Abul Ragheb: 43% of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin
Jordan, Politics, 9/3/2002

The Jordanian prime minister Ali Abul Ragheb said on Monday that the Jordanians of Palestinian origin constitute 43 % of the country's population which is estimated at five million. This was expressed in the first official statement on the population structure in Jordan.

Abul Ragheb said replying to a question during a seminar organized by the Jordanian press union "this is a difficult issue, I do not want to indulge in it. " Foreign press said that the Jordanians of Palestinian origin constitute 60 or even 70 % of the population. The correct figure which is "built on secret and precise statistics is that they only constitute 43 %;" Abul Ragheb stressed that this figure is declared for the first time after it has been speculated by the media and the foreign diplomatic circles.

In 1994 Jordan made a Census, but the demographic structure and the population composition remained in secret since then.

Abul Ragheb stressed that despite of all that, all Jordanians have rallied in the frame of "one family" regardless of their roots, recalling that many Jordanians are of Syrian, Sharkas or Armenian and many other origins who all "melt in the pot of the Jordanian citizenship."

Abul Ragheb also defended the measures taken by his government to organize the entry of the people of the West Bank through imposing personal guarantees. He said that his country adopted this measure in order to avoid emptying the Palestinian territories from its population.

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