A study by Uriyah Shavit and Jalal Bana (Ha'aretz Magazine, July 6, 2001) quotes official UNRWA statistics indicating that there are currently 3.7 million Arabs who qualify for refugee status under the Palestinian demand for "right of return." (UNRWA is the UN agency that deals with the Arab refugees.) The writers indicate that the agency's records "tend to be exaggerated," and attribute this to the refugee population's tendency not to report deaths, so as to enable the uninterrupted collection of the food rations of the deceased.
Other explanations for the high number of "refugees" include also the following: UNRWA uses what the authors call an "expansive" definition of refugees, such as the inclusion of children and grandchildren, as well as "Palestinians" who lived in the area in question for as little as two years (!). Furthermore, UNRWA's figures are based on a figure of 730,000 refugees in 1949 - while according to Joan Peters, author of From Time Immemorial, the true number of 1949 refugees could be as low as 430,000 (based on calculations by researcher Walter Pinner) or 539,000 (according to "an oft-cited study based on League of Nations… records and Arab census figures").
Where are these refugees-and-their-descendants now? Abandoned by their host countries. The vast majority of these Arabs have never received citizenship in their host countries of Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon (Jordan is a major exception). Instead, they were concentrated in squalid refugee camps, left as a living, suffering symbol of Arab rejection of the State of Israel. The situation continues today in the Palestinian Authority, as well; Shavit and Bana quote Israeli researcher Yitzchak Ravid to the effect that "the Palestinian Authority has some reservations about improving the situation in the refugee camps..." Ravid also wrote (not quoted by Shavit and Bana), "[Like the Arab nations,] the PA, too, maintains the refugees' special status in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and abstains from allowing them to assimilate within the local population."