Present Absentee - Definition

Definition

If the definition is restricted to those displaced in the 1948 war and its immediate aftermath and their descendants, some 274,000 Arab citizens of Israel - or 1 in 4 Palestinians in Israel - are internally displaced Palestinians.

The vast majority are Muslim (90%) and some 10% are Christian. There are no Druze among them "since no Druze village was destroyed in the 1948 war and no Druze left their settlements permanently."

Organizations defending the rights of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel also generally include the 110,000 Bedouin forced to move in a closed area under military rule in the Negev in 1949 in their estimates of internally displaced Palestinians. Other internally displaced persons included in these counts are those who were displaced by ongoing home demolitions enacted against unlicensed structures or in unrecognized villages. Estimates based on this broader definition place the total population of IDPs at anywhere between 250,000 - 420,000 people.

In recent years, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories who have been displaced by the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier have also been referred to as internally displaced Palestinians. They are estimated to number between 24,500 and 57,000 people.

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