The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said on Sunday that the total number of Palestinians has increased about 10 times, while about 134,000 have been martyred in Palestine since the 1948 Nakba.
This came in a statement issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reviewing the conditions of the Palestinian people on the occasion of the 76th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, which falls on Wednesday, May 15, 2024.
The Central Bureau of Statistics explained, “Despite the displacement of about one million Palestinians in 1948 and more than 200,000 Palestinians after the June 1967 war, the total number of Palestinians in the world reached 14.63 million people at the end of 2023.”
He added, “5 million and 500 thousand of them reside in the State of Palestine, and about 1 million and 750 thousand Palestinians live in the 1948 territories, while the number of Palestinians in the Arab countries reached about 6 million and 560 thousand, and about 772 thousand in foreign countries.”
Thus, the number of Palestinians in historic Palestine reached approximately 7 million and 300 thousand, while the number of Jews is estimated at approximately 7 million and 200 thousand by the end of 2023, which means that the number of Palestinians exceeds the number of Jews in historical Palestine.
He explained that Israel occupies “more than 85% of the total area of historic Palestine.”
The statement reviews some of the events that took place during the Nakba, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced or forced to leave from their cities and villages.
The statement said, “More than one million Palestinians were displaced out of the 1.4 million Palestinians who resided in historic Palestine in 1948.”
Numbers of martyrs
Regarding the number of Palestinian martyrs in the ongoing conflict with Israel for 76 years, the statement said that “more than 134,000 were martyred in defense of Palestinian rights since the Nakba of 1948.”
The national and Islamic forces called on the Palestinians to participate in commemorating the Nakba through a central festival held in the city of Ramallah in the West Bank, in which Palestinian and black flags are scheduled to be raised, in addition to banners with the names of the cities and villages whose owners left or were forced to leave in 1948.
“Nakba” is a term the Palestinians use to refer to the day on which the establishment of Israel was declared on most of their lands on May 15, 1948.
The anniversary of the Nakba comes as the Israeli army, with American support, continues its devastating war on Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving tens of thousands of martyrs and wounded, most of them children and women, massive destruction, and famine that claimed the lives of children and the elderly, according to Palestinian and UN data.