By Xinhua
Ramallah : An official in the Palestinian Central Statistic Bureau in this West Bank city said Saturday that the Palestinian population in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem stood at about 3.76 million.
Luai Shabanah, director general of the statistic bureau, told a news conference held in Ramallah on Saturday that the Palestinian population increased by around one million in 10 years, which stood at 2.89 million in June 1967.
Of the 3.76 million Palestinians living on the Palestinian territories, some 2.345 million were living in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and the other 1.416 million living in Gaza, Shabanah said.
He said that 208,000 Palestinians are living in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which was annexed to Israel despite a Palestinian demand for it as the capital of their future independent state.
Shabanah added that in 1997, Israel had prevented the Palestinian Central Statistics Bureau from conducting a door-to-door statistics, mainly in east Jerusalem.
But “this time, volunteers all over the Palestinian territories, including Gaza, which is ruled by Hamas, conducted actual count working discretely to avoid confrontations with Israeli authorities,” Shabanah said.
In early December last year, some 6,200 census-takers fanned out across the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem, going house to house to collect information.
Palestinians have one of the highest birth rates in the world, forcing Israel to consider the possibility that the Jews population, despite ongoing Jewish immigration, will one day be less than the Palestinian Arab population.
In September 2007, Israel’s population included 5.45 million Jews, 1.4 million Arabs and 310,000 others, according to Israeli government figures.