Approximately 41.6 per cent of Palestinian residents in the state of Palestine are refugees, Quds Press reported Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) saying yesterday.

In an official report, the PCBS said that 26.3 per cent of West Bank residents and 67.7 per cent of those in the Gaza Strip are refugees.

According to UNRWA, there were 5.6 million Palestinian refugees in January 2015.

On May 15, the world observed 68 years of Israeli occupation, dispossession and oppression – referred to as the Nakba, reported Imraan Buccus from the Sunday Independent.

Buccus explains the Nakba stating that: “There was large-scale intimidation and siege, setting fires to Palestinian homes, planting of mines, destroying of 500 villages, and other terrorist activities. Nearly 800 000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes and into refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere. They have never returned.”

He further notes that, “Most Palestinians have a personal narrative of loss – a relative killed, or a branch of the family that fled north while the others fled east, never to be reunited, or homes, offices, orchards and other property seized”.

Buccus said that even the late intellectual, Edward Said said, “None of the older members of my family ever recovered from the trauma,” in The Politics of Dispossession.

The UNRWA added that a “devastating tragedy” happened in 1948 when 66 per cent Palestinians were displaced from historic Palestine, referring to the Nakba.

(MEMO, Independent, PC)