*According to an August, 1971 Ford Foundation report, by 1950, the majority of the Palestinian refugees began evacuating the camps and non-refugees moved in to benefit from UNRWA’s services. For example, half of the population in the Jelazoon refugee camp, near Ramallah, settled there after 1950.
*A November 17, 2003 report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) documented that less than 33% of registered Palestinian refugees live in refugee camps.
*The actual number of Palestinian refugees is determined by the following:
a) Before the 1948/9 War, 800,000 Arabs (per inflated numbers) resided within the boundaries of “pre-1967 Israel”.
b) At the end of that war, 170,000 Arabs stayed in Israel.
c) Of the remaining 630,000Arabs,
- 100,000 were absorbed by Israel’s family reunification gesture;
- 100,000 middle and upper class Arabs left before the beginning of the 1948-49 war and were absorbed by neighboring Arab states;
- 50,000 migrant laborers returned to their Arab countries of origin;
- 50,000 Bedouins joined their brethren-tribes in Jordan and Sinai;
- and 10,000 were war fatalities.
Thus, the actual total number of Palestinian refugees was 320,000.
*Most of the refugees followed their political, economic and social leadership, which left before the eruption of the war. Many were enticed to depart by Arab leaders, who promised a quick devastation of the Jewish state that would provide the evacuees with Jewish property. British authorities influenced others, pressuring the minority in mixed Jewish-Arab towns to evacuate: Arabs evacuated but Jews did not. For a full report see http://bit.ly/18GhJP0
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