Study: 11.2 million Palestinians worldwide

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RAMALLAH, West Bank, May 10 (UPI) -- The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates there were 11.2 million Palestinians around the world at the end of 2011, a release said Thursday.

On the 64th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, when the establishment of Israel uprooted an estimated 1.37 million Palestinians from their lands and homes in 1948, the Bureau says the population had increased eight times by the end of 2011.

Data show 44.1 percent of the total Palestinian population within the Palestinian Territory are refugees. There were an estimated 5.1 million registered refugees worldwide by the end of the 2011, 29 percent of which lived among 58 refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Based on current growth rates, the Bureau expects the refugee population to rise to 7.2 million by the end of 2020.

The estimates do not include Palestinians displaced between 1949 and 1967, the year the Six Day War occurred. Refugees who left or were forced to leave as a result of the war are also not included.