Present absentee

Present absentees are Arab internally displaced persons (IDPs) who fled or were expelled from their homes in Mandatory Palestine during the 1947–1949 Palestine war but remained within the area that became the state of Israel.

In 1950, 46,000 out of the 156,000 Israeli Arabs in Israel were considered present absentees. According to 2015 estimates from Palestinian NGO BADIL, there are 384,200 IDPs in Israel and 334,600 IDPs in the Palestinian territories.^[1]

IDPs are not permitted to live in the homes they formerly lived in, even if they were in the same area as their home, the property still exists, and they can show that they own it. They are regarded as absent by the Israeli government because they were absent from their homes on a particular day, even if they did not intend to leave them for more than a few days, and even if they left involuntarily.^[2] The community carries out an annual March of Return to their former villages.

^ BADIL (2015). "Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons 2013-2015". p. 8. There are two categories of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Mandate Palestine. The first type is composed of 384,200 Palestinians who have been internally displaced inside Israel since 1948 while the second category consists of 334,600 internally displaced Palestinians in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.
^ Segev, Tom. 1949: The First Israelis, pp. 68-91.

[1] BADIL (2015). "Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons 2013-2015". p. 8. There are two categories of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Mandate Palestine. The first type is composed of 384,200 Palestinians who have been internally displaced inside Israel since 1948 while the second category consists of 334,600 internally displaced Palestinians in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.

[2] Segev, Tom. 1949: The First Israelis, pp. 68-91.

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