Palestinians

Ethnic group The Palestinian people , ( , ash-sha`b al-filasTīni ) also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs ( , al-filasTīnīyyūn ; , al-`Arab al-filasTīnīyyūn ), are an Arabic -speaking people with family origins in Palestine . The total Palestinian population is estimated at approximately 12 million, roughly less than half continuing to live within the boundaries of what was Mandate Palestine , an area encompassing Israel , the West Bank , the Gaza Strip . In this combined area, as of 2009, Arabs constitute 49% of all inhabitants, some of whom are internally displaced . The remainder, over half of all Palestinians, comprise what is known as the Palestinian diaspora , of whom more than half are stateless refugees , lacking citizenship in any country. Of the diaspora, about 1.9 million live in neighboring Jordan , one and a half million between Syria and Lebanon , a quarter million in Saudi Arabia , while Chile 's half a million are the largest concentration outside the Arab world . By religious affiliation , most Palestinians are Muslim , particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam , and there is a significant Palestinian Christian minority of various Christian denominations in the Palestinian territories. However, the majority of Palestinian Christians are found outside of Palestine. As the commonly applied "Palestinian Arab" ethnonym implies, the current traditional vernacular of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the Palestinian dialect of Arabic . Recent genetic evidence has demonstrated that Palestinians as an ethnic group are closely related to Jews and represent modern "descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times," largely predating the Arabian Muslim conquest that resulted in their acculturation , established Arabic as the predominant vernacular, and over time also Islamized many of them from various prior faiths. The first widespread use of " Palestinian " as an endonym to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by the local Arabic-speaking population of Palestine began prior to the outbreak of World War I , and the first demand for national independence was issued by the Syrian -Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921. After the creation of Israel, the exodus of 1948 , and more so after the exodus of 1967 , the term came to signify not only a place of origin, but the sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian nation-state . The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) represents the Palestinian people before the international community. "What is the True Demographic Picture in the West Bank and Gaza? - A Presentation and a Critique" . Refugees into Citizens - Palestinians and the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict . Figure 2: Plot of populations based on Y-chromosome haplotype data .

Ethnic group The Palestinian people ( , ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī ), also referred to as Palestinians ( , al-Filasṭīniyyūn , ), are the modern descendants of the peoples who have lived in Palestine over the centuries, and who today are largely culturally and linguistically Arab due to Arabization of the region. Despite various wars and exoduses (such as that in 1948 ), roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in historic Palestine , the area encompassing the West Bank , the Gaza Strip and Israel . In this combined area, as of 2004, Palestinians constituted 49% of all inhabitants, encompassing the entire population of the Gaza Strip (1.6 million), the majority of the population of the West Bank (approximately 2.3 million versus close to 500,000 Jewish Israeli citizens which includes about 200,000 in East Jerusalem ), and 16.5% of the population of Israel proper as Arab citizens of Israel . Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians , including more than a million in the Gaza Strip, three-quarters of a million in the West Bank, and about a quarter of a million in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora , more than half are stateless lacking citizenship in any country. 3.24 million of the diaspora population live in neighboring Jordan where they make up approximately half the population, 1.5 million live between Syria and Lebanon , a quarter of a million in Saudi Arabia , with Chile's half a million representing the largest concentration outside the Arab world . A genetic study has suggested that a majority of the Muslims of Palestine, inclusive of Arab citizens of Israel, could be descendants of Christians , Jews and other earlier inhabitants of the southern Levant whose core may reach back to prehistoric times . A study of high-resolution haplotypes demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Israeli Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool. Since the time of the Muslim conquests in the 7th century, religious conversions have resulted in Palestinians being predominantly Sunni Muslim by religious affiliation , though there is a significant Palestinian Christian minority of various Christian denominations , as well as Druze and a small Samaritan community. Though Palestinian Jews made up part of the population of Palestine prior to the creation of the State of Israel, few identify as "Palestinian" today. Acculturation , independent from conversion to Islam , resulted in Palestinians being linguistically and culturally Arab . The vernacular of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the Palestinian dialect of Arabic . Many Arab citizens of Israel, including Palestinians, are bilingual and fluent in Hebrew . The history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars. Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century. " Palestinian " was used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by the Arabs of Palestine in a limited way until World War I . The first demand for national independence of the Levant was issued by the Syrian–Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921. After the creation of the State of Israel, the exodus of 1948 , and more so after the exodus of 1967 , the term came to signify not only a place of origin, but also the sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state . According to Rashid Khalidi , the modern Palestinian people now understand their identity as encompassing the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period. Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before the international community. The Palestinian National Authority , officially established as a result of the Oslo Accords , is an interim administrative body nominally responsible for governance in Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People . United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . 2013 . PMID 17351267 citations : CS1 maint: postscript ( link ) Also see Supplementary Data Dowty, Alan (2008). Palestinians are the descendants of all the indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine over the centuries; since the seventh century, they have been predominantly Muslim in religion and almost completely Arab in language and culture. 'Palestinians are an indigenous people who either live in, or originate from, historical Palestine... Although the Muslims guaranteed security and allowed religious freedom to all inhabitants of the region, the majority converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture.' Bassam Abu-Libdeh, Peter D. David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi claimed that the population at the time of the Arab conquest was mainly Christian, of Jewish origins, which underwent conversion to avoid a tax burden, basing their argument on 'the fact that at the time of the Arab conquest, the population of Palestine was mainly Christian, and that during the Crusaders’ conquest some four hundred years later, it was mainly Muslim. It was one of the mainstays of Umayyad power and was important in their struggle against both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.... Conversions arising from convenience as well as conviction then increased. These conversions to Islam, together with a steady tribal inflow from the desert, changed the religious character of Palestine’s inhabitants. The predominantly Christian population gradually became predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. At the same time, during the early years of Muslim control of the city, a small permanent Jewish population returned to Jerusalem after a 500-year absence.' Encyclopedia Britannica , Palestine , 'From the Arab Conquest to 1900,' . The Arabs of Palestine began widely using the term Palestinian starting in the pre–World War I period to indicate the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people. But after 1948—and even more so after 1967—for Palestinians themselves the term came to signify not only a place of origin but also, more importantly, a sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state. Semites and Anti-Semites, An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice . Moreover, after Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 the population by and large remained in situ, and did so again after Bar Kochba's revolt in AD 135. When the vast majority of the population became Christian during the Byzantine period, no vast number were driven out, and similarly in the seventh century, when the vast majority became Muslim, few were driven from the land. Palestine has been multi-cultural and multi ethnic from the beginning, as one can read between the lines even in the biblical narrative. Many Palestinian Jews became Christians, and in turn Muslims. It is applicable to the Bedouin and to a section of the urban and effendi classes; it is inappropriate as a description of the rural mass of the population, the fellaheen. The whole population spoke Arabic, usually corrupted by dialects bearing traces of words of other origin, but it was only the Bedouin who habitually thought of themselves as Arabs. Western travelers from the sixteenth century onwards make the same distinction, and the word 'Arab' almost always refers to them exclusively. . .Gradually it was realized that there remained a substantial stratum of the pre-Israelite peasantry, and that the oldest element among the peasants were not 'Arabs' in the sense of having entered the country with or after the conquerors of the seventh century, had been there already when the Arabs came.' James Parkes , Whose Land? "What is the True Demographic Picture in the West Bank and Gaza? – A Presentation and a Critique" . Refugees into Citizens – Palestinians and the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict . Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics . 2009 . American Academy for the Advancement of Science. . "Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes" . PMID 10801975 . : Unknown parameter |author-separator= ignored ( help ) and Almut Nebel; et al. "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews". PMID 11153918 . : Unknown parameter |author-separator= ignored ( help ) Another study says; "Our recent study of high-resolution microsatellite haplotypes demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool." [1] Likhovski, Assaf (2006). Law and identity in mandate Palestine . Institute for Middle East Understanding. 2007 . There are <ref group=a> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a template (see the help page ).

Ethnonational group of Palestine For other uses, see Palestinian (disambiguation) . Ethnic group The Palestinian people ( , ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī ), also referred to as Palestinians ( , al-Filasṭīniyyūn ; ) or Palestinian Arabs ( , al-Filasṭīniyyīn al-ʿarab ), are an ethnonational group comprising the modern descendants of the peoples who have lived in Palestine continuously over the centuries and who today are largely culturally and linguistically Arab ; this definition includes those ethnic Jews and Samaritans who fit this definition. Despite various wars and exoduses (such as that in 1948 ), roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in historic Palestine , the area encompassing the West Bank , the Gaza Strip and Israel . In this combined area, as of 2005 , Palestinians constituted 49% of all inhabitants, encompassing the entire population of the Gaza Strip (1.865 million), the majority of the population of the West Bank (approximately 2,785,000 versus about 600,000 Jewish Israeli citizens , which includes about 200,000 in East Jerusalem ) and 20.95% of the population of Israel proper as Arab citizens of Israel . Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians , including more than a million in the Gaza Strip, about 750,000 in the West Bank and about 250,000 in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora , more than half are stateless , lacking citizenship in any country. Between 2.1 and 3.24 million of the diaspora population live as refugees in neighboring Jordan , over 1 million live between Syria and Lebanon and about 750,000 live in Saudi Arabia , with Chile's half a million representing the largest concentration outside the Middle East . Palestinian Christians and Muslims constituted 90% of the population of Palestine in 1919, just before the third wave of Jewish immigration under the post- WW1 British Mandatory Authority , opposition to which spurred the consolidation of a unified national identity, fragmented as it was by regional, class, religious and family differences. The history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars. Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century, when an embryonic desire among Palestinians for self-government in the face of generalized fears that Zionism would lead to a Jewish state and the dispossession of the Arab majority crystallised among most editors, Christian and Muslim, of local newspapers. " Palestinian " was used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by Palestinian Arabs in a limited way until World War I. After the creation of the State of Israel , the exodus of 1948 and more so after the exodus of 1967 , the term came to signify not only a place of origin but also the sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state . Modern Palestinian identity now encompasses the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period . Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states. The Palestinian National Authority , officially established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords , is an interim administrative body nominally responsible for governance in Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People . According to Perry Anderson , it is estimated that half of the population in the Palestinian territories are refugees and that they have collectively suffered approximately US$300 billion in property losses due to Israeli confiscations, at 2008–09 prices. Luke Baker, 'Population parity in historic Palestine raises hard questions for Israel,' Reuters 10 September 2015. "60% מערביי ישראל מגדירים עצמם פלסטינים" [60% of Israeli Arabs define themselves as Palestinians]. "Lebanon conducts first-ever census of Palestinian refugees" . 21 December 2017. Palestinians in the Netherlands – Palestine Link" . United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . 2013 . Samaritans: Past and present: Current studies. The Times of Israel . "Acculturation, religious identity, and psychological well-being among Palestinians in Israel". Palestinians are the descendants of all the indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine over the centuries; since the seventh century, they have been predominantly Muslim in religion and almost completely Arab in language and culture. 'Palestinians are an indigenous people who either live in, or originate from, historical Palestine... Although the Muslims guaranteed security and allowed religious freedom to all inhabitants of the region, the majority converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture.' Bassam Abu-Libdeh, Peter D. David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi claimed that the population at the time of the Arab conquest was mainly Christian, of Jewish origins, which underwent conversion to avoid a tax burden, basing their argument on 'the fact that at the time of the Arab conquest, the population of Palestine was mainly Christian, and that during the Crusaders’ conquest some four hundred years later, it was mainly Muslim. It was one of the mainstays of Umayyad power and was important in their struggle against both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.... Conversions arising from convenience as well as conviction then increased. These conversions to Islam, together with a steady tribal inflow from the desert, changed the religious character of Palestine's inhabitants. The predominantly Christian population gradually became predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. At the same time, during the early years of Muslim control of the city, a small permanent Jewish population returned to Jerusalem after a 500-year absence.' Encyclopædia Britannica , Palestine , 'From the Arab Conquest to 1900,' . The Arabs of Palestine began widely using the term Palestinian starting in the pre–World War I period to indicate the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people. But after 1948—and even more so after 1967—for Palestinians themselves the term came to signify not only a place of origin but also, more importantly, a sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state. Semites and Anti-Semites, An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice . Moreover, after Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 the population by and large remained in situ, and did so again after Bar Kochba's revolt in AD 135. When the vast majority of the population became Christian during the Byzantine period, no vast number were driven out, and similarly in the seventh century, when the vast majority became Muslim, few were driven from the land. Palestine has been multi-cultural and multi ethnic from the beginning, as one can read between the lines even in the biblical narrative. Many Palestinian Jews became Christians, and in turn Muslims. It is applicable to the Bedouin and to a section of the urban and effendi classes; it is inappropriate as a description of the rural mass of the population, the fellaheen. The whole population spoke Arabic, usually corrupted by dialects bearing traces of words of other origin, but it was only the Bedouin who habitually thought of themselves as Arabs. Western travelers from the sixteenth century onwards make the same distinction, and the word 'Arab' almost always refers to them exclusively ... Gradually it was realized that there remained a substantial stratum of the pre-Israelite peasantry, and that the oldest element among the peasants were not 'Arabs' in the sense of having entered the country with or after the conquerors of the seventh century, had been there already when the Arabs came.' James Parkes , Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine, (1949) rev.ed. "What is the True Demographic Picture in the West Bank and Gaza? – A Presentation and a Critique" . Refugees into Citizens – Palestinians and the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict . Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics . 2009 . Law and identity in mandate Palestine . Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement. The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other". Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose. As we have seen, Zionism itself arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. It would be perverse to judge Zionism as somehow less valid than European anti-Semitism or those nationalisms. . . Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the "conquest of land" and the "conquest of labor" slogans that became central to the dominant strain of Zionism in the Yishuv originated as a result of the Zionist confrontation with the Palestinian "other". There are <ref group=a> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a template (see the help page ).

Ethnonational group of the Levant "Palestinian" redirects here. Ethnic group Palestinians ( , al-Filasṭīniyyūn ; , Fālasṭīnīm ) or Palestinian people ( , ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( , al-ʿArab al-Filasṭīniyyūn ), are an Arab ethnonational group descending from peoples who have inhabited the region of Palestine over the millennia, and who are today culturally and linguistically Arab . Despite various wars and exoduses , roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine , now encompassing the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (the Palestinian territories ) as well as Israel . In this combined area, as of 2022 , Palestinians constitute a demographic majority, with an estimated population of 7.503 million or 51.16% (as compared to Jews at 46-47%) of all inhabitants, taking in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem , and almost 21 percent of the population of Israel proper as part of its Arab citizens . Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians , including more than a million in the Gaza Strip, around 750,000 in the West Bank, and around 250,000 in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora , more than half are stateless , lacking legal citizenship in any country. Between 2.1 and 3.24 million of the diaspora population live as refugees in neighboring Jordan ; over 1 million live between Syria and Lebanon , and about 750,000 live in Saudi Arabia , with Chile holding the largest Palestinian diaspora concentration (around half a million) outside of the Arab world . In 1919, Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Christians constituted 90 percent of the population of Palestine, just before the third wave of Jewish immigration under the British Mandate after World War I . Opposition to Jewish immigration spurred the consolidation of a unified national identity , though Palestinian society was still fragmented by regional, class, religious, and family differences. The history of the Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars; the term " Palestinian " was used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by Palestinian Arabs from the late 19th century and in the pre-World War I period. The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and subsequent creation of an individual British Mandate for the region replaced Ottoman citizenship with Palestinian citizenship, solidifying a national identity. After the Israeli Declaration of Independence , the 1948 Palestinian expulsion , and more so after the 1967 Palestinian exodus , the term "Palestinian" evolved into a sense of a shared future in the form of aspirations for a Palestinian state . Today, the Palestinian identity encompasses the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period . Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states. The Palestinian National Authority , officially established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords , is an interim administrative body nominally responsible for governance in Palestinian population centres in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People . According to British historian Perry Anderson , it is estimated that half of the population in the Palestinian territories are refugees, and that they have collectively suffered approximately US$300 billion in property losses due to Israeli confiscations, at 2008–2009 prices. ’Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) Presents the Conditions of Palestinian Populations on the Occasion of the International Population Day, 11/07/2022,’ Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) 7 July 2022 "Where We Work UNRWA" . "Lebanon conducts first-ever census of Palestinian refugees" . 21 December 2017. "El Salvador's Palestinian connection" . 26 February 2006. Palestinians in the Netherlands – Palestine Link" . United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . 2013 . Samaritans: Past and present: Current studies. The Times of Israel . PMID 29522542 . : CS1 maint: article number as page number ( link ) "Palestine Nationalism: A. The Palestinians are an Arab people, largely Moslem but with important numbers of Christians, who live in, once lived in, or trace their descent through parents or grandparents to the land once known as Palestine, which came under a British mandate in 1922 and now is the land of Israel, the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip. Of course, the notion that the Palestinians are an Arab people, an integral part of the Arab world ('the Arab nation'), is wholly legitimate and natural, given the history and culture of the people in question. "But given that the groups we are concerned with (Israelis and Palestinians) are ethnonational groups, their political cultures are heavily shaped by their ethnonational identities." Jabareen, Hassan. 2002. "The Future of Arab Citizenship in Israel:Jewish-Zionist Time in as Place with No Palestinian memory." In Challenging Ethnic Citizenship: German and Israeli Perspectives on Immigration , edited by D. "This blurring has led to a situation in which characteristics of the State of Israel are presented as characteristics of a nation-state, even though (de facto) it is a binational state, and Palestinian citizens are presented as an ethnic minority group although they are a homeland majority." Hussain, Mir Zohair, and Stephan Shumock. 2006. A Concise Overview ." In Perspectives on Contemporary Ethnic Conflict: Primal Violence Or the Politics of Conviction , edited by S. Routledge: "What is noteworthy here is the use of a general category ‘Arabs,’ instead of a more specific one of 'Palestinians.' By turning to a general category, the particularity of Palestinians, among other ethnic and national groups, is erased and in its place Jordanian identity is implanted." Haklai, Oded (15 June 2011). Palestinian Ethnonationalism in Israel . "Acculturation, religious identity, and psychological well-being among Palestinians in Israel". People know who they are, where they live, and where their families have lived for centuries or millennia Dowty, Alan (2008). Palestinians are the descendants of all the indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine over the centuries; since the seventh century, they have been predominantly Muslim in religion and almost completely Arab in language and culture. "Genetic Disease in Palestine and Palestinians." Pp. 700–11 in Genomics and Health in the Developing World , edited by D. Although the Muslims guaranteed security and allowed religious freedom to all inhabitants of the region, the majority converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture." Khalidi, Rashid Ismail , et al. " Palestine § From the Arab Conquest to 1900 ." Encyclopædia Britannica . It was one of the mainstays of Umayyad power and was important in their struggle against both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.... Conversions arising from convenience as well as conviction then increased. These conversions to Islam, together with a steady tribal inflow from the desert, changed the religious character of Palestine's inhabitants. The predominantly Christian population gradually became predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. At the same time, during the early years of Muslim control of the city, a small permanent Jewish population returned to Jerusalem after a 500-year absence." "Palestine" . The Arabs of Palestine began widely using the term Palestinian starting in the pre–World War I period to indicate the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people. But after 1948—and even more so after 1967—for Palestinians themselves the term came to signify not only a place of origin but also, more importantly, a sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state. Semites and Anti-Semites, An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice . It is applicable to the Bedouin and to a section of the urban and effendi classes; it is inappropriate as a description of the rural mass of the population, the fellaheen. The whole population spoke Arabic, usually corrupted by dialects bearing traces of words of other origin, but it was only the Bedouin who habitually thought of themselves as Arabs. Western travelers from the sixteenth century onwards make the same distinction, and the word 'Arab' almost always refers to them exclusively.... Gradually it was realized that there remained a substantial stratum of the pre-Israelite peasantry, and that the oldest element among the peasants were not 'Arabs' in the sense of having entered the country with or after the conquerors of the seventh century, had been there already when the Arabs came." Melvin Ember; Carol R. Meron Rapaport, 'The Israeli right is the minority — the left need only realize it,' +972 magazine 12 January 2023 'Jews now a 47% minority in Israel and the territories, demographer says,' The Times of Israel 30 August 2022. Refugees into Citizens – Palestinians and the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict . Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics . 2009 . Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement. The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other". Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose. As we have seen, Zionism itself arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. It would be perverse to judge Zionism as somehow less valid than European anti-Semitism or those nationalisms. . . Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the "conquest of land" and the "conquest of labor" slogans that became central to the dominant strain of Zionism in the Yishuv originated as a result of the Zionist confrontation with the Palestinian "other".

Ethnonational group of the Levant "Palestinian" redirects here. Ethnic group Palestinians ( Arabic : الفلسطينيون , romanized : al-Filasṭīniyyūn ) are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine . They represent a highly homogeneous community who share one cultural and ethnic identity , speak Palestinian Arabic and share close religious, linguistic, and cultural ties with other Levantine Arabs. In 1919, Palestinian Muslims and Christians constituted 90 percent of the population of Palestine, just before the third wave of Jewish immigration and the setting up of British Mandatory Palestine after World War I . Opposition to Jewish immigration spurred the consolidation of a unified national identity , though Palestinian society was still fragmented by regional, class, religious, and family differences. The history of the Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars. After the Israeli Declaration of Independence , the 1948 Palestinian expulsion , and more so after the 1967 Palestinian exodus , the term "Palestinian" evolved into a sense of a shared future in the form of aspirations for a Palestinian state . Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states. The Palestinian National Authority , officially established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords , is an interim administrative body nominally responsible for governance in Palestinian population centres in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People . According to British historian Perry Anderson , it is estimated that half of the population in the Palestinian territories are refugees. Despite various wars and exoduses , roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine , now encompassing Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip . In Israel proper, Palestinians constitute almost 21 percent of the population as part of its Arab citizens . Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians , including over 1.4 million in the Gaza Strip, over 870,000 in the West Bank, and around 250,000 in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora , more than half are stateless , lacking legal citizenship in any country. 2.3 million of the diaspora population are registered as refugees in neighboring Jordan , most of whom hold Jordanian citizenship; over 1 million live between Syria and Lebanon , and about 750,000 live in Saudi Arabia , with Chile holding the largest Palestinian diaspora concentration (around half a million) outside of the Arab world . The World Fact Book . Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics . "Zalaquett pone a Chile como modelo de convivencia palestino-judía" [Zalaquett sets Chile as a model for Palestinian-Jewish coexistence]. "Cómo llegó Chile a tener la mayor comunidad de palestinos fuera de Israel y del mundo árabe" [How Chile came to have the largest Palestinian community outside Israel and the Arab world]. BBC Mundo (in Spanish). 6 November 2023 . "Palästinenser in Deutschland – "Das ist nicht mehr mein Land" " . fr.de (in German). 12 February 2024 . International Organization for Migration (IOM) . En suma, los árabes y palestinos, arribados al país a finales del siglo XIX, dominan hoy en día la economía del país, y cada vez están emergiendo como actores importantes de la clase política hondureña y forman, después de Chile, la mayor concentración de descendientes de palestinos en América Latina, con entre 150,000 y 200,000 personas. [In short, Arabs and Palestinians, who arrived in the country at the end of the 19th century, dominate the country's economy today and are increasingly emerging as important players in the Honduran political class, forming, after Chile, the largest concentration of Palestinian descendants in Latin America, with between 150,000 and 200,000 people.] "El Salvador's Palestinian connection" . 26 February 2006. Palestinians in the Netherlands" . Australian Bureau of Statistics . 2001. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees . 2015 . Samaritans' Past and present: Current studies . The Times of Israel . The World's Muslims: Unity and Diversity . Palestinians (similar to the Samaritans and some of the Druze), highlighting their primarily indigenous origin : CS1 maint: article number as page number ( link ) Dowty 2023 , 3. The Arab Story to 1914: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous population, descended from Jews, other Semitic groups, and non-Semitic groups such as the Philistines, had been mostly Christianized. Over succeeding centuries it was Islamicized, and Arabic replaced Aramaic (a Semitic tongue closely related to Hebrew) as the dominant language" Dowty 2023 , 10. Some historians connect it to the Philistines, a biblical people that resided on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea as early as the twelfth century B.C.E. Thus, Palestinians are considered by some to be the indigenous people of present-day Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Thus, some Palestinian Arabs, like the Jews, may claim a genetic relationship to the ancient inhabitants of the country."; "Even though not a race in a biological sense, political Zionism, after a century of attempts to prove contemporary Jews' material, biological relationships – not merely their spiritual, cultural ones – to the ancient people of the biblical stories, in spite of widespread interspersing with local communities, finally has succeeded. It is tragic that Zionism, as well as Arab Nationalism, have failed to recognize the Palestinians, many of whom similarly appear to share phylogenetic relations to the historic inhabitants of the country, as equal partners." Tanous, Osama; Asi, Yara; Hammoudeh, Weeam; Mills, David; Wispelwey, Bram (2023). "Acculturation, religious identity, and psychological well-being among Palestinians in Israel". Although the Muslims guaranteed security and allowed religious freedom to all inhabitants of the region, the majority converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture." Encyclopedia Britannica , From the Arab conquest to 1900 : "The process of Arabization and Islamization was gaining momentum there. It was one of the mainstays of Umayyad power and was important in their struggle against both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.... Conversions arising from convenience as well as conviction then increased. These conversions to Islam, together with a steady tribal inflow from the desert, changed the religious character of Palestine's inhabitants. The predominantly Christian population gradually became predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. It is applicable to the Bedouin and to a section of the urban and effendi classes; it is inappropriate as a description of the rural mass of the population, the fellaheen. The whole population spoke Arabic, usually corrupted by dialects bearing traces of words of other origin, but it was only the Bedouin who habitually thought of themselves as Arabs. Western travelers from the sixteenth century onwards make the same distinction, and the word 'Arab' almost always refers to them exclusively.... Gradually it was realized that there remained a substantial stratum of the pre-Israelite peasantry, and that the oldest element among the peasants were not 'Arabs' in the sense of having entered the country with or after the conquerors of the seventh century, had been there already when the Arabs came." Encyclopedia Britannica , The term 'Palestinian' : "The Arabs of Palestine began widely using the term Palestinian starting in the pre–World War I period to indicate the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people. But after 1948—and even more so after 1967—for Palestinians themselves the term came to signify not only a place of origin but also, more importantly, a sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state." Koss, Maren (3 January 2018). [They are a] homogenous society, in which the majority is composed of Sunni Muslims ... the Palestinian society is more homogenous than the Lebanese ... The Middle East Strategic Balance . Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia: [4 volumes] . Palestinians represent a highly homogenized community who share one cultural and ethnic identity: South Levantine Arabic Christison, Kathleen (2001). Shared Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue . Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement. The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other". Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose. As we have seen, Zionism itself arose in reaction to anti-Semitic and exclusionary nationalist movements in Europe. It would be perverse to judge Zionism as somehow less valid than European anti-Semitism or those nationalisms. . . Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the "conquest of land" and the "conquest of labor" slogans that became central to the dominant strain of Zionism in the Yishuv originated as a result of the Zionist confrontation with the Palestinian "other". Critical issues in Israeli society . Refugees into Citizens – Palestinians and the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict . Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics . 2009. There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or templates on this page, but the references will not show without a template or template (see the help page ).