In Brief: Palestinian refugees live across the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the global diaspora, and today the worldwide Palestinian population is about 15.2 million, with roughly 9 million refugees worldwide as a result of repeated waves of ethnic cleansing since 1948.
In More Detail: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reports that there are 5.9 million Palestinian refugees eligible for UNRWA services. However, depending on the time and circumstances of a Palestinian’s displacement, they might not qualify for UNRWA registration. Many Palestinians who were expelled from their land by force at the hands of Israel never registered with UNRWA. Additionally, about one-fourth of all Palestinian citizens of Israel were internally displaced in 1948, an estimated 30,000-40,000 Palestinians. In fact, there are about 9 million displaced Palestinians worldwide as a result of Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaigns in 1948 and 1967, and its settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as reported by BADIL in 2021. Palestinian refugees live in the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. These figures do not account for the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, where over 90 percent of the population has been displaced, with some facing as many as 10 displacements according to a September 2025 UN report. There are about 15.2 million Palestinians worldwide according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
- The Gaza Strip: absorbed between 200,000 and 250,000 refugees as a result of the Nakba, added to a population of about 80,000. In August 2023, just two months before the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, UNRWA reported that 1.58 million Palestinians in Gaza were registered refugees.
- A note on the genocide of Gaza: an estimated 115,000 fled the Gaza Strip to Egypt as a result of Israel’s routine massacres and utter destruction of Gaza. Virtually all Palestinians in Gaza are internally displaced today, sheltering in the remaining schools, homes, or hospitals; in the remnants of bombed-out buildings; or in makeshift tents. The majority of Gaza’s population of over 2 million Palestinians are refugees or descendants of refugees of the Nakba, who are facing endless displacement due to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Not only is this a symbol of the ongoing Nakba, but for many victims of the ongoing genocide, including a Nakba survivor facing displacement in Gaza, Israel’s brutality is far worse today.
- The West Bank: absorbed 280,000 refugees as a result of the Nakba, added to a population of about 900,000. UNRWA reports that nearly 913,000 registered refugees live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem today.
- If the West Bank absorbed more refugees than the Gaza Strip in 1948, and the West Bank is a much larger territory, why is the registered refugee population in the West Bank smaller? The West Bank absorbed more refugees than the Gaza Strip in 1948 and is 15 times larger. Nonetheless, the registered refugee population in the West Bank is lower than that of the Gaza Strip. Here is why:
- As a result of the June 1967 war and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel ethnically cleansed about 300,000-400,000 additional Palestinians from throughout historic Palestine. Many Palestinians ethnically cleansed in 1967 were refugees who initially fled to the West Bank from other parts of historic Palestine. The vast majority of 1967 refugees were expelled to Jordan (95 percent per one estimate), which accounts for the disparity in the present-day population sizes between the Gaza Strip and the much larger West Bank.
- If the West Bank absorbed more refugees than the Gaza Strip in 1948, and the West Bank is a much larger territory, why is the registered refugee population in the West Bank smaller? The West Bank absorbed more refugees than the Gaza Strip in 1948 and is 15 times larger. Nonetheless, the registered refugee population in the West Bank is lower than that of the Gaza Strip. Here is why:
- Jordan: absorbed 70,000 refugees as a result of the Nakba, and upwards of 300,000 Palestinians fled to Jordan in 1967. UNRWA reports that 2.39 million registered refugees live in Jordan today.
- A distinctive feature of this exiled community, the largest concentration of Palestinians outside of Palestine, is that a majority hold Jordanian citizenship, including residents of the 13 refugee camps in Jordan.
- Around 18 percent of all Palestinians in Jordan live in its 10 official UNRWA camps, others live in 3 unofficial camps, and most live in the vicinities of all 13 camps—but the organization reports that “all of them live under similar socio-economic conditions.”
- A note concerning the estimated number of Palestinians expelled to Jordan in 1967: Officially, Jordan states that it received over 300,000 refugees. According to an encyclopedia entry authored by an expert in refugee affairs, an estimated total of 420,000 refugees were expelled to Jordan in 1967, with 380,000 arriving from the West Bank—around 180,000 of whom were 1948 refugees in the territory who were expelled for a second time in 1967—and 40,000 were expelled from Gaza.
- Lebanon: absorbed about 110,000 refugees as a result of the Nakba. UNRWA’s Lebanon Field Office recorded nearly 500,000 registered refugees as of February 2025.
- Less than half of registered Palestinian refugees in Lebanon receive the UNRWA benefits they are eligible for, about 248,000 people.
- Palestinian refugees registered in Lebanon are eligible to register children born abroad, with many emigrating for economic opportunity or to acquire citizenship—this accounts for the disparity between refugees receiving services (45 percent) and those who do not (55 percent).
- UNRWA adds this disclaimer about the refugee population size: “registration with UNRWA is voluntary; deaths as well as emigration remain often unreported, and refugees can continue registering newborns as they move abroad through the UNRWA online registration system.”
- A slim minority of Palestinians were offered citizenship. Initially, all Palestinian Christian refugees who fled to Lebanon in 1948 were granted citizenship. Middle-class Palestinian Muslim refugees, and those with Lebanese ancestry, were also eligible to apply for citizenship through the mid-1960s. Palestinians who acquired Lebanese citizenship, unlike refugees, generally enjoyed the freedom to choose where they lived, open businesses, and pursue educational paths of their choosing.
- The population reported by UNRWA includes about 27,000 registered refugees originally living in Syria, who fled to Lebanon as a result of the Syrian war.
- Syria: absorbed at least 85,000 refugees as a result of the Nakba. In 1967, Israel occupied the Syrian Golan Heights, displacing an additional 100,000 people into other regions of Syria. Among the displaced were refugees from northern Palestine who fled to Syria in the 1948 Nakba, suffering a second displacement in less than two decades. As of December 2023, UNRWA reports over 586,000 refugees are registered with UNRWA, and approximately 438,000 are currently living in Syria. The remainder fled to neighboring Jordan and Lebanon as a result of the Syrian war.
As of 2025, there are about 15.2 million Palestinians worldwide, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics:
- 3.4 million in the West Bank
- 2.1 million in the Gaza Strip
- 1.9 million Palestinian citizens of Israel
- 6.5 million in Arab states
- 1.3 million in global diaspora, outside of the Arab region
