Karsh on Palestinian Refugee Numbers
Historian Efraim Karsh undertakes a comprehensive look at the various numbers cited for Palestinian refugees from 1948 and accounts for their discrepancies. He writes, in part,
Admitting to having “some difficulty in separating out the real refugees from the rest, and in explaining the reasons for doing so to the Arab authorities,” [Sir Raphael] Cilento [director of the UN Disaster Relief Project (DRP) in Palestine] attributed this chaotic situation to a number of reasons:
•Refugees were registered on arrival and fed but their names were not struck off the list if they moved or died;
•Refugees moving from one area to another would check in and be fed at several points en route and at each would be added to the list of refugees in the area, in this way numbers increased on paper in areas vacated as well as at final destination;
•Local destitute persons were included in numbers although they were not properly refugees;
•Fraud and misrepresentation by officials and others to utilize supplies etc.;
•There were people who left their homes owing to disturbed conditions but returned to them shortly afterward, yet were briefly registered as refugees and the records remained.
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