Numbers amidst the middle east crisis

Since 1947 there were between 700,000 to 900,000 Palestinians expelled out of their homeland, including Nakba during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War mentioned in a previous blog. 

Since then, the expulsions have continued through ongoing military conflicts, land confiscations, and Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), there are currently over 5.7 million Palestine refugees, most of whom reside in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. 

These figures tabulate those displaced out of the region, and not individuals internally displaced within the Palestinian territories. It’s also useful to keep in mind the following numbers to get a better perspective on the overall situation.

The Palestinian population is crammed on a smaller area that is 28% of Israel’s, with colonies continuously encroaching on the West Bank. The Israeli GDP per capita is 15 times that of the Palestinians and equal to those of Belgium, Canada and Germany. Which makes me cringe when I think that US taxpayers have to give $3 billion yearly to a wealthy country that massacres the population of Gaza? 

This said, having such a massively poor population (similar to Bolivia or Egypt) parked and segregated racially in ghettos in the midst of its territory, is a recipe for social disaster and can only foster envy, anger, and humiliation that exploded on October 7. 

The economic gap, the imprisonment of the population and constant tensions are the ferment that long ago created Hamas and Hezbollah. It is also by now obvious that the Netanyahu government is hell-bent on starving the Palestinians, letting many die and eventually getting rid of them all. 

A glaring example can be found in the Israeli kibbutz hiring and bringing over Thais workers for $1,500 a month when there’s huge unemployment in Palestine. Looks to me like another mass genocide in progress!