Today, Wednesday, Palestinians commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba that befell them in 1948.

The Supreme National Committee for Commemorating the Nakba, the Department of Refugee Affairs of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and political forces and factions called for a series of marches and vigils in the main city centers in the West Bank.

Before noon on Wednesday, the city of Hebron witnessed the first events with a march in which hundreds participated, and activities were organized in a number of schools.

While the rest of the West Bank cities will witness popular vigils and marches to commemorate the Nakba, while mourning whistles will sound over loudspeakers at one o’clock in the afternoon in commemoration of the 76th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba.

Participants in the Hebron march raised banners denouncing Israeli attempts to end the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and the “plan to displace and starve the Palestinian people,” and another on which they wrote: “Palestine will remain and the occupation will disappear.”

According to data published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics last Sunday, on the occasion of the Nakba anniversary, the number of Palestinians has increased more than 10 times since the Nakba.

He added that during the Nakba, “more than a million Palestinians were displaced out of the 1.4 million Palestinians who lived in historic Palestine in 1948,” noting that the occupation controlled “774 Palestinian villages and cities, 531 of which were completely destroyed” during the Nakba.

Today, the agency says that the number of Palestinians around the world is estimated at approximately 14,630,000 by the end of 2023, which “indicates that the number of Palestinians has multiplied about 10 times since the events of the Nakba of 1948.”

He added that 5 million 550 thousand Palestinians live in the State of Palestine (the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem), and about 1 million 750 thousand live in the 1948 territories, while the number of Palestinians in Arab countries is estimated at about 6 million 560 thousand, and about 772 thousand in non-Arab countries.

The Nakba anniversary falls this year while the Gaza Strip is living under the weight of a devastating war that, as of last Monday, left more than 45,000 martyrs and missing persons, about 79,000 wounded, and the complete destruction of nearly 86,000 housing units and about 294,000 housing units partially, according to data from the government media office in Gaza.