Palestinians (Arabic: الفلسطينيون, al-Filasṭīniyyūn; Hebrew: פָלַסְטִינִים, Fālasṭīnīm) or Palestinian people (الشعب الفلسطيني, ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs (العرب الفلسطينيون, al-ʿArab al-Filasṭīniyyūn), are an ethnonational group[30][31][32][33][34][35][36] descending from peoples who have inhabited the region of Palestine over the millennia, and who are today culturally and linguistically Arab.[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]
Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states.[60] 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.[61] 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.[62]
The Greek toponym Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη), which is the origin of the ArabicFilasṭīn (فلسطين), first occurs in the work of the 5th century BCE Greek historian Herodotus, where it denotes generally[63] the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt.[64][65] Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the "Syrians of Palestine" or "Palestinian-Syrians",[66] an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians.[67][68] Herodotus makes no distinction between the inhabitants of Palestine.[69]
A depiction of Syria and Palestine from CE 650 to 1500
When the Romans conquered the region in the first century BCE, they used the name Judaea for the province that covered most of the region. At the same time, the name Syria Palestina continued to be used by historians and geographers to refer to the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, as in the writings of Philo, Josephus and Pliny the Elder. During the early 2nd century CE, Syria Palaestina became the official administrative name in a move viewed by scholars as an attempt by emperor Hadrian to disassociate Jews from the land as punishment for the Bar Kokhba revolt.[75][76][77] Jacobson suggested the change to be rationalized by the fact that the new province was far larger.[78][79] The name was thenceforth inscribed on coins, and beginning in the fifth century, mentioned in rabbinic texts.[75][80][81] The Arabic word Filastin has been used to refer to the region since the time of the earliest medieval Arab geographers. It appears to have been used as an Arabicadjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century.[82]
Khalil Beidas (1874–1949) was the first person to self-describe Palestine's Arabs as "Palestinians" in the preface of a book he translated in 1898.
In modern times, the first person to self-describe Palestine's Arabs as "Palestinians" was Khalil Beidas in 1898, followed by Salim Quba'in and Najib Nassar in 1902. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which eased press censorship laws in the Ottoman Empire, dozens of newspapers and periodicals were founded in Palestine, and the term "Palestinian" expanded in usage. Among those were the Al-Quds, Al-Munadi, Falastin, Al-Karmil and Al-Nafir newspapers, which used the term "Filastini" more than 170 times in 110 articles from 1908 to 1914. They also made references to a "Palestinian society", "Palestinian nation", and a "Palestinian diaspora". Article writers included Christian and Muslim Arab Palestinians, Palestinian emigrants, and non-Palestinian Arabs.[83][84]
During the Mandatory Palestine period, the term "Palestinian" was used to refer to all people residing there, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and those granted citizenship by the British Mandatory authorities were granted "Palestinian citizenship".[85] Other examples include the use of the term Palestine Regiment to refer to the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group of the British Army during World War II, and the term "Palestinian Talmud", which is an alternative name of the Jerusalem Talmud, used mainly in academic sources.
1936 issue of the Falastin newspaper established in 1911 that often referred to its readers as "Palestinians"
Following the 1948 establishment of Israel, the use and application of the terms "Palestine" and "Palestinian" by and to Palestinian Jews largely dropped from use. For example, the English-language newspaper The Palestine Post, founded by Jews in 1932, changed its name in 1950 to The Jerusalem Post. The term Arab Jews can include Jews with Palestinian heritage and Israeli citizenship, although some Arab Jews prefer to be called Mizrahi Jews. Non-Jewish Arab citizens of Israel with Palestinian heritage identify themselves as Arabs or Palestinians.[86] These non-Jewish Arab Israelis thus include those that are Palestinian by heritage but Israeli by citizenship.[87]
The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO's Palestinian National Council in July 1968, defined "Palestinians" as "those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father – whether in Palestine or outside it – is also a Palestinian."[88] Note that "Arab nationals" is not religious-specific, and it includes not only the Arabic-speaking Muslims of Palestine but also the Arab Christians and other religious communities of Palestine who were at that time Arabic-speakers, such as the Samaritans and Druze. Thus, the Jews of Palestine were/are also included, although limited only to "the [Arabic-speaking] Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the [pre-state] Zionist invasion." The Charter also states that "Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit."[88][89]
The origins of Palestinians are complex and diverse. The region was not originally Arab – its Arabization was a consequence of the gradual inclusion of Palestine within the rapidly expanding Islamic Caliphates established by Arabian tribes and their local allies. Like in other "Arabized" Arab nations, the Arab identity of Palestinians, largely based on linguistic and cultural affiliation, is independent of the existence of any actual Arabian origins.[90]
In the 7th century, the Arab Rashidunsconquered the Levant; they were later succeeded by other Arab Muslim dynasties, including the Umayyads, Abbasids and the Fatimids.[100] Over the following several centuries, the population of Palestine drastically decreased, from an estimated 1 million during the Roman and Byzantine periods to about 300,000 by the early Ottoman period.[101][102] Over time, the existing population adopted Arab culture and language and much converted to Islam.[98] The settlement of Arabs before and after the Muslim conquest is thought to have played a role in accelerating the Islamization process.[103][104][105][106] Some scholars suggest that by the arrival of the Crusaders, Palestine was already overwhelmingly Muslim,[107][108] while others claim that it was only after the Crusades that the Christians lost their majority, and that the process of mass Islamization took place much later, perhaps during the Mamluk period.[103][109]
For several centuries during the Ottoman period the population in Palestine declined and fluctuated between 150,000 and 250,000 inhabitants, and it was only in the 19th century that a rapid population growth began to occur.[110] This growth was aided by the immigration of Egyptians (during the reigns of Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha) and Algerians (following Abdelkader El Djezaïri's revolt) in the first half of the 19th century, and the subsequent immigration of Algerians, Bosnians, and Circassians during the second half of the century.[111][112]
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement. Some argue that it can be traced as far back as the peasants' revolt in Palestine in 1834 (or even as early as the 17th century), while others argue that it did not emerge until after the Mandatory Palestine period.[57][113] Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century,[57] 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.[114] The term itself Filasṭīnī was first introduced by Khalīl Beidas in a translation of a Russian work on the Holy Land into Arabic in 1898. After that, its usage gradually spread so that, by 1908, with the loosening of censorship controls under late Ottoman rule, a number of Muslim, Christian and Jewish correspondents writing for newspapers began to use the term with great frequency in referring to the 'Palestinian people' (ahl/ahālī Filasṭīn), 'Palestinians' (al-Filasṭīnīyūn), the 'sons of Palestine' (abnā’ Filasṭīn) or to 'Palestinian society' (al-mujtama' al-filasṭīnī).[115]
Whatever the differing viewpoints over the timing, causal mechanisms, and orientation of Palestinian nationalism, by the early 20th century strong opposition to Zionism and evidence of a burgeoning nationalistic Palestinian identity is found in the content of Arabic-language newspapers in Palestine, such as Al-Karmil (est. 1908) and Filasteen (est. 1911).[116] Filasteen initially focused its critique of Zionism around the failure of the Ottoman administration to control Jewish immigration and the large influx of foreigners, later exploring the impact of Zionist land-purchases on Palestinian peasants (Arabic: فلاحين, fellahin), expressing growing concern over land dispossession and its implications for the society at large.[116]
Historian Rashid Khalidi's 1997 book Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness is considered a "foundational text" on the subject.[117] He notes that the archaeological strata that denote the history of Palestine – encompassing the Biblical, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods – form part of the identity of the modern-day Palestinian people, as they have come to understand it over the last century.[59] Noting that Palestinian identity has never been an exclusive one, with "Arabism, religion, and local loyalties" playing an important role, Khalidi cautions against the efforts of some extreme advocates of Palestinian nationalism to "anachronistically" read back into history a nationalist consciousness that is in fact "relatively modern".[118][119]
Khalidi argues that the modern national identity of Palestinians has its roots in nationalist discourses that emerged among the peoples of the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century that sharpened following the demarcation of modern nation-state boundaries in the Middle East after World War I.[119] Khalidi also states that although the challenge posed by Zionism played a role in shaping this identity, that "it is a serious mistake to suggest that Palestinian identity emerged mainly as a response to Zionism."[119]
Khalil Beidas's 1898 use of the word "Palestinians" in the preface to his translation of Akim Olesnitsky's A Description of the Holy Land[120]
Conversely, historian James L. Gelvin argues that Palestinian nationalism was a direct reaction to Zionism. In his book The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War he states that "Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement."[121] Gelvin argues that this fact does not make the Palestinian identity any less legitimate: "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."[121]
David Seddon writes that "[t]he creation of Palestinian identity in its contemporary sense was formed essentially during the 1960s, with the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization." He adds, however, that "the existence of a population with a recognizably similar name ('the Philistines') in Biblical times suggests a degree of continuity over a long historical period (much as 'the Israelites' of the Bible suggest a long historical continuity in the same region)."[122]
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal consider the 1834 Peasants' revolt in Palestine as constituting the first formative event of the Palestinian people. From 1516 to 1917, Palestine was ruled by the Ottoman Empire save a decade from the 1830s to the 1840s when an Egyptian vassal of the Ottomans, Muhammad Ali, and his son Ibrahim Pasha successfully broke away from Ottoman leadership and, conquering territory spreading from Egypt to as far north as Damascus, asserted their own rule over the area. The so-called Peasants' Revolt by Palestine's Arabs was precipitated by heavy demands for conscripts. The local leaders and urban notables were unhappy about the loss of traditional privileges, while the peasants were well aware that conscription was little more than a death sentence. Starting in May 1834 the rebels took many cities, among them Jerusalem, Hebron and Nablus and Ibrahim Pasha's army was deployed, defeating the last rebels on 4 August in Hebron.[123]Benny Morris argues that the Arabs in Palestine nevertheless remained part of a larger national pan-Arab or, alternatively, pan-Islamist movement.[124]Walid Khalidi argues otherwise, writing that Palestinians in Ottoman times were "[a]cutely aware of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history ..." and "[a]lthough proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry, the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial, including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them."[125]
A 1930 protest in Jerusalem against the British Mandate by Palestinian women. The sign reads "No dialogue, no negotiations until termination [of the Mandate]"
Zachary J. Foster argued in a 2015 Foreign Affairs article that "based on hundreds of manuscripts, Islamic court records, books, magazines, and newspapers from the Ottoman period (1516–1918), it seems that the first Arab to use the term "Palestinian" was Farid Georges Kassab, a Beirut-based Orthodox Christian." He explained further that Kassab's 1909 book Palestine, Hellenism, and Clericalism noted in passing that "the Orthodox Palestinian Ottomans call themselves Arabs, and are in fact Arabs," despite describing the Arabic speakers of Palestine as Palestinians throughout the rest of the book."[126]
Bernard Lewis argues it was not as a Palestinian nation that the Arabs of Ottoman Palestine objected to Zionists, since the very concept of such a nation was unknown to the Arabs of the area at the time and did not come into being until very much later. Even the concept of Arab nationalism in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, "had not reached significant proportions before the outbreak of World War I."[44] Tamir Sorek, a sociologist, submits that, "Although a distinct Palestinian identity can be traced back at least to the middle of the nineteenth century (Kimmerling and Migdal 1993; Khalidi 1997b), or even to the seventeenth century (Gerber 1998), it was not until after World War I that a broad range of optional political affiliations became relevant for the Arabs of Palestine."[113]
Israeli historian Efraim Karsh takes the view that the Palestinian identity did not develop until after the 1967 war because the Palestinian exodus/expulsion had fractured society so greatly that it was impossible to piece together a national identity. Between 1948 and 1967, the Jordanians and other Arab countries hosting Arab refugees from Palestine/Israel silenced any expression of Palestinian identity and occupied their lands until Israel's conquests of 1967. The formal annexation of the West Bank by Jordan in 1950, and the subsequent granting of its Palestinian residents Jordanian citizenship, further stunted the growth of a Palestinian national identity by integrating them into Jordanian society.[127]
The idea of a unique Palestinian state distinct from its Arab neighbors was at first rejected by Palestinian representatives. The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (in Jerusalem, February 1919), which met for the purpose of selecting a Palestinian Arab representative for the Paris Peace Conference, adopted the following resolution: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds."[128]
An independent Palestinian state has not exercised full sovereignty over the land in which the Palestinians have lived during the modern era. Palestine was administered by the Ottoman Empire until World War I, and then overseen by the British Mandatory authorities. Israel was established in parts of Palestine in 1948, and in the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the West Bank was ruled by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip by Egypt, with both countries continuing to administer these areas until Israel occupied them in the Six-Day War. Historian Avi Shlaim states that the Palestinians' lack of sovereignty over the land has been used by Israelis to deny Palestinians their rights to self-determination.[129]
Today, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination has been affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly, the International Court of Justice[130] and several Israeli authorities.[131] A total of 133 countries recognize Palestine as a state.[132] However, Palestinian sovereignty over the areas claimed as part of the Palestinian state remains limited, and the boundaries of the state remain a point of contestation between Palestinians and Israelis.
The first Palestinian nationalist organizations emerged at the end of the World War I.[133] Two political factions emerged. al-Muntada al-Adabi, dominated by the Nashashibi family, militated for the promotion of the Arabic language and culture, for the defense of Islamic values and for an independent Syria and Palestine. In Damascus, al-Nadi al-Arabi, dominated by the Husayni family, defended the same values.[134]
Article 22 of The Covenant of the League of Nations conferred an international legal status upon the territories and people which had ceased to be under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire as part of a 'sacred trust of civilization'. Article 7 of the League of Nations Mandate required the establishment of a new, separate, Palestinian nationality for the inhabitants. This meant that Palestinians did not become British citizens, and that Palestine was not annexed into the British dominions.[135] The Mandate document divided the population into Jewish and non-Jewish, and Britain, the Mandatory Power considered the Palestinian population to be composed of religious, not national, groups. Consequently, government censuses in 1922 and 1931 would categorize Palestinians confessionally as Muslims, Christians and Jews, with the category of Arab absent.[136]
Musa Alami (1897–1984) was a Palestinian nationalist and politician, viewed in the 1940s as the leader of the Palestinians
The articles of the Mandate mentioned the civil and religious rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, but not their political status. At the San Remo conference, it was decided to accept the text of those articles, while inserting in the minutes of the conference an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of any of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non-Jewish communities in Palestine. In 1922, the British authorities over Mandatory Palestine proposed a draft constitution that would have granted the Palestinian Arabs representation in a Legislative Council on condition that they accept the terms of the mandate. The Palestine Arab delegation rejected the proposal as "wholly unsatisfactory", noting that "the People of Palestine" could not accept the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the constitution's preamble as the basis for discussions. They further took issue with the designation of Palestine as a British "colony of the lowest order."[137] The Arabs tried to get the British to offer an Arab legal establishment again roughly ten years later, but to no avail.[138]
After the British general, Louis Bols, read out the Balfour Declaration in February 1920, some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem.[139]
A month later, during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the protests against British rule and Jewish immigration became violent and Bols banned all demonstrations. In May 1921 however, further anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa and dozens of Arabs and Jews were killed in the confrontations.[139]
After the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, the San Remo conference and the failure of Faisal to establish the Kingdom of Greater Syria, a distinctive form of Palestinian Arab nationalism took root between April and July 1920.[140][141] With the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, coupled with the British conquest and administration of Palestine, the formerly pan-Syrianist mayor of Jerusalem, Musa Qasim Pasha al-Husayni, said "Now, after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine".[142]
Conflict between Palestinian nationalists and various types of pan-Arabists continued during the British Mandate, but the latter became increasingly marginalized. Two prominent leaders of the Palestinian nationalists were Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, appointed by the British, and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.[139] After the killing of sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam by the British in 1935, his followers initiated the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, which began with a general strike in Jaffa and attacks on Jewish and British installations in Nablus.[139] The Arab Higher Committee called for a nationwide general strike, non-payment of taxes, and the closure of municipal governments, and demanded an end to Jewish immigration and a ban of the sale of land to Jews. By the end of 1936, the movement had become a national revolt, and resistance grew during 1937 and 1938. In response, the British declared martial law, dissolved the Arab High Committee and arrested officials from the Supreme Muslim Council who were behind the revolt. By 1939, 5,000 Arabs had been killed in British attempts to quash the revolt; more than 15,000 were wounded.[139]
In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan, which divided the mandate of Palestine into two states: one majority Arab and one majority Jewish. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and attacked Jewish civilian areas and paramilitary targets. Following Israel's declaration of independence in May 1948, five Arab armies (Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan) came to the Palestinian Arabs' aid against the newly founded State of Israel.[143]
The Palestinian Arabs suffered such a major defeat at the end of the war, that the term they use to describe the war is Nakba (the "catastrophe").[144] Israel took control of much of the territory that would have been allocated to the Arab state had the Palestinian Arabs accepted the UN partition plan.[143] Along with a military defeat, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from what became the State of Israel. Israel did not allow the Palestinian refugees of the war to return to Israel.[145]
After the war, there was a hiatus in Palestinian political activity. Khalidi attributes this to the traumatic events of 1947–49, which included the depopulation of over 400 towns and villages and the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees.[146] 418 villages had been razed, 46,367 buildings, 123 schools, 1,233 mosques, 8 churches and 68 holy shrines, many with a long history, destroyed by Israeli forces.[147] In addition, Palestinians lost from 1.5 to 2 million acres of land, an estimated 150,000 urban and rural homes, and 23,000 commercial structures such as shops and offices.[148] Recent estimates of the cost to Palestinians in property confiscations by Israel from 1948 onwards has concluded that Palestinians have suffered a net $300 billion loss in assets.[62]
Those parts of British Mandatory Palestine which did not become part of the newly declared Israeli state were occupied by Egypt or annexed by Jordan. At the Jericho Conference on 1 December 1948, 2,000 Palestinian delegates supported a resolution calling for "the unification of Palestine and Transjordan as a step toward full Arab unity".[149] During what Khalidi terms the "lost years" that followed, Palestinians lacked a center of gravity, divided as they were between these countries and others such as Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere.[150]
In the 1950s, a new generation of Palestinian nationalist groups and movements began to organize clandestinely, stepping out onto the public stage in the 1960s.[151] The traditional Palestinian elite who had dominated negotiations with the British and the Zionists in the Mandate, and who were largely held responsible for the loss of Palestine, were replaced by these new movements whose recruits generally came from poor to middle-class backgrounds and were often students or recent graduates of universities in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus.[151] The potency of the pan-Arabist ideology put forward by Gamal Abdel Nasser—popular among Palestinians for whom Arabism was already an important component of their identity[152]—tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab states it subsumed.[153]
Since 1967, Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have lived under military occupation, creating, according to Avram Bornstein, a carceralization of their society.[154] In the meantime, pan-Arabism has waned as an aspect of Palestinian identity. The Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank triggered a second Palestinian exodus and fractured Palestinian political and militant groups, prompting them to give up residual hopes in pan-Arabism. They rallied increasingly around the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which had been formed in Cairo in 1964. The group grew in popularity in the following years, especially under the nationalistic orientation of the leadership of Yasser Arafat.[155] Mainstream secular Palestinian nationalism was grouped together under the umbrella of the PLO whose constituent organizations include Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among other groups who at that time believed that political violence was the only way to "liberate" Palestine.[59] These groups gave voice to a tradition that emerged in the 1960s that argues Palestinian nationalism has deep historical roots, with extreme advocates reading a Palestinian nationalist consciousness and identity back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, when such a consciousness is in fact relatively modern.[156]
The Battle of Karameh and the events of Black September in Jordan contributed to growing Palestinian support for these groups, particularly among Palestinians in exile. Concurrently, among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a new ideological theme, known as sumud, represented the Palestinian political strategy popularly adopted from 1967 onward. As a concept closely related to the land, agriculture and indigenousness, the ideal image of the Palestinian put forward at this time was that of the peasant (in Arabic, fellah) who stayed put on his land, refusing to leave. A strategy more passive than that adopted by the Palestinian fedayeen, sumud provided an important subtext to the narrative of the fighters, "in symbolizing continuity and connections with the land, with peasantry and a rural way of life."[157]
In 1974, the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Arab nation-states and was granted observer status as a national liberation movement by the United Nations that same year.[60][158] Israel rejected the resolution, calling it "shameful".[159] In a speech to the Knesset, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon outlined the government's view that: "No one can expect us to recognize the terrorist organization called the PLO as representing the Palestinians—because it does not. No one can expect us to negotiate with the heads of terror-gangs, who through their ideology and actions, endeavor to liquidate the State of Israel."[159]
In 1975, the United Nations established a subsidiary organ, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, to recommend a program of implementation to enable the Palestinian people to exercise national independence and their rights to self-determination without external interference, national independence and sovereignty, and to return to their homes and property.[160]
The First Intifada (1987–93) was the first popular uprising against the Israeli occupation of 1967. Followed by the PLO's 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine, these developments served to further reinforce the Palestinian national identity. After the Gulf War in 1991, Kuwaiti authorities forcibly pressured nearly 200,000 Palestinians to leave Kuwait.[161] The policy which partly led to this exodus was a response to the alignment of PLO leader Yasser Arafat with Saddam Hussein.
The Oslo Accords, the first Israeli–Palestinian interim peace agreement, were signed in 1993. The process was envisioned to last five years, ending in June 1999, when the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area began. The expiration of this term without the recognition by Israel of the Palestinian State and without the effective termination of the occupation was followed by the Second Intifada in 2000.[162][163] The second intifada was more violent than the first.[164] The International Court of Justice observed that since the government of Israel had decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, their existence was no longer an issue. The court noted that the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of 28 September 1995 also referred a number of times to the Palestinian people and its "legitimate rights".[165] According to Thomas Giegerich, with respect to the Palestinian people's right to form a sovereign independent state, "The right of self-determination gives the Palestinian people collectively the inalienable right freely to determine its political status, while Israel, having recognized the Palestinians as a separate people, is obliged to promote and respect this right in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations".[166]
Following the failures of the Second Intifada, a younger generation is emerging that cares less about nationalist ideology than about economic growth. This has been a source of tension between some of the Palestinian political leadership and Palestinian business professionals who desire economic cooperation with Israelis. At an international conference in Bahrain, Palestinian businessman Ashraf Jabari said, "I have no problem working with Israel. It is time to move on. ... The Palestinian Authority does not want peace. They told the families of the businessmen that they are wanted [by police] for participating in the Bahrain workshop."[167]
In the absence of a comprehensive census including all Palestinian diaspora populations, and those that have remained within what was British Mandate Palestine, exact population figures are difficult to determine. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) announced at the end of 2015 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2015 was 12.37 million of which the number still residing within historic Palestine was 6.22 million.[176] In 2022, Arnon Soffer estimated that in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine (now encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip), there's a Palestinian population of 7.503 million, making up 51.16% of the total population.[177][178] Within Israel proper, Palestinians constitute almost 21 percent of the population as part of its Arab citizens.[47]
In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG).[179] In their report,[180] they claimed that several errors in the PCBS methodology and assumptions artificially inflated the numbers by a total of 1.3 million. The PCBS numbers were cross-checked against a variety of other sources (e.g., asserted birth rates based on fertility rate assumptions for a given year were checked against Palestinian Ministry of Health figures as well as Ministry of Education school enrollment figures six years later; immigration numbers were checked against numbers collected at border crossings, etc.). The errors claimed in their analysis included: birth rate errors (308,000), immigration & emigration errors (310,000), failure to account for migration to Israel (105,000), double-counting Jerusalem Arabs (210,000), counting former residents now living abroad (325,000) and other discrepancies (82,000). The results of their research was also presented before the United States House of Representatives on 8 March 2006.[181]
The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[182] DellaPergola accused the authors of the AIDRG report of misunderstanding basic principles of demography on account of their lack of expertise in the subject, but he also acknowledged that he did not take into account the emigration of Palestinians and thinks it has to be examined, as well as the birth and mortality statistics of the Palestinian Authority.[183] He also accused AIDRG of selective use of data and multiple systematic errors in their analysis, claiming that the authors assumed the Palestinian Electoral registry to be complete even though registration is voluntary, and they used an unrealistically low Total Fertility Ratio (a statistical abstraction of births per woman) to reanalyse that data in a "typical circular mistake." DellaPergola estimated the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza at the end of 2005 as 3.33 million, or 3.57 million if East Jerusalem is included. These figures are only slightly lower than the official Palestinian figures.[182] The Israeli Civil Administration put the number of Palestinians in the West Bank at 2,657,029 as of May 2012.[184][185]
The AIDRG study was also criticized by Ian Lustick, who accused its authors of multiple methodological errors and a political agenda.[186]
In 2009, at the request of the PLO, "Jordan revoked the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians to keep them from remaining permanently in the country."[187]
Many Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.[188][189]
In total, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas. Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre-dated the Arab-Israeli conflict, but continued to grow thereafter.[190] Many emigrants were from the Bethlehem area. Those emigrating to Latin America were mainly Christian. Half of those of Palestinian origin in Latin America live in Chile.[8]El Salvador[191] and Honduras[192] also have substantial Palestinian populations. These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry (Antonio Saca in El Salvador and Carlos Roberto Flores in Honduras). Belize, which has a smaller Palestinian population, has a Palestinian minister – Said Musa.[193]Schafik Jorge Handal, Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.[194]
Refugees
December 15, 2023
palestinians, palestinian, redirects, here, other, uses, palestinian, disambiguation, arabic, الفلسطينيون, filasṭīniyyūn, hebrew, ינ, ים, fālasṭīnīm, palestinian, people, الشعب, الفلسطيني, filasṭīnī, also, referred, palestinian, arabs, العرب, الفلسطينيون, ʿara. Palestinian redirects here For other uses see Palestinian disambiguation Palestinians Arabic الفلسطينيون al Filasṭiniyyun Hebrew פ ל ס ט ינ ים Falasṭinim or Palestinian people الشعب الفلسطيني ash sha b al Filasṭini also referred to as Palestinian Arabs العرب الفلسطينيون al ʿArab al Filasṭiniyyun are an ethnonational group 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 descending from peoples who have inhabited the region of Palestine over the millennia and who are today culturally and linguistically Arab 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 Palestiniansالفلسطينيون Arabic al FilasṭiniyyunFlag of PalestineTotal population14 3 million 1 Regions with significant populations State of Palestine5 350 000 1 West Bank3 190 000 1 of whom 809 738 are registered refugees as of 2017 2 3 4 Gaza Strip2 170 000 of whom 1 386 455 are registered refugees as of 2018 1 5 2 3 Jordan2 175 491 2017 registered refugees only 2 3 240 000 2009 6 Israel2 037 000 7 Syria568 530 2021 registered refugees only 2 Chile500 000 8 Saudi Arabia400 000 9 Qatar295 000 9 United States255 000 10 United Arab Emirates200 000 11 Lebanon174 000 2017 census 12 458 369 2016 registered refugees 2 Honduras27 000 200 000 9 13 Germany100 000 14 Kuwait80 000 15 Egypt70 000 9 El Salvador70 000 16 Brazil59 000 17 Libya59 000 9 Iraq57 000 18 Canada50 975 19 Yemen29 000 9 United Kingdom20 000 20 Peru15 000 citation needed Mexico13 000 9 Colombia12 000 9 Netherlands9 000 15 000 21 Australia7 000 est 22 23 Sweden7 000 24 Algeria4 030 25 LanguagesIn Palestine and Israel Arabic Hebrew EnglishDiaspora Local varieties of Arabic and languages of host countries for the Palestinian diasporaReligionMajority Sunni IslamMinority Christianity various denominations non denominational Islam Druzism Samaritanism 26 27 Shia Islam 28 Related ethnic groupsJordanians Lebanese Syrians and other Arabs 29 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 Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip 46 In Israel proper Palestinians constitute almost 21 percent of the population as part of its Arab citizens 47 Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians including more than a million in the Gaza Strip 48 around 750 000 in the West Bank 49 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 50 Between 2 1 and 3 24 million of the diaspora population live as refugees in neighboring Jordan 51 52 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 53 54 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 55 56 The history of the Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars 57 58 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 43 44 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 43 Today the Palestinian identity encompasses the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the Ottoman period 59 Founded in 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states 60 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 61 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 62 Contents 1 Etymology 2 Origins 3 Identity 3 1 Emergence of a distinct identity 4 Rise of Palestinian nationalism 4 1 British Mandate 1917 1947 4 2 War 1947 1949 4 3 Lost years 1949 1967 4 4 1967 present 5 Demographics 5 1 Refugees 5 2 Religion 5 3 Current demographics 6 Society 6 1 Language 6 2 Education 6 3 Women and family 7 Culture 7 1 Cuisine 7 2 Art 7 3 Literature 7 4 Music 7 4 1 Palestinian hip hop 7 4 2 Dance 7 5 Sport 8 See also 9 References 9 1 Notes 9 2 Citations 9 3 Sources 10 External linksEtymologySee also Timeline of the name Palestine The Greek toponym Palaistine Palaistinh which is the origin of the Arabic Filasṭin فلسطين first occurs in the work of the 5th century BCE Greek historian Herodotus where it denotes generally 63 the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt 64 65 Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym as when he speaks of the Syrians of Palestine or Palestinian Syrians 66 an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians 67 68 Herodotus makes no distinction between the inhabitants of Palestine 69 nbsp A depiction of Syria and Palestine from CE 650 to 1500The Greek word reflects an ancient Eastern Mediterranean Near Eastern word which was used either as a toponym or ethnonym In Ancient Egyptian Peleset Purusati 70 has been conjectured to refer to the Sea Peoples particularly the Philistines 71 72 Among Semitic languages Akkadian Palastu variant Pilistu is used of 7th century Philistia and its by then four city states 73 Biblical Hebrew s cognate word Plistim is usually translated Philistines 74 When the Romans conquered the region in the first century BCE they used the name Judaea for the province that covered most of the region At the same time the name Syria Palestina continued to be used by historians and geographers to refer to the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as in the writings of Philo Josephus and Pliny the Elder During the early 2nd century CE Syria Palaestina became the official administrative name in a move viewed by scholars as an attempt by emperor Hadrian to disassociate Jews from the land as punishment for the Bar Kokhba revolt 75 76 77 Jacobson suggested the change to be rationalized by the fact that the new province was far larger 78 79 The name was thenceforth inscribed on coins and beginning in the fifth century mentioned in rabbinic texts 75 80 81 The Arabic word Filastin has been used to refer to the region since the time of the earliest medieval Arab geographers It appears to have been used as an Arabic adjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century 82 nbsp Khalil Beidas 1874 1949 was the first person to self describe Palestine s Arabs as Palestinians in the preface of a book he translated in 1898 In modern times the first person to self describe Palestine s Arabs as Palestinians was Khalil Beidas in 1898 followed by Salim Quba in and Najib Nassar in 1902 After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution which eased press censorship laws in the Ottoman Empire dozens of newspapers and periodicals were founded in Palestine and the term Palestinian expanded in usage Among those were the Al Quds Al Munadi Falastin Al Karmil and Al Nafir newspapers which used the term Filastini more than 170 times in 110 articles from 1908 to 1914 They also made references to a Palestinian society Palestinian nation and a Palestinian diaspora Article writers included Christian and Muslim Arab Palestinians Palestinian emigrants and non Palestinian Arabs 83 84 During the Mandatory Palestine period the term Palestinian was used to refer to all people residing there regardless of religion or ethnicity and those granted citizenship by the British Mandatory authorities were granted Palestinian citizenship 85 Other examples include the use of the term Palestine Regiment to refer to the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group of the British Army during World War II and the term Palestinian Talmud which is an alternative name of the Jerusalem Talmud used mainly in academic sources nbsp 1936 issue of the Falastin newspaper established in 1911 that often referred to its readers as Palestinians Following the 1948 establishment of Israel the use and application of the terms Palestine and Palestinian by and to Palestinian Jews largely dropped from use For example the English language newspaper The Palestine Post founded by Jews in 1932 changed its name in 1950 to The Jerusalem Post The term Arab Jews can include Jews with Palestinian heritage and Israeli citizenship although some Arab Jews prefer to be called Mizrahi Jews Non Jewish Arab citizens of Israel with Palestinian heritage identify themselves as Arabs or Palestinians 86 These non Jewish Arab Israelis thus include those that are Palestinian by heritage but Israeli by citizenship 87 The Palestinian National Charter as amended by the PLO s Palestinian National Council in July 1968 defined Palestinians as those Arab nationals who until 1947 normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or stayed there Anyone born after that date of a Palestinian father whether in Palestine or outside it is also a Palestinian 88 Note that Arab nationals is not religious specific and it includes not only the Arabic speaking Muslims of Palestine but also the Arab Christians and other religious communities of Palestine who were at that time Arabic speakers such as the Samaritans and Druze Thus the Jews of Palestine were are also included although limited only to the Arabic speaking Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the pre state Zionist invasion The Charter also states that Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate is an indivisible territorial unit 88 89 OriginsMain articles Origin of the Palestinians and Demographic history of Palestine region The origins of Palestinians are complex and diverse The region was not originally Arab its Arabization was a consequence of the gradual inclusion of Palestine within the rapidly expanding Islamic Caliphates established by Arabian tribes and their local allies Like in other Arabized Arab nations the Arab identity of Palestinians largely based on linguistic and cultural affiliation is independent of the existence of any actual Arabian origins 90 nbsp Palestinian mother and childPalestine has undergone many demographic and religious upheavals throughout history During the 2nd millennium BCE it was inhabited by the Canaanites Semitic speaking peoples who practiced the Canaanite religion 91 Palestinians share a strong genetic link to the ancient Canaanites 92 93 The Israelites emerged later as a separate ethnoreligious group in the region 94 Jews eventually formed the majority of the population in Palestine during classical antiquity however the Jewish population in Jerusalem and its surroundings in Judea never fully recovered as a result of the Jewish Roman Wars In the centuries that followed the region experienced political and economic unrest mass conversions to Christianity and subsequent Christianization of the Roman Empire and the religious persecution of minorities 95 96 The immigration of Christians as well as the conversion of pagans Jews and Samaritans contributed to a Christian majority forming in Late Roman and Byzantine Palestine 97 98 99 In the 7th century the Arab Rashiduns conquered the Levant they were later succeeded by other Arab Muslim dynasties including the Umayyads Abbasids and the Fatimids 100 Over the following several centuries the population of Palestine drastically decreased from an estimated 1 million during the Roman and Byzantine periods to about 300 000 by the early Ottoman period 101 102 Over time the existing population adopted Arab culture and language and much converted to Islam 98 The settlement of Arabs before and after the Muslim conquest is thought to have played a role in accelerating the Islamization process 103 104 105 106 Some scholars suggest that by the arrival of the Crusaders Palestine was already overwhelmingly Muslim 107 108 while others claim that it was only after the Crusades that the Christians lost their majority and that the process of mass Islamization took place much later perhaps during the Mamluk period 103 109 For several centuries during the Ottoman period the population in Palestine declined and fluctuated between 150 000 and 250 000 inhabitants and it was only in the 19th century that a rapid population growth began to occur 110 This growth was aided by the immigration of Egyptians during the reigns of Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha and Algerians following Abdelkader El Djezairi s revolt in the first half of the 19th century and the subsequent immigration of Algerians Bosnians and Circassians during the second half of the century 111 112 IdentityMain articles History of the Palestinians Palestinian identity History of Palestinian nationality and Palestinian nationalism Emergence of a distinct identityThe timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement Some argue that it can be traced as far back as the peasants revolt in Palestine in 1834 or even as early as the 17th century while others argue that it did not emerge until after the Mandatory Palestine period 57 113 Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century 57 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 114 The term itself Filasṭini was first introduced by Khalil Beidas in a translation of a Russian work on the Holy Land into Arabic in 1898 After that its usage gradually spread so that by 1908 with the loosening of censorship controls under late Ottoman rule a number of Muslim Christian and Jewish correspondents writing for newspapers began to use the term with great frequency in referring to the Palestinian people ahl ahali Filasṭin Palestinians al Filasṭiniyun the sons of Palestine abna Filasṭin or to Palestinian society al mujtama al filasṭini 115 nbsp Saladin s Falcon the coat of arms and emblem of the Palestinian AuthorityWhatever the differing viewpoints over the timing causal mechanisms and orientation of Palestinian nationalism by the early 20th century strong opposition to Zionism and evidence of a burgeoning nationalistic Palestinian identity is found in the content of Arabic language newspapers in Palestine such as Al Karmil est 1908 and Filasteen est 1911 116 Filasteen initially focused its critique of Zionism around the failure of the Ottoman administration to control Jewish immigration and the large influx of foreigners later exploring the impact of Zionist land purchases on Palestinian peasants Arabic فلاحين fellahin expressing growing concern over land dispossession and its implications for the society at large 116 Historian Rashid Khalidi s 1997 book Palestinian Identity The Construction of Modern National Consciousness is considered a foundational text on the subject 117 He notes that the archaeological strata that denote the history of Palestine encompassing the Biblical Roman Byzantine Umayyad Abbasid Fatimid Crusader Ayyubid Mamluk and Ottoman periods form part of the identity of the modern day Palestinian people as they have come to understand it over the last century 59 Noting that Palestinian identity has never been an exclusive one with Arabism religion and local loyalties playing an important role Khalidi cautions against the efforts of some extreme advocates of Palestinian nationalism to anachronistically read back into history a nationalist consciousness that is in fact relatively modern 118 119 Khalidi argues that the modern national identity of Palestinians has its roots in nationalist discourses that emerged among the peoples of the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century that sharpened following the demarcation of modern nation state boundaries in the Middle East after World War I 119 Khalidi also states that although the challenge posed by Zionism played a role in shaping this identity that it is a serious mistake to suggest that Palestinian identity emerged mainly as a response to Zionism 119 nbsp Khalil Beidas s 1898 use of the word Palestinians in the preface to his translation of Akim Olesnitsky s A Description of the Holy Land 120 Conversely historian James L Gelvin argues that Palestinian nationalism was a direct reaction to Zionism In his book The Israel Palestine Conflict One Hundred Years of War he states that Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement 121 Gelvin argues that this fact does not make the Palestinian identity any less legitimate 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 121 David Seddon writes that t he creation of Palestinian identity in its contemporary sense was formed essentially during the 1960s with the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization He adds however that the existence of a population with a recognizably similar name the Philistines in Biblical times suggests a degree of continuity over a long historical period much as the Israelites of the Bible suggest a long historical continuity in the same region 122 Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S Migdal consider the 1834 Peasants revolt in Palestine as constituting the first formative event of the Palestinian people From 1516 to 1917 Palestine was ruled by the Ottoman Empire save a decade from the 1830s to the 1840s when an Egyptian vassal of the Ottomans Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim Pasha successfully broke away from Ottoman leadership and conquering territory spreading from Egypt to as far north as Damascus asserted their own rule over the area The so called Peasants Revolt by Palestine s Arabs was precipitated by heavy demands for conscripts The local leaders and urban notables were unhappy about the loss of traditional privileges while the peasants were well aware that conscription was little more than a death sentence Starting in May 1834 the rebels took many cities among them Jerusalem Hebron and Nablus and Ibrahim Pasha s army was deployed defeating the last rebels on 4 August in Hebron 123 Benny Morris argues that the Arabs in Palestine nevertheless remained part of a larger national pan Arab or alternatively pan Islamist movement 124 Walid Khalidi argues otherwise writing that Palestinians in Ottoman times were a cutely aware of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history and a lthough proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them 125 nbsp A 1930 protest in Jerusalem against the British Mandate by Palestinian women The sign reads No dialogue no negotiations until termination of the Mandate Zachary J Foster argued in a 2015 Foreign Affairs article that based on hundreds of manuscripts Islamic court records books magazines and newspapers from the Ottoman period 1516 1918 it seems that the first Arab to use the term Palestinian was Farid Georges Kassab a Beirut based Orthodox Christian He explained further that Kassab s 1909 book Palestine Hellenism and Clericalism noted in passing that the Orthodox Palestinian Ottomans call themselves Arabs and are in fact Arabs despite describing the Arabic speakers of Palestine as Palestinians throughout the rest of the book 126 Bernard Lewis argues it was not as a Palestinian nation that the Arabs of Ottoman Palestine objected to Zionists since the very concept of such a nation was unknown to the Arabs of the area at the time and did not come into being until very much later Even the concept of Arab nationalism in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire had not reached significant proportions before the outbreak of World War I 44 Tamir Sorek a sociologist submits that Although a distinct Palestinian identity can be traced back at least to the middle of the nineteenth century Kimmerling and Migdal 1993 Khalidi 1997b or even to the seventeenth century Gerber 1998 it was not until after World War I that a broad range of optional political affiliations became relevant for the Arabs of Palestine 113 Israeli historian Efraim Karsh takes the view that the Palestinian identity did not develop until after the 1967 war because the Palestinian exodus expulsion had fractured society so greatly that it was impossible to piece together a national identity Between 1948 and 1967 the Jordanians and other Arab countries hosting Arab refugees from Palestine Israel silenced any expression of Palestinian identity and occupied their lands until Israel s conquests of 1967 The formal annexation of the West Bank by Jordan in 1950 and the subsequent granting of its Palestinian residents Jordanian citizenship further stunted the growth of a Palestinian national identity by integrating them into Jordanian society 127 The idea of a unique Palestinian state distinct from its Arab neighbors was at first rejected by Palestinian representatives The First Congress of Muslim Christian Associations in Jerusalem February 1919 which met for the purpose of selecting a Palestinian Arab representative for the Paris Peace Conference adopted the following resolution We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria as it has never been separated from it at any time We are connected with it by national religious linguistic natural economic and geographical bonds 128 Rise of Palestinian nationalismSee also Palestinian nationalism nbsp UN stamp to commemorate the Palestinian struggleAn independent Palestinian state has not exercised full sovereignty over the land in which the Palestinians have lived during the modern era Palestine was administered by the Ottoman Empire until World War I and then overseen by the British Mandatory authorities Israel was established in parts of Palestine in 1948 and in the wake of the 1948 Arab Israeli War the West Bank was ruled by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt with both countries continuing to administer these areas until Israel occupied them in the Six Day War Historian Avi Shlaim states that the Palestinians lack of sovereignty over the land has been used by Israelis to deny Palestinians their rights to self determination 129 Today the right of the Palestinian people to self determination has been affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly the International Court of Justice 130 and several Israeli authorities 131 A total of 133 countries recognize Palestine as a state 132 However Palestinian sovereignty over the areas claimed as part of the Palestinian state remains limited and the boundaries of the state remain a point of contestation between Palestinians and Israelis British Mandate 1917 1947 Main article Mandatory Palestine nbsp Mandatory Palestine in 1946The first Palestinian nationalist organizations emerged at the end of the World War I 133 Two political factions emerged al Muntada al Adabi dominated by the Nashashibi family militated for the promotion of the Arabic language and culture for the defense of Islamic values and for an independent Syria and Palestine In Damascus al Nadi al Arabi dominated by the Husayni family defended the same values 134 Article 22 of The Covenant of the League of Nations conferred an international legal status upon the territories and people which had ceased to be under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire as part of a sacred trust of civilization Article 7 of the League of Nations Mandate required the establishment of a new separate Palestinian nationality for the inhabitants This meant that Palestinians did not become British citizens and that Palestine was not annexed into the British dominions 135 The Mandate document divided the population into Jewish and non Jewish and Britain the Mandatory Power considered the Palestinian population to be composed of religious not national groups Consequently government censuses in 1922 and 1931 would categorize Palestinians confessionally as Muslims Christians and Jews with the category of Arab absent 136 nbsp Musa Alami 1897 1984 was a Palestinian nationalist and politician viewed in the 1940s as the leader of the PalestiniansThe articles of the Mandate mentioned the civil and religious rights of the non Jewish communities in Palestine but not their political status At the San Remo conference it was decided to accept the text of those articles while inserting in the minutes of the conference an undertaking by the Mandatory Power that this would not involve the surrender of any of the rights hitherto enjoyed by the non Jewish communities in Palestine In 1922 the British authorities over Mandatory Palestine proposed a draft constitution that would have granted the Palestinian Arabs representation in a Legislative Council on condition that they accept the terms of the mandate The Palestine Arab delegation rejected the proposal as wholly unsatisfactory noting that the People of Palestine could not accept the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the constitution s preamble as the basis for discussions They further took issue with the designation of Palestine as a British colony of the lowest order 137 The Arabs tried to get the British to offer an Arab legal establishment again roughly ten years later but to no avail 138 After the British general Louis Bols read out the Balfour Declaration in February 1920 some 1 500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem 139 A month later during the 1920 Nebi Musa riots the protests against British rule and Jewish immigration became violent and Bols banned all demonstrations In May 1921 however further anti Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa and dozens of Arabs and Jews were killed in the confrontations 139 After the 1920 Nebi Musa riots the San Remo conference and the failure of Faisal to establish the Kingdom of Greater Syria a distinctive form of Palestinian Arab nationalism took root between April and July 1920 140 141 With the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria coupled with the British conquest and administration of Palestine the formerly pan Syrianist mayor of Jerusalem Musa Qasim Pasha al Husayni said Now after the recent events in Damascus we have to effect a complete change in our plans here Southern Syria no longer exists We must defend Palestine 142 Conflict between Palestinian nationalists and various types of pan Arabists continued during the British Mandate but the latter became increasingly marginalized Two prominent leaders of the Palestinian nationalists were Mohammad Amin al Husayni Grand Mufti of Jerusalem appointed by the British and Izz ad Din al Qassam 139 After the killing of sheikh Izz ad Din al Qassam by the British in 1935 his followers initiated the 1936 39 Arab revolt in Palestine which began with a general strike in Jaffa and attacks on Jewish and British installations in Nablus 139 The Arab Higher Committee called for a nationwide general strike non payment of taxes and the closure of municipal governments and demanded an end to Jewish immigration and a ban of the sale of land to Jews By the end of 1936 the movement had become a national revolt and resistance grew during 1937 and 1938 In response the British declared martial law dissolved the Arab High Committee and arrested officials from the Supreme Muslim Council who were behind the revolt By 1939 5 000 Arabs had been killed in British attempts to quash the revolt more than 15 000 were wounded 139 War 1947 1949 Main article 1948 Arab Israeli War nbsp Abd al Qadir al Husayni leader of the Army of the Holy War in 1948In November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan which divided the mandate of Palestine into two states one majority Arab and one majority Jewish The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and attacked Jewish civilian areas and paramilitary targets Following Israel s declaration of independence in May 1948 five Arab armies Lebanon Egypt Syria Iraq and Transjordan came to the Palestinian Arabs aid against the newly founded State of Israel 143 The Palestinian Arabs suffered such a major defeat at the end of the war that the term they use to describe the war is Nakba the catastrophe 144 Israel took control of much of the territory that would have been allocated to the Arab state had the Palestinian Arabs accepted the UN partition plan 143 Along with a military defeat hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from what became the State of Israel Israel did not allow the Palestinian refugees of the war to return to Israel 145 nbsp Boundaries defined in the 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine Area assigned for a Jewish state Area assigned for an Arab state Planned Corpus separatum with the intention that Jerusalem would be neither Jewish nor ArabArmistice Demarcation Lines of 1949 Green Line Israeli controlled territory from 1949 Egyptian and Jordanian controlled territory from 1948 until 1967 Lost years 1949 1967 After the war there was a hiatus in Palestinian political activity Khalidi attributes this to the traumatic events of 1947 49 which included the depopulation of over 400 towns and villages and the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees 146 418 villages had been razed 46 367 buildings 123 schools 1 233 mosques 8 churches and 68 holy shrines many with a long history destroyed by Israeli forces 147 In addition Palestinians lost from 1 5 to 2 million acres of land an estimated 150 000 urban and rural homes and 23 000 commercial structures such as shops and offices 148 Recent estimates of the cost to Palestinians in property confiscations by Israel from 1948 onwards has concluded that Palestinians have suffered a net 300 billion loss in assets 62 Those parts of British Mandatory Palestine which did not become part of the newly declared Israeli state were occupied by Egypt or annexed by Jordan At the Jericho Conference on 1 December 1948 2 000 Palestinian delegates supported a resolution calling for the unification of Palestine and Transjordan as a step toward full Arab unity 149 During what Khalidi terms the lost years that followed Palestinians lacked a center of gravity divided as they were between these countries and others such as Syria Lebanon and elsewhere 150 In the 1950s a new generation of Palestinian nationalist groups and movements began to organize clandestinely stepping out onto the public stage in the 1960s 151 The traditional Palestinian elite who had dominated negotiations with the British and the Zionists in the Mandate and who were largely held responsible for the loss of Palestine were replaced by these new movements whose recruits generally came from poor to middle class backgrounds and were often students or recent graduates of universities in Cairo Beirut and Damascus 151 The potency of the pan Arabist ideology put forward by Gamal Abdel Nasser popular among Palestinians for whom Arabism was already an important component of their identity 152 tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab states it subsumed 153 1967 present See also Six Day WarSince 1967 Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have lived under military occupation creating according to Avram Bornstein a carceralization of their society 154 In the meantime pan Arabism has waned as an aspect of Palestinian identity The Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank triggered a second Palestinian exodus and fractured Palestinian political and militant groups prompting them to give up residual hopes in pan Arabism They rallied increasingly around the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO which had been formed in Cairo in 1964 The group grew in popularity in the following years especially under the nationalistic orientation of the leadership of Yasser Arafat 155 Mainstream secular Palestinian nationalism was grouped together under the umbrella of the PLO whose constituent organizations include Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine among other groups who at that time believed that political violence was the only way to liberate Palestine 59 These groups gave voice to a tradition that emerged in the 1960s that argues Palestinian nationalism has deep historical roots with extreme advocates reading a Palestinian nationalist consciousness and identity back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries and even millennia when such a consciousness is in fact relatively modern 156 nbsp Yasser Arafat Nayef Hawatmeh and Kamal Nasser in a Jordan press conference in Amman 1970The Battle of Karameh and the events of Black September in Jordan contributed to growing Palestinian support for these groups particularly among Palestinians in exile Concurrently among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip a new ideological theme known as sumud represented the Palestinian political strategy popularly adopted from 1967 onward As a concept closely related to the land agriculture and indigenousness the ideal image of the Palestinian put forward at this time was that of the peasant in Arabic fellah who stayed put on his land refusing to leave A strategy more passive than that adopted by the Palestinian fedayeen sumud provided an important subtext to the narrative of the fighters in symbolizing continuity and connections with the land with peasantry and a rural way of life 157 In 1974 the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Arab nation states and was granted observer status as a national liberation movement by the United Nations that same year 60 158 Israel rejected the resolution calling it shameful 159 In a speech to the Knesset Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon outlined the government s view that No one can expect us to recognize the terrorist organization called the PLO as representing the Palestinians because it does not No one can expect us to negotiate with the heads of terror gangs who through their ideology and actions endeavor to liquidate the State of Israel 159 In 1975 the United Nations established a subsidiary organ the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People to recommend a program of implementation to enable the Palestinian people to exercise national independence and their rights to self determination without external interference national independence and sovereignty and to return to their homes and property 160 nbsp Protest for Palestine in TunisiaThe First Intifada 1987 93 was the first popular uprising against the Israeli occupation of 1967 Followed by the PLO s 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine these developments served to further reinforce the Palestinian national identity After the Gulf War in 1991 Kuwaiti authorities forcibly pressured nearly 200 000 Palestinians to leave Kuwait 161 The policy which partly led to this exodus was a response to the alignment of PLO leader Yasser Arafat with Saddam Hussein The Oslo Accords the first Israeli Palestinian interim peace agreement were signed in 1993 The process was envisioned to last five years ending in June 1999 when the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area began The expiration of this term without the recognition by Israel of the Palestinian State and without the effective termination of the occupation was followed by the Second Intifada in 2000 162 163 The second intifada was more violent than the first 164 The International Court of Justice observed that since the government of Israel had decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people their existence was no longer an issue The court noted that the Israeli Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of 28 September 1995 also referred a number of times to the Palestinian people and its legitimate rights 165 According to Thomas Giegerich with respect to the Palestinian people s right to form a sovereign independent state The right of self determination gives the Palestinian people collectively the inalienable right freely to determine its political status while Israel having recognized the Palestinians as a separate people is obliged to promote and respect this right in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations 166 Following the failures of the Second Intifada a younger generation is emerging that cares less about nationalist ideology than about economic growth This has been a source of tension between some of the Palestinian political leadership and Palestinian business professionals who desire economic cooperation with Israelis At an international conference in Bahrain Palestinian businessman Ashraf Jabari said I have no problem working with Israel It is time to move on The Palestinian Authority does not want peace They told the families of the businessmen that they are wanted by police for participating in the Bahrain workshop 167 DemographicsMain articles Demographics of the Palestinian territories Demographics of Israel and Demographics of Jordan Country or region PopulationPalestinian Territories Gaza Strip and West Bank including East Jerusalem 4 420 549 168 Jordan 2 700 000 169 Israel 1 318 000 170 Chile 500 000 largest community outside the Middle East 171 172 173 Syria 434 896 174 Lebanon 405 425 174 Saudi Arabia 327 000 170 The Americas 225 000 175 Egypt 44 200 175 Kuwait approx 40 000 170 Other Gulf states 159 000 170 Other Arab states 153 000 170 Other countries 308 000 170 TOTAL 10 574 521In the absence of a comprehensive census including all Palestinian diaspora populations and those that have remained within what was British Mandate Palestine exact population figures are difficult to determine The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics PCBS announced at the end of 2015 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2015 was 12 37 million of which the number still residing within historic Palestine was 6 22 million 176 In 2022 Arnon Soffer estimated that in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine now encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip there s a Palestinian population of 7 503 million making up 51 16 of the total population 177 178 Within Israel proper Palestinians constitute almost 21 percent of the population as part of its Arab citizens 47 In 2005 a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American Israel Demographic Research Group AIDRG 179 In their report 180 they claimed that several errors in the PCBS methodology and assumptions artificially inflated the numbers by a total of 1 3 million The PCBS numbers were cross checked against a variety of other sources e g asserted birth rates based on fertility rate assumptions for a given year were checked against Palestinian Ministry of Health figures as well as Ministry of Education school enrollment figures six years later immigration numbers were checked against numbers collected at border crossings etc The errors claimed in their analysis included birth rate errors 308 000 immigration amp emigration errors 310 000 failure to account for migration to Israel 105 000 double counting Jerusalem Arabs 210 000 counting former residents now living abroad 325 000 and other discrepancies 82 000 The results of their research was also presented before the United States House of Representatives on 8 March 2006 181 The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 182 DellaPergola accused the authors of the AIDRG report of misunderstanding basic principles of demography on account of their lack of expertise in the subject but he also acknowledged that he did not take into account the emigration of Palestinians and thinks it has to be examined as well as the birth and mortality statistics of the Palestinian Authority 183 He also accused AIDRG of selective use of data and multiple systematic errors in their analysis claiming that the authors assumed the Palestinian Electoral registry to be complete even though registration is voluntary and they used an unrealistically low Total Fertility Ratio a statistical abstraction of births per woman to reanalyse that data in a typical circular mistake DellaPergola estimated the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza at the end of 2005 as 3 33 million or 3 57 million if East Jerusalem is included These figures are only slightly lower than the official Palestinian figures 182 The Israeli Civil Administration put the number of Palestinians in the West Bank at 2 657 029 as of May 2012 184 185 The AIDRG study was also criticized by Ian Lustick who accused its authors of multiple methodological errors and a political agenda 186 In 2009 at the request of the PLO Jordan revoked the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians to keep them from remaining permanently in the country 187 Many Palestinians have settled in the United States particularly in the Chicago area 188 189 In total an estimated 600 000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre dated the Arab Israeli conflict but continued to grow thereafter 190 Many emigrants were from the Bethlehem area Those emigrating to Latin America were mainly Christian Half of those of Palestinian origin in Latin America live in Chile 8 El Salvador 191 and Honduras 192 also have substantial Palestinian populations These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry Antonio Saca in El Salvador and Carlos Roberto Flores in Honduras Belize which has a smaller Palestinian population has a Palestinian minister Said Musa 193 Schafik Jorge Handal Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader was the son of Palestinian immigrants 194 Refugees nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp nbsp 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