A People Dispossessed
______________

1900 The population of historical Palestine-what is now Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem -is 550,000 Palestinian Arabs and 50,000 Jews.

1946 Due mainly to settlers from Europe, site of the Holocaust, the Jewish population grows more than tenfold to 608,000. The Palestinian population stands at 1,269,000. Jews own only six to eight percent of the country's land.

1948 Israel declares independence and conquers 78 percent of Palestine in a victorious war against its neighbors. Driving 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and confiscating most of their land reduce the Palestinian population within Israel's borders to 156,000.

The Jewish population expands to 716,700. An additional 750,000 Palestinians live in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, while many uprooted Palestinian refugees flee to neighboring Arab countries.

1967 Israel initiates war against its neighbors and occupies the remaining 22 percent of Palestine, bringing another 1.1 million Palestinians directly under Israeli military rule.

2002 Israel's Jewish population is approximately 5.2 million. Approximately 1.3 million non-Jews, overwhelmingly Palestinians, also live within Israel's borders and face legalized discrimination. Another two million Palestinians live in the territories conquered by Israel in the 1967 war-the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. In 1967 less than 10,000 Jews lived in these occupied territories, but now close to 400,000 Jews have seized close to 10 percent of the land.

-ME/HK

Sources: "Palestine's Population During the Ottoman and the British Mandate Periods," by Justin McCarthy and Norman G. Finkelstein, "Image and Reality of the Palestine Conflict" 2001, pp.186-187