According to them, the total number of Palestinians in the world is now up to 12.37 million, with 2.9 million in the West Bank, 1.85 million in Gaza, 1.47 million Arabs in Israel, 5.46 million in Arab countries and around 685,000 in foreign countries.
Last year they counted 12.1 million, meaning that despite Israel's supposed attempts at genocide, somehow some 270,000 more Palestinians managed to appear in just one year.
Some genocide!
However, the Bureau's methods of counting people seem to be less than scientific.
For example, every year, they release the percentage of the population in the territories that are "refugees."
This year they said that 42.8% of all Palestinian Arabs in the territories are "refugees," 27.1% in the West Bank and 67.3% in Gaza.
Yet last year the numbers came out as 43.1% total, 38.8% in the West Bank and 61.2% in Gaza. And in 2012, the numbers were 44.2%, 41.4% in WB and 58.6% in Gaza.
A 14% difference in percentage of "refugees" in the West Bank, and 9% difference in Gaza, in only three years?
But the trend was completely different in 2006, when they claimed 28.8% in the West Bank and 69.2% in Gaza were "refugees."
Does this make any sense?
There is no rational way to explain such wildly divergent numbers among a statistic that should be largely static if you assume reasonably consistent population growth between refugee and non-refugee populations.
So all of the PCBS' population figures must be considered equally unreliable.
