Today the number of Palestinian total approximately 4.7 million persons, of which 3.4 million are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). The largest concentration of Palestine refugees is in Jordan, representing more than 40% of those refugees registered with UNRWA, and the refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including Jerusalem, represent 38% of UNRWA’s registration, Lebanon and Syria each host about 10% of the registered refugees and the remainder live in neighboring countries, including Egypt, while others have migrated to Europe, the United States, Canada and South America.

Since the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine, the Middle East has been hot point of conflicts interrupted by full-scale wars that threaten the peace of the world. For this reason alone, not to mention principles of right and justice, it is an obligation upon every state and individual to exert the limit of their influence to secure a lasting and just settlement of this conflict. This requires the restoration, to the Arab States, of their territory and to the Palestinian people their legitimate and national rights in their country. It is Israel's denial of these rights that form the fundamental cause of this whole conflict.

Bertrand Russell, in his last words before he died, spoke of these rights in his message to the International Conference of Parliamentarians held in February 1970: "The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was 'given' by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict."

No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East."

District   Depopulated   Dispossessed     Population
           Villages          1948            1999
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Acre        30               47,038         306,753
Ramleh      64               97,405         635,215
Baysan      31               19,602         127,832
Beersheba   88               90,507         590,231
Gaza        46               79,947         521,365
Haifa       59              121,196         790,365
Hebron      16               22,991         149,933
Jaffa       25              123,227         803,610
Jerusalem   39               97,950         638,769
Jenin        6                4,005          26,118
Nazareth     5                8,746          57,036
Safad       78               52,248         340,729
Tiberias    26               28,872         188,285
Tulkarm     18               11,032          71,944
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TOTAL      531              804,766       5,248,185

Place of Refugees     All Population           of which
                         (1999)                Refugees
----------------------------------------------------------
Israel                  1,012,547                     0
Gaza Strip              1,066,707               813,570
West Bank               1,695,429               693,286
Jordan                  2,472,501             1,849,666
Lebanon                   456,824               433,276
Syria                     494,501               472,475
Egypt                      51,805                42,974
Saudi Arabia              291,778               291,778
Kuwait                     40,031                36,499
Other Gulf                112,116               112,116
Iraq, Libya                78,884                78,884
Other Arab Countries        5,887                 5,887
The Americas              216,196               183,767
Other Countries           275,303               234,008
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TOTAL                   8,270,509             5,248,186