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Palestine - People

Israeli security services have “almost accurate intelligence information about civilians in the Gaza Strip, and know that they have "The people of this or that house, and the ownership of shops and establishments, as well as the phone numbers of almost all residents."" The researcher specializing in Israeli affairs, Helmi Moussa, told Al Jazeera Net 08 December 2023. "It has a lot of information about people because of its already control over the population registry and the official entry crossings into Gaza," he added, adding that the officers of those services were "filling in the blanks from time to time, Either through agents, or through pressure on workers (Palestinian workers inside Israel), or through public information. They have a register of school and university students and the like.”

Researcher Musa concludes "What they were ignorant of was sometimes things related to the resistance at a certain moment. But Gaza was and still is the most monitored area in the world."

The awareness developed by the people of the Gaza Strip about historical events and their role in displacement, in addition to their personal experience regarding immigration, builds something like an immunity system. The people of the Gaza Strip also had a Palestinian experience that no one else experienced, through repeated wars and clashes before the liberation of the Gaza Strip, which developed into the form of bloody wars after its liberation, which built for them a state of struggle for the mentality of this society as a whole, at the level of means and tools, at the level of expectations, at the level of expectations, and at the level of ideas as well.

The psychological and mental state possessed by the people of the Gaza Strip is in addition to the link between their social structure and the resistance movements, which is a very intertwined structure, as tens of thousands of Palestinian resistance fighters affiliated with the various military wings are members of the same society. In fact, generations of Palestinians have participated in the armed struggle, which means that the connection between the social, political and military there cannot be easily broken. When talking about the displacement of Gazans, it is necessary to understand this deep connection between the resistance fighters and society, which makes it difficult to deal with the state of displacement and end the situation and the thought of struggle.

The Israeli occupation, despite its continued claims to seek to achieve what was stated in the Oslo Accords and implement what is known as the “two-state solution,” its political and military practice on the ground reveals exactly the opposite, as it continues to cut off Palestinian lands in the West Bank and build settlements there, and implement policies Deportation and restrictions on Palestinians in both the West Bank and Jerusalem,. These policies reflect that the project of controlling the entire Palestinian territory is most present in the imagination of the occupation authorities, especially after the extreme right-wing leadership today dominates the political scene there. It can be said that one of the most prominent manifestations of the continued presence of the replacement project in the occupation’s mentality is the significant change in the number of settlers in the Palestinian territories from 40,000 in 1977 to 604,000 in 2017, and it is expected that they will reach approximately 1.9 million in 2050, which is equivalent to 30% of the population of the West Bank.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PEBS), until the year 2023, the number of Palestinians living in the lands of what is known today as the “State of Palestine,” that is, in the West Bank and Gaza, reached 5.48 million people, which constitutes approximately 38% of the percentage of Palestinians who numbered 14.5 million people around the world, which means that 62% of the Palestinians live outside their lands, a situation that is mainly due to the two fundamental events in the history of the Palestinian issue that shaped the reality on the ground today; The 1948 war (the Nakba) and the subsequent forced displacement campaigns until 1949, and the June 5 war of 1967. The largest Palestinian diaspora community is in Jordan. More than four million naturalized Palestinians and refugees Many of them still live in refugee camps that were established in 1949.

Although it was the last major war launched by the occupation to expand its territories and resulted in widespread displacement, it did not stop practicing coercive and deportation policies after that, which raised the material and moral cost of living for Palestinians in their lands, which generated a state of silent and slow displacement.

About 2,500,000 Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, and another 2,300,000 blockaded in Gaza [Israel exercises "effective control" over Gaza and as such remains the "occupying power" under international law]. Arabs living as citizens inside Israel proper total around 1 million (out of Israel's population of 6 million). According to United Nations projections, over half of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip relies on international humanitarian assistance, and dependency on outside aid continues to rise.

Replacement, it seems, remains an existing dream in the Israeli imagination, waiting for the appropriate moment to begin implementing it through its military and political institutions, and this is reflected in Israeli actions, even if the starting points for this are multiple, between an Israeli left that sees the establishment of a Palestinian state as a national threat to its entity, and among currents The right that finds this a religious entitlement and duty must occur on a wide map that goes beyond even all of Palestine, but the highest sanctuary for them lies in both the lands of Samaria - the mountains of Nablus - and Jerusalem, as they represent the two capitals of the defunct kingdoms of the children of Israel.

Despite relatively low incomes, there is a sizeable middle/upper-middle class in the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank and Gaza boast one of the highest per capita rates of university graduates in the Arab world. Palestinians have a long-standing tradition of spending generously on higher education, regarded as an asset.

The occupied territories are composed of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. The population of the 370 sq km Gaza Strip is approximately 1,500,000. In addition, there were some 6,900 Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip (August 2000 estimate) prior to the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. The West Bank covers 5,500 square kilometers. The population of the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) about 2,500,000. The population of East Jerusalem is approximately 390,000. In addition, there are some 176,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and about 173,000 in East Jerusalem (August 1999 estimate). The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) registered 824,622 refugees in the Gaza Strip and 583,009 in the West Bank in 2000. According to a UNRWA estimate in January 2011, there were 848,494 Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and 1,167,361 in Gaza, many living in 27 UNRWA-affiliated refugee camps, 19 in the West Bank and eight in Gaza.

There are about four million Palestinians and their descendants who were expelled or fled from Israel following its creation. Palestinian refugees were chased out or expelled by the actions of Zionist terrorist organizations - the Haganah, Lehi, and Irgun. Palestinian negotiators have so far insisted that refugees, and all their descendants, from the 1948 and 1967 wars have a right to return to the places where they lived before 1948 and 1967, including those within the 1949 Armistice lines.

They cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN General Assembly Resolution 194, adopted in 1948, which says: "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible."

UN Resolution 3236 "reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return". Resolution 242 from the UN affirms the necessity for "achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem".

Gaza is overwhelmingly urban, with 75-80% of the population living in the Gaza-Khan Yunis-Rafah conurbations. Gaza is also distinguished by the preponderance of its refugee population, constituting 2/3 of the total, of which about 1/3 are camp dwellers. The West Bank, by comparison, is, as a rural society. Fully 75% of the West Bank urban population is concentrated in 3 major conurbations: Nablus, Hebron, and the greater Jerusalem area (including Bethlehem and Ramallah-Bireh). At the end of 1998 there were over 500,000 registered refugees, one quarter of whom lived in nineteen recognized refugee camps and the majority in West Bank towns and villages. Some camps are located next to major towns, and others are situated in rural areas.

The West Bank, Palestinian Territories, is undergoing a transition characterized by rapid urbanization and changing lifestyles. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, approximately 40% of West Bank residents lived in rural areas in 2006, compared with 62% in the early 1990s. At the same time, the Palestinian Territories have been undergoing an epidemiologic transition characterized by a persistent burden of infectious diseases typical of developing countries and a rise in noncommunicable (chronic) diseases such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and cancer. High prevalences of type 2 diabetes and obesity were observed in urban and rural Palestinian areas beginning in the late 1990s, and the rates are rising.

Longevity and increased life expectancy may also explain the observed change in mortality patterns. The Palestinian health care system has good experience in handling infectious diseases; people are living longer and being exposed to more risk factors for chronic disease.

The unemployment rate among youth graduates was 52.5% in the first quarter of 2013. The highest unemployment rate was 64.7% for graduates in education and teacher training, while the lowest unemployment rate of 24.1% was among law graduates. Almost half of youth do not read newspapers and magazines. Among 49.9% of youth aged 15-29 years in the Palestine do not read newspapers or magazines at all; 40.4% in the West Bank and 65.3% in Gaza Strip. Also, 87.4% of youth in the Palestine watch television on a daily basis compared to 27.4% who listen to the radio daily, while 25.0% of youth use the Internet.

The estimated population in the Palestine totaled 4.42 million in mid-2013 (50.8% male and 49.2% female) with a ratio of 103.2 males per 100 females. Youth represents 29.9% of the total population. According to the final results of the Palestinian Family Survey of 2010, the total fertility rate in the Palestine declined to 4.4 births between (2008-2009) compared to 4.6 births in 2006. At the region level, the total fertility rate in the West Bank between (2008-2009) was 4.0 birth compared with 5.2 birth in Gaza Strip. Females aged 25-29 years contribute 26.0% of the total fertility rate, the highest contributor of all age groups.

The fertility transition has been well underway in the West Bank since 1985, with a lull during the Intifada period. No indication of a fertility transition in the Gaza Strip is seen. An examination of the age pattern of fertility reveals that Palestinian fertility had increasingly shifted toward younger ages, with a particular concentration in the age group 15-24 during the Intifada period. A decomposition analysis of the fertility rates shows that the recent rise in fertility is essentially due to changes in marital structure, but also to increased fertility within marriage among younger women.