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by Tamar Sternthal
Opinion
Jordan’s King Abdullah II addresses the assembly on the opening day of the Global Refugee Forum, in Geneva, Switzerland, Dec. 13, 2023. Photo: Jean-Guy Python/Pool via REUTERS
In an otherwise informative and very important May 15 article shedding light on a worrisome development with respect to Iranian belligerence in the region, Reuters falsely inflated the number of Palestinian Arab refugees who fled to Jordan in the wake of the 1948 war (“Jordan foils arms plot as kingdom caught in Iran-Israel shadow war“):
Most of [King Abdullah’s] 11 million people are of Palestinian origin, because Jordan took in millions of Palestinian refugees fleeing their homeland in the turbulent years following the founding of Israel. [Emphasis added.]
The total Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war who dispersed across the Middle East and beyond did not reach even one million. As Reuters itself reported in recent days, some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees in the wake of the failed Arab war to annihilate Israel in 1948 — not millions. And only around half of those 700,000 ended up in Jordan. (The Arabic version of the same story on the thwarted weapons smuggling does not contain the “millions” error.)
According to the Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question:
In 1949, the West Bank had a population of 740,000, including 280,000 refugees, and the East Bank had a population of 470,000, including 70,000 refugees. Taken together, the population of Jordan exceeded 1.2 million inhabitants, two-thirds of whom were of Palestinian origin (Jordanian-Palestinians).
In other words, Jordan took in some 350,000 Palestinian refugees (280,00 from the West Bank and 70,000 from the East Bank), not “millions.” I have contacted Reuters, requesting they issue a correction.
Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA website.
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