Ahead of Nakba Day, report claims 11.2 million Palestinians worldwide
Palestinian bureau of statistics says population has increased eight-fold since 1948
Ahead of Tuesday’s Nakba Day, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics released a study indicating that at the end of 2011 there were 11.2 million Palestinians in the world, eight times the number when Israel declared statehood in 1948.
According to the report, there were 1.37 million Palestinians, some 800,000 of whom the report claims were driven from their homes, at the time of the Nakba — the Palestinian term for the “catastrophe” of Israel’s establishment and its consequences.
Annually commemorated on May 15, Nakba Day is often marked by protests in Palestinian areas, some of them violent.
According to the report, issued Thursday, there are 5.6 million Palestinians living in what it calls “historic Palestine” — which it defines as reaching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It estimates that there are 4.2 million Palestinians in the West Bank (2.6 million) and the Gaza Strip (1.6 million).
It quotes UNRWA — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — as saying there were 5.1 million Palestinian refugees registered at the end of 2011. The majority of Palestinian refugees today, 59.1%, it said, live in camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, while the remaining Palestinian refugees are in the Gaza Strip (23.8 %) and the West Bank (17.1%).
The report also discusses the bureau’s findings regarding population density in the Palestinian territories, the “expansion and annexation” wall (Israel’s West Bank security barrier), the number of “martyrs” killed as part of the “continuous effort to build a state,” Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses and the “limited Palestinian exports.”