Let Amos Oz go to Belgium

Stephen sent me this message (I cite with his permission): "In a recent interview in the Guardian, Amos Oz claimed that if all the Palestinian refugees returned to the West Bank and Gaza, then they would still be less densely populated than Belgium. A life in writing: Amos Oz 'If every last Palestinian refugee was settled in the West Bank and Gaza, it would still be less crowded than Belgium' Having visited Belgium quite often, I knew this was probably untrue. After checking with data from the CIA World Factbook, I now know it is untrue. The workings are: The CIA World Factbook gives the land area of the West Bank as 5,640 sq kms and the land area of Gaza as 360 sq kms, so the total land area is 6,000 sq kms. The CIA World Factbook gives the population of the West Bank as 2,400,000 and the population of Gaza as 1,500,000. The UNRWA gives the number of registered Palestinian refugees as 4,600,000. So the total number of Palestinians would be 8,500,000 living in an area of 6,000 sq kms. This gives a population density of ~1,400 per sq km. The CIA World Factbook gives the land area of Belgium as 30,528 sq kms and the population of Belgium as 10,400,000. This gives a population density of 340 per sq km. If doing the maths was too difficult for Mr Oz, then perhaps he should have looked at country population densities on Wikipedia where he would have seen that Palestine, without the return of refugees, has a population density of 667 per sq km while Belgium has a population density of 341 per sq km. http://en.wikipedia.org wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density"