Understanding Palestinian Refugees: Just the Facts…

• At least 8.7 of 13.05 million (66.7%) Palestinians worldwide are forcibly displaced persons.
• Among them are at least 7.94 million Palestinian refugees; the rest are internally displaced persons (IDPs).
• During the Nakba 6.71 million Palestinian were made refugees.
• The number of Palestinian refugees originating from the 1967 War is estimated to be 1.24 million refugees.
• Approximately 415,876 current IDPs are a result of the 1948 Nakba.
• Approximately 344,599 Palestinians have been made IDPs in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) since 1967 as a result of Israel’s regime of colonization, annexation, and apartheid.
• In 1948, an estimated 65% of Palestinian refugees remained in the territory of Palestine which was not under Israeli control at the time – i.e., the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
• The remaining 35% found refuge in neighboring states, mainly Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt.
• The majority of Palestinians displaced from the oPt during the 1967 War found refuge in neighboring states; 95% to Jordan.
• UNRWA estimates that half of the refugees forced out of the oPt in 1967 were also refugees from 1948.
• Most refugees still live within 100km of the borders of Mandatory Palestine where their homes of origin are located.
• The conflict in Syria has internally displaced more than half of the 560,000 registered Palestinian refugees in the country since 2011.

This week’s Just the Facts comes from:

These facts are drawn from Badil’s“Q and A: What you need to know about PalestinianRefugees and Internally Displaced Persons”. It is available as a PDF here.

Learning More

To learn more, in addition to reading BADIL’s pamphlet, you can also look at Visualizing Palestine’s visual. ​To go deeper, we are developing an extensive list of Additional Resources at the bottom of this week’s entry as well as a YouTube playlist on the subject.