Population Statistics of Palestine

Regardless of whoever said the famous phrase describing Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land", this false statement was adopted by the Zionists and was associated with their establishing of a Jewish state in Palestine. At the birth of modern Zionism in the early twentieth century, the meaning of this phrase was taken literally suggesting that the land of Palestine was uninhabited. Discovering that this was not the case, many interpretations were made by Jewish scholars to justify the validity of the phrase. However, their efforts only added insult to injury and made the bad situation worse. For example, a group of scholars interprets the phrase as an expression claiming that the Palestinians did not constitute a self-conscious national group, meaning that Palestine contained people but not "a people". In other words, this interpretation suggests that the Palestinians have no history, culture, nor a legitimate claim to national self-determination! Assuming that the first phrase interpretation is misleading, the second would be racist and misleading!

The history and culture of Palestine is much richer than to be summarized in few pages, yet here is an attempt, but as for the statistical question of Palestine, a population statistics study would be helpful. Below is a table of the population statistics of the historical land of Palestine, which is now divided into Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, from 1900 to 2005. It's important to note that statistical data are available for earlier years, for example, in 1877, Palestine had a population of 426,908 (97%) Arabs and 13,942 (3%) Jews. However, earlier years data were neglected to maintain accuracy, as older data is generally seen as less accurate than more modern population figures. Another thing to note is that the decrease in total population in 1918 is due to WWI and famine.

Year	Arabs	Jews	Total	% of Arabs	% of Jews
1900	564,000	36,000	600,000	94.00%	6.00%
1914	731,000	60,000	791,000	92.41%	7.59%
1918	688,000	59,000	747,000	92.10%	7.90%
1922	668,258	83,790	752,048	88.86%	11.14%
1931	858,708	174,606	1,033,314	83.10%	16.90%
1941	1,111,398	474,102	1,585,500	70.10%	29.90%
1944	1,211,000	554,000	1,765,000	68.61%	31.39%
1946	1,237,334	608,225	1,845,559	67.04%	32.96%
1950	1,172,100	1,203,000	2,375,100	49.35%	50.65%
1960	1,340,100	1,911,300	3,251,400	41.22%	58.78%
1970	1,045,000	2,582,000	3,627,000	28.81%	71.19%
1980	2,100,000	3,282,700	5,382,700	39.01%	60.99%
1995	3,506,900	4,495,100	8,002,000	43.83%	56.17%
2005	5,139,100	5,275,700	10,414,800	49.34%	50.66%

Many conclusions can be drawn from the above data, but first, an explanation is needed to interpret the unnatural increase in the Jewish population throughout the years, and another explanation to interpret the unnatural decrease in the Arab population throughout the years and especially in the '40s and the late '60s. As for the first, Jewish immigration to Palestine, or what is known as the Aliyah, explains this unnatural increase of the Jewish population, for example, the Jewish population nearly tripled between 1931 and 1941, and this is explained by the 5th Aliyah that occurred between 1929 and 1939 in which a wave of nearly 250,000 Jewish immigrants arrived to Palestine. Secondly, reductions in the Arab population in Palestine were mainly a result of the Nakba in 1948 and the Naksa in 1967, where more than 750,000 and 372,000 Arab Palestinians respectively fled or were expelled from Palestine.

After the UN partitioning plan of Palestine and after the creation of Israel, only few Arab Palestinians were permitted to stay in Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship. Those Palestinians are called Arab citizens of Israel or the Israeli Arabs and the data below shows population statistics of these Israeli Arabs against the Israeli Jews within the boarders of what is now knows as the state of Israel.

Year	Arabs	Jews	Total	% of Arabs	% of Jews
1949	159,100	1,013,900	1,173,000	13.56%	86.44%
1967	392,700	2,383,600	2,776,300	14.14%	85.86%
1973	493,200	2,845,000	3,338,200	14.77%	85.23%
1983	706,100	3,412,500	4,118,600	17.14%	82.86%
1990	875,000	3,946,700	4,821,700	18.15%	81.85%
1995	1,004,900	4,522,300	5,527,200	18.18%	81.82%
2000	1,188,700	4,955,400	6,144,100	19.35%	80.65%
2006	1,413,300	5,393,400	6,806,700	20.76%	79.24%

Upon the creation of Israel, the remaining Palestinian lands were divided into the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And the data below shows the Arab population statistics for these two areas from 1948 to 2005. However, it's important to note that following the 1967 war, Israel began establishing Jewish settlements on the stolen Palestinian lands and only for the Israeli Jews. There are now thousands of these settlements throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and their aim is to expand the borders of the Israeli land at the expense of the remaining Palestinian land. Though the tables below only shows population of the Arab Palestinians, the illegal Jewish settlers in 2006 reached 255,600 in the West Bank and that is almost 10% of the total population in the territory.

Year	West Bank	Gaza	Total
1948	462,100	82,500	544,600
1950	765,000	240,000	1,005,000
1960	799,000	302,000	1,101,000
1970	677,000	368,000	1,045,000
1980	964,000	497,000	1,461,000
1985	1,044,000	532,288	1,576,288
1990	1,254,506	642,814	1,897,320
1995	1,626,689	875,231	2,501,920
2000	2,020,298	1,132,063	3,152,361
2005	2,385,615	1,376,289	3,761,904

Israeli citizen