12.1m Palestinians around the world in 2014

There were 12.1 million Palestinians around the world at the end of 2014, the Palestinian Statistics Bureau announced yesterday.

Head of the bureau, Ola Awad, said in a statement that the Nakba was “a forced displacement process for the unarmed Palestinian nation from its land in 1948.”

She explained: “Around 800,000 Palestinians were forced out of their villages and cities to the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the neighbouring Arab countries. In addition, thousands were forced out of their homes, but remained in areas which became under Israeli control.”

At that time, the number of the Palestinians was 1.4 million living in 1,300 Palestinian village and cities, of which Israel occupied 774 and destroyed 531 others.

Awad added that the occupation committed more than 70 massacres against the Palestinians and caused more than 15,000 deaths.

The number of Palestinians living in lands occupied in 1967 is around 4.6 million, including 2.8 million in the occupied West Bank and 1.8 million in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian refugees in both areas represent 43.1 per cent of the total population.

Until May 2014, the number of refugees recorded by UNRWA was 5.49 million. About 29 per cent of them live in 58 camps in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

This number does not include refugees forced out of their homes between 1949 and 1967, or those forced out of their homes by the Israeli occupation during the 1967 war.

Palestinians, who did not leave their homes and became Israeli citizens numbered 154,000 in 1948. Their population has increased to 1.5 million as of 2014.

At the end of 2014, population density in the Gaza Strip was 4,904 residents per square kilometre, while in the occupied West Bank it was 500 residents per square kilometre.