By DPA
Ramallah : Around 1,000 Palestinian field workers Wednesday started numbering buildings throughout the West Bank, officials said, as the first phase of the second population and building census in the Palestinian areas got underway.
Loay Shabaneh, director of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), said the first phase, which will last one month, includes numbering buildings, and in December will be followed by a population census.
The survey is being conducted “only for statistical purposes,” he said.
The census is being held as Israelis and Palestinians are currently working on a document to be presented at an upcoming international conference, which it is hoped will be the prelude toward negotiations on a permanent settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said recently that the census will be important for these negotiations.
This is the second Palestinian population census since the Palestinian Authority assumed control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip following the Oslo interim peace agreement in 1994.
The first census was conducted in 1997 and found that there were 2.84 million Palestinians living in the Palestinian territories, including Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. Some 1.82 million lived in the West Bank and a little over one million in the Gaza Strip.
The 1997 census found the Hebron area in the southern West Bank had the highest population, – 427,000 people, followed by Gaza City with more than 396,000 people and then East Jerusalem with 348,000 people.
But the East Jerusalem figures were based on census results outside city limits and on Israeli statistics, as Israel did not allow the PCBS to conduct the census in that part of East Jerusalem, which it has annexed.
Israel is expected to follow the same policy this time as well.