Lies, damned lies and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics came out with its annual "nakba" report where it tries to twist numbers to make Israel look as bad as possible.

Just a quick glance through it shows a number of lies as well as more evidence that the PA has no real interest in peace.

For example:

Nakba in literary terms means a natural catastrophe such as an earthquake, volcano, or hurricane. However, the Nakba in Palestine describes a process of ethnic cleansing in which an unarmed nation has been destroyed and its population displaced to be replaced systematically by another nation. Unlike a natural catastrophe, the Palestinian Nakba was the result of a man-made military plan with the agreement of other states, leading to a major tragedy for the Palestinian people.

Who started the war again? Oh, yeah, the "unarmed nation" of Arabs in Palestine who immediately started killing Jewish civilians after the UN partition resolution. They were then joined by their compatriots from neighboring Arab states.

If they would have accepted partition, they would have had a state 64 years ago. Instead they decided to kill the Jews. Bad decisions have consequence - unless yo are Palestinian Arab, in which case your bad decisions must be the fault of the Jews.

In 1948, 1.4 million Palestinians lived in 1,300 Palestinian towns and villages. More than 800,000 of the population were driven out of their homeland to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, neighboring Arab countries, and other countries of the world.

The number is closer to 600,000. But what's wrong with inflating it by 33%? It's not as if the PCBS really cares about accurate statistics, is it?

According to documentary evidence, the Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages during the Nakba. The atrocities of Israeli forces also included more than 70 massacres in which 15,000 Palestinians were killed.

This paragraph is still referring to the "nakba" - and nowhere near 15,000 Palestinian Arabs were killed then. It was probably closer to a thousand. The total number of Palestinian Arabs killed in 64 years by Israel is about 15,000.

Statistical data also show that refugees constitute 44.1% of the total Palestinian population in the Palestinian Territory.

If they are on their territory, how can they be refugees from their territory? Just one of the many anomalous definitions that apply to Palestinian Arabs only.

Population Density: Gaza Strip the most crowded place in the world
The population density in the Palestinian Territory at the end of 2011 was 703 individuals per square kilometer (km2): 462 individuals/km2 in the West Bank and 4,429 individuals/km2 in Gaza Strip. In Israel, the population density of Arabs and Jews in 2011 was 362 individuals per km2.

Except for Macau, Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong and Gibraltar. The first two have population densities quadruple that of Gaza.

Historical Palestine: Israel controls more than 85% of its land
At the end of 2011, there were 11.7 million people living in the historical land of Palestine with a land area of 27,000 km2. Jews constitute around 52% of the total population and utilize more than 85% of the total area of land. Arabs comprise 48% of the total population and utilize less than 15% of the land. A Palestinian therefore has less than a quarter of the area of land available to an Israeli.

I don't know if these numbers are correct (how do they characterize Israeli Arabs, for example First they say "Jews" and then "Israelis.") However, "historic Palestine" is one of those Palestinian Arab myths they love to throw around. It is an artificial construct created by the British after World War One, and in reality there was something called Eastern Palestine before then - in a land now known as Jordan. And it was larger than western Palestine, what the Palestinian Arabs now call - "Palestine."

Why did they give up their claim to more than half of their historic area? Because Jews didn't control any of it!

The number of martyrs killed in the al Aqsa Intifada between September 29th, 2000 and December 31st, 2011 was 7,460, up from 7,235 at the end of 2009.

Notice that the official Palestinian Arab position is that suicide bombers are "martyrs." Notice also that they are claiming that the second intifada is still going on.

You can learn a lot from reading reports from the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics. But not al lof it was what they wanted to try to teach you.