Scottish Friends of Palestine أصدقاء فلسطين الأسكتلنديين

Nearly six million Palestinians remain refugees

WAFA 21/06/2020

More than 5.6 million Palestinians are registered by United Nations (UN) as refugees, after seven decades of the Palestinian catastrophe or Nakba that began when Israel expelled more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes in historical Palestine, declaring it the state of Israel, in 1948. The Palestinian refugee population is distributed in different Near East regions, including the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Many hundreds of thousands of refugees live in extremely difficult circumstances in those regions, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, with no prospect for a just solution to their plight. Since 1948, the number of Palestinian refugees has multiplied nine times, resulting in the figure of 5.6 million refugees today, not including those who are not registered or were displaced in 1967.

According to the 2019 Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Jordan has 39 % of the total Palestinian refugee population, the Gaza Strip has 25 %, the West Bank has 17 %, Syria 11 %, and Lebanon has 9 %.