The center of Palestinian life shifts to…
June 1949 CE
The center of Palestinian life shifts to the Arab towns of the hilly eastern region (later called the West Bank).
About thirteen hundred thousand Arabs lived in Palestine before the war.
Estimates of the number of Arabs displaced from their original homes, villages, and neighborhoods during the period from December 1947 to January 1949 range from about five hundred and twenty thousand to about one million.
Some 2two hundred and seventy-six thousand move to the West Bank; by 1949 more than half the prewar Arab population of Palestine lives in the West Bank (from four hundred thousand in 1947 to more than seven hundred thousand).
Another one hundred thousand have fled to Transjordan.
More than twenty percent of the Palestinian Arabs have left Palestine altogether.
The Palestinian Arab community ceases to exist as a social and political entity.
By the summer of 1949, about seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinian Arabs are living in squalid refugee camps, set up virtually overnight in territories adjacent to Israel's borders.
Another four hundred and fifty thousand have become unwelcome residents of the West Bank.
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The Near and Middle East
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