There are some 14 million Palestinians worldwide, and more than 6 million of them are refugees living in UN-administered camps scattered throughout Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Who are the refugees? Violence during the founding of modern Israel in 1948 drove 700,000 Arabs from their homes. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza during the Six-Day War in 1967 added as many as 300,000 more. Those people and their descendants live in more than 60 refugee camps which are, today, functional cities with power, running water, and permanent structures.
The country with the largest number of registered Palestinian refugees is Jordan, where some 2 million account for a quarter of the country’s population. But they are present in large numbers in Lebanon and Syria too, as well as in the Palestinian territories.
Refugees make up 80% of the population of Gaza and nearly 40% in the West Bank. Here is a closer look at where the Palestinian refugees live today.