians in 1948 and the displacement of more than 200,000 Palestinians, most of them to Jordan after the June 1967 war, the total number of Palestinians in the world at the end of 2021 reached about 14 million, which indicates that the number of Palestinians has multiplied about 10 times since The events of the Nakba of 1948, about half of them (7 million) are in historical Palestine (1.7 million in the occupied territories in 1948).

Population estimates indicate that by the end of 2021, the population of the West Bank “including Jerusalem” reached 3.2 million, and about 2.1 million in the Gaza Strip.

 Based on these data, Palestinians constitute 49.9% of the population residing in historical Palestine, while Jews constitute 50.1% of the total population and exploit more than 85% of the total area of ​​historical Palestine (27,000 km2).