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Since 1967, close to 290,000
Palestinians have left the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:
170,000 and 120,000
respectively. The groups most likely to emigrate are refugees who
reside outside the
refugee camps, and the middle class, including Christians and urban
dwellers. The
percentage of those who have left is 15.8 per cent of the overall
population.
Among the Christians,
estimates place the number of those who have left at 18,000, i.e.,
35.3 per cent of the
entire Christian community, which is over twice the national
average.
Reasons given for the
8,500 Christians who have left since 1967 are: employment and
permanent emigration
(43.4 per cent); family and marriage (28.6 per cent), and study
(18.8 per cent). In
other surveys of 2,505 emigrants conducted in 1989 and 1990, the
reasons given for
emigration were employment and permanent emigration (44.8 per cent),
family and marriage
(34.1 per cent), study (14.9 per cent), and other reasons (4.4 per
cent).
It is clear that
Palestinians leave because they do not have proper economic and
occupational
opportunities and prospects in their own land. Palestinian
Christians, who,
because of their
educational and occupational backgrounds, follow a middle-class
style of
life, are in a
particular predicament. The Palestinian Christian community fits
well the
definition of a migrant
community as proposed by migration experts. 'A community with a
high educational
achievement and a relatively good standard of living but with no
real
prospects for economic
security or advancement will most probably become a migrant
community.
When asked what
conditions might halt emigration, 60.4 per cent in the emigration
survey placed work
opportunities, education and economic conditions as an important
condition. When the
political situation is added, the percentage becomes an overwhelming
82.7 per cent. Given the
reasons cited for emigration, one can definitely conclude that
those who leave, or
think of leaving, undertake the step for concrete reasons, and not
because of an
unspecified general malaise. People with a good and secure job will
think
twice before deciding to
leave the country. Palestinians, including Christians, do not have
simply out of political
or social frustration- they seem to have grown accustomed to these.
They leave if they do
not have opportunities to gain a livelihood, and in order to ensure
some sense of stability
in their own lives, and in those of their children.
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