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Graphic

Palestinians in the Jerusalem Municipality

A quick visual overview of the demographic breakdown of Palestinians whom Israel counts as being resident inside the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, based on Israeli data for the year 2019

Credit: 

Jerusalem Story

There are no reliable data about Palestinian Jerusalemites. Since they live in a frenetically politicized milieu, and they are not allowed to count themselves in any official way,1 the only “data” one can start from are Israeli data. However, Israeli officials who compile this data serve the state’s objective, which is to ensure that Palestinians remain demographically insignificant enough to prevent them from ever gaining political power. Israeli data only count Palestinians who are registered in the official Population Registry as having a permanent address in Jerusalem. But this leave out tens of thousands who are either carrying West Bank IDs and living in within the boundaries (whether legally or illegally) or those who are completely unregistered (for example, if their residency was revoked but they did not comply with the deportation order, or if a child is born to a parent and the system won’t accept to register him or her on the parent’s ID). Of course this data also then overlooks all the Jerusalemites who live outside the boundaries of the city but identify themselves as Jerusalemites. 

Flawed as they may be, these data are the most readily available that exist at the present. So to answer the question “Who are the Palestinians of Jerusalem?” this graphic offers a snapshot of some key demographics.

Notes

1

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), being an agency of the Palestinian Authority, is banned under Israeli law from operating within the municipal boundaries. Attempts to collect census data in J1 have resulted in arrests of the census takers. The PCBS can really only compile data from J2.

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