User:Palestine-info/estimates

Estimates of the Palestinian Refugee flight of 1948 refers to the various attempts that has been made to estimate how many Arabs became refugees in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Various conflicting estimates has been presented by all sides in the conflict and finding which of them that is accurate is hard.

Political agenda
The situation is further complicated due to the fact that both sides feel that the dispute involves an important political point. The Israeli side prefers a low estimate because they feel it lessens Israel's responsibility for the Palestinian Exodus, for the exact opposite reason, the Palestinian side wants an estimate as high as possible. In general, estimates calculated by pro-Palestinian researchers differ hugely from estimates calculated by pro-Israeli researchers.

Methodology
Different researchers use different methods to derive their number of the Palestinian refugee flight of 1948. One often used method is to try and estimate how many non-Jewish persons lived inside the area that Israel occupied and deduct the numbers that remained.

Definition of refugee
By using different definitions one gets very diverging results when calculating the number of refugees. The most common definition is

The UNRWA definition is


 * any person "whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict"

Both definitions excludes the "internal refugees" - those persons who fled their homes but did not leave the borders of the state of Israel. They initially numbered 75,000 persons.

Village statistics
The most authorative source of statistical data for the late British Mandate period is the document A Survey of Palestine, a book in three volumes prepared by the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in December, 1945, to January, 1946. In its third volume (supplement) on p. 12-13 it lists an estimate for the number of inhabitants in Palestine divided by religion on December 31, 1946.

The figures excludes the nomadic bedouin population.

Population growth

 * Computed in UNESM to 2.5%.
 * By Abu-Sitta/Khalidi to 3.8%.

The bedouins
In UNESM estimated to number 127,000 in December 31, 1946.

Remaining population
In UNESM estimated to 133,000. 108,000 from the census of November 8, 1948 and an additional registration during January 1949. Plus 25,000 Arabs who reentered Israel in 1949.