Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48]
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[54] the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt.[55][56] Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the "Syrians of Palestine" or "Palestinian-Syrians",[57] an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians.[58][59] Herodotus makes no distinction between the inhabitants of Palestine.[60]
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.[65][66][67] Jacobson suggested the change to be rationalized by the fact that the new province was far larger.[68] The name was thenceforth inscribed on coins, and beginning in the fifth century, mentioned in rabbinic texts.[65][69][70] 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.[71]
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.[72][73] The Palestinian Arab Christian Falastin newspaper had addressed its readers as Palestinians since its inception in 1911 during the Ottoman period.[74][75]
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".[76] 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 Palestinian Arab Christian Falastin newspaper addressed its readers as "Palestinians" since its establishment in 1911.[74]
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.[77] These non-Jewish Arab Israelis thus include those that are Palestinian by heritage but Israeli by citizenship.[78]
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."[79] 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."[79][80]
Historical records and later genetic studies indicate that the Palestinian people descend mostly from Ancient Levantines extending back to Bronze Age inhabitants of Levant.[81][82][83][84][85][86][87] According to Palestinian historian Nazmi Al-Ju'beh like in other Arab nations, the Arab identity of Palestinians, largely based on linguistic and cultural affiliation, is independent of the existence of any actual Arabian origins.[88] Palestinians are sometimes described as indigenous.[34] In a human rights context, the word indigenous may have different definitions; the UN Commission on Human Rights uses several criteria to define this term.[89][b]
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.[107] 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.[108][109] Over time, the existing population adopted Arab culture and language and much converted to Islam.[104] The settlement of Arabs before and after the Muslim conquest is thought to have played a role in accelerating the Islamization process.[110][111][112][113] Some scholars suggest that by the arrival of the Crusaders, Palestine was already overwhelmingly Muslim,[114][115] 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.[110][116]
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.[117] 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.[118][119]
Genetic studies indicate a genetic affinity between Palestinians and other Arab and Semitic groups in the Middle East and North Africa.[84][124] Recent research suggests a genetic continuity between modern Palestinians and ancient Levantine populations, evidenced by their clustering with the Bronze-Age population of Canaan.[82] Variations have been noted between Muslim and Christian Palestinians.[125] Additionally, there are indications within Palestinian populations of maternal gene flow from Sub-Saharan Africa, possibly linked to historical migrations or the Arab slave trade.[126] Genetic studies have also shown a genetic relationship between Palestinians and Jews.[127][128][83] A 2023 study looking at the whole genomes of world populations found that the Palestinian samples clustered in the "Middle Eastern genomic group", which included samples such as Samaritan, Bedouin, Jordanian, Iraqi Jew and Yemenite Jew samples.[129]
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national identity 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.[42][130] Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century,[42] 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.[131] 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).[132]
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).[133] 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.[133]
Historian Rashid Khalidi's 1997 book Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness is considered a "foundational text" on the subject.[134] 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.[45] 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".[135][136]
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.[136] 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."[136]
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."[138] 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."[138]
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)."[139]
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.[140]Benny Morris argues that the Arabs in Palestine nevertheless remained part of a larger national pan-Arab or, alternatively, pan-Islamist movement.[141]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."[142]
A 1930 Palestinian women's protest in Jerusalem against the British Mandate. 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."[143]
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."[130]
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.[144]
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."[145]
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.[146]
Today, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination has been affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly, the International Court of Justice[147] and several Israeli authorities.[148] A total of 133 countries recognize Palestine as a state.[149] 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.[150] 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.[151]
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.[152] 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.[153]
Musa Alami (1897–1984) was a Palestinian nationalist and politician, viewed in the 1940s as a 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."[154] The Arabs tried to get the British to offer an Arab legal establishment again roughly ten years later, but to no avail.[155]
After the British general, Louis Bols, read out the Balfour Declaration in February 1920, some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem.[156]
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.[156]
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.[157][158] 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".[159]
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.[156] 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.[156] 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.[156]
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.[160]
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").[161] 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.[160] 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.[162]
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.[163] 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.[164] 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.[165] 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.[48]
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".[166] 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.[167]
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.[168] 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.[168] 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[169]—tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab states it subsumed.[170]
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.[171] 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.[172] 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.[45] 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.[173]
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."[174]
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.[46][175] Israel rejected the resolution, calling it "shameful".[176] 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."[176]
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.[177]
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.[178] 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.[179][180] The second intifada was more violent than the first.[181] 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".[182] 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".[183]
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."[184]
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.[193] 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.[194][195] Within Israel proper, Palestinians constitute almost 21 percent of the population as part of its Arab citizens.[50]
In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG).[196] In their report,[197] 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.[198]
The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[199] 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.[200]
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.[199] The Israeli Civil Administration put the number of Palestinians in the West Bank at 2,657,029 as of May 2012.[201][202]
The AIDRG study was also criticized by Ian Lustick, who accused its authors of multiple methodological errors and a political agenda.[203]
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."[204]
Many Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.[205][206]
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.[207] 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.[10]El Salvador[208] and Honduras[209] 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.[210]Schafik Jorge Handal, Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.[211]
In 2006, there were 4,255,120 Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This number includes the descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war, but excludes those who have since then emigrated to areas outside of UNRWA's remit.[191] Based on these figures, almost half of all Palestinians are registered refugees. The 993,818 Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and 705,207 Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, who hail from towns and villages now located within the borders of Israel, are included in these figures.[212]
Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank are organized according to a refugee family's village or place of origin. Among the first things that children born in the camps learn is the name of their village of origin. David McDowall writes that, "[...] a yearning for Palestine permeates the whole refugee community and is most ardently espoused by the younger refugees, for whom home exists only in the imagination."[215]
Israeli policy to prevent the refugees from returning to their homes was initially formulated by David Ben Gurion and Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund was formally adopted by the Israeli cabinet in June 1948.[216] In December of that year the UN adopted resolution 194, which resolved "that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible."[217][218][219] Despite much of the international community, including the US President Harry Truman, insisting that the repatriation of Palestinian refugees was essential, Israel refused to accept the principle.[219] In the intervening years Israel has consistently refused to change its position and has introduced further legislation to hinder Palestinians refugees from returning and reclaiming their land and confiscated property.[218][219]
In keeping with an Arab League resolution in 1965, most Arab countries have refused to grant citizenship to Palestinians, arguing that it would be a threat to their right of return to their homes in Palestine.[218][220] In 2012, Egypt deviated from this practice by granting citizenship to 50,000 Palestinians, mostly from the Gaza Strip.[220]
Palestinians living in Lebanon are deprived of basic civil rights. They cannot own homes or land and are barred from becoming lawyers, engineers and doctors.[221]
The majority of Palestinians are Muslim,[222] the vast majority of whom are followers of the Sunni branch of Islam,[223] with a small minority of Ahmadiyya.[224]Palestinian Christians represent a significant minority of 6%, and belong to several denominations, followed by much smaller religious communities, including Druze and Samaritans. Palestinian Jews – considered Palestinian by the Palestinian National Charter adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which defined them as those "Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion" – today identify as Israelis[225] (with the exception of a very few individuals). Palestinian Jews almost universally abandoned any such identity after the establishment of Israel and their incorporation into the Israeli Jewish population, which was originally composed of Jewish immigrants from around the world.
Until the end of the 19th century, cross-cultural syncretism between Islamic and Christian symbols and figures in religious practice was common in the Palestinian countryside, where most villages did not have local mosques or churches.[226] Popular feast days, such as Thursday of the Dead, were celebrated by both Muslims and Christians and shared prophets and saints include Jonah, who is venerated in Halhul as both a Biblical and Islamic prophet, and St. George, who is known in Arabic as al-Khdir. Villagers would pay tribute to local patron saints at maqams – domed single rooms often placed in the shadow of an ancient carob or oak tree; many of them are rooted in Jewish, Samaritan, Christian and sometimes pagan traditions.[227] Saints, taboo by the standards of orthodox Islam, mediated between man and God, and shrines to saints and holy men dotted the Palestinian landscape.[226] Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, states that this built evidence constitutes "an architectural testimony to Christian/Moslem Palestinian religious sensibility and its roots in ancient Semitic religions."[226]
Religion as constitutive of individual identity was accorded a minor role within Palestinian social structure until the latter half of the 19th century.[226] Jean Moretain, a priest writing in 1848, wrote that a Christian in Palestine was "distinguished only by the fact that he belonged to a particular clan. If a certain tribe was Christian, then an individual would be Christian, but without knowledge of what distinguished his faith from that of a Muslim."[226]
The concessions granted to France and other Western powers by the Ottoman Sultanate in the aftermath of the Crimean War had a significant impact on contemporary Palestinian religious cultural identity.[226] Religion was transformed into an element "constituting the individual/collective identity in conformity with orthodox precepts", and formed a major building block in the political development of Palestinian nationalism.[226]
The British census of 1922 registered 752,048 inhabitants in Palestine, consisting of 660,641 Palestinian Arabs (Muslim and Christian Arabs), 83,790 Palestinian Jews, and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The corresponding percentage breakdown is 87% Muslim and Christian Arab and 11% Jewish.[228]
The Druze became Israeli citizens and Druze males serve in the Israel Defense Forces, though some individuals identify as "Palestinian Druze".[232] According to Salih al-Shaykh, most Druze do not consider themselves to be Palestinian: "their Arab identity emanates in the main from the common language and their socio-cultural background, but is detached from any national political conception. It is not directed at Arab countries or Arab nationality or the Palestinian people, and does not express sharing any fate with them. From this point of view, their identity is Israel, and this identity is stronger than their Arab identity".[233]
There are also about 350 Samaritans who carry Palestinian identity cards and live in the West Bank while a roughly equal number live in Holon and carry Israeli citizenship.[234] Those who live in the West Bank also are represented in the legislature for the Palestinian National Authority.[234] They are commonly referred to among Palestinians as the "Jews of Palestine", and maintain their own unique cultural identity.[234]
Jews who identify as Palestinian Jews are few, but include Israeli Jews who are part of the Neturei Karta group,[235] and Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen and self-described Palestinian Jew (who converted to Islam in 2008 in order to marry Miyassar Abu Ali) who serves as an observer member in the Palestine National Council.[236]
Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith spent his last years in Acre, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He remained there for 24 years, where a shrine was erected in his honor.[237][238]
Palestinian Eastern Orthodox priest from Jerusalem with his family of three generations, circa 1893
Current demographics
According to the PCBS, there are an estimated 4,816,503 Palestinians in the Palestinian territories as of 2016[update], of whom 2,935,368 live in the West Bank and 1,881,135 in the Gaza Strip.[185] According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, there were 1,658,000 Arab citizens of Israel as of 2013.[239] Both figures include Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
In 2008, Minority Rights Group International estimated the number of Palestinians in Jordan to be about 3 million.[240] The UNRWA put their number at 2.3 million as of 2024[update].[6]
Areen Omari, a Palestinian actress and producer, attends a motion picture ceremony
Palestinian Arabic is a subgroup of the broader Levantine Arabic dialect. Prior to the 7th century Islamic Conquest and Arabization of the Levant, the primary languages spoken in Palestine, among the predominantly Christian and Jewish communities, were Aramaic, Greek, and Syriac.[241]Arabic was also spoken in some areas.[242] Palestinian Arabic, like other variations of the Levantine dialect, exhibits substantial influences in lexicon from Aramaic.[243]
Palestinian Arabic has three primary sub-variations, Rural, Urban, and Bedouin, with the pronunciation of the Qāf serving as a shibboleth to distinguish between the three main Palestinian sub-dialects: The urban variety notes a [Q] sound, while the rural variety (spoken in the villages around major cities) have a [K] for the [Q]. The Bedouin variety of Palestine (spoken mainly in the southern region and along the Jordan valley) use a [G] instead of [Q].[244]
Barbara McKean Parmenter has noted that the Arabs of Palestine have been credited with the preservation of the original Semitic place names of many sites mentioned in the Bible, as was documented by the American geographer Edward Robinson in the 19th century.[245]
Palestinians who live or work in Israel generally can also speak Modern Hebrew, as do some who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Palestinian schoolgirlsPalestinian students and John Kerry
The literacy rate of Palestine was 96.3% according to a 2014 report by the United Nations Development Programme, which is high by international standards. There is a gender difference in the population aged above 15 with 5.9% of women considered illiterate compared to 1.6% of men.[246] Illiteracy among women has fallen from 20.3% in 1997 to less than 6% in 2014.[246]
Palestinian intellectuals, among them May Ziadeh and Khalil Beidas, were an integral part of the Arab intelligentsia.[when?] Educational levels among Palestinians have traditionally been high. In the 1960s the West Bank had a higher percentage of its adolescent population enrolled in high school education than did Lebanon.[247]Claude Cheysson, France's Minister for Foreign Affairs under the first Mitterrand Presidency, held in the mid-eighties that, 'even thirty years ago, (Palestinians) probably already had the largest educated elite of all the Arab peoples.'[248]
Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, has critiqued Muslim historiography for assigning the beginning of Palestinian cultural identity to the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In describing the effect of such historiography, he writes:
Pagan origins are disavowed. As such the peoples who populated Palestine throughout history have discursively rescinded their own history and religion as they adopted the religion, language, and culture of Islam.[226]
That the peasant culture of the large fellahin class showed features of cultures other than Islam was a conclusion arrived at by some Western scholars and explorers who mapped and surveyed Palestine during the latter half of the 19th century,[252] and these ideas were to influence 20th-century debates on Palestinian identity by local and international ethnographers.
The contributions of the 'nativist' ethnographies produced by Tawfiq Canaan and other Palestinian writers and published in The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (1920–48) were driven by the concern that the "native culture of Palestine", and in particular peasant society, was being undermined by the forces of modernity.[253] Salim Tamari writes that:
Implicit in their scholarship (and made explicit by Canaan himself) was another theme, namely that the peasants of Palestine represent—through their folk norms ... the living heritage of all the accumulated ancient cultures that had appeared in Palestine (principally the Canaanite, Philistine, Hebraic, Nabatean, Syrio-Aramaic and Arab).[253]
Palestinian culture is closely related to those of the nearby Levantine countries such as Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, and the Arab World. Cultural contributions to the fields of art, literature, music, costume and cuisine express the characteristics of the Palestinian experience and show signs of common origin despite the geographical separation between the Palestinian territories, Israel and the diaspora.[254][255][256]
Palestine's history of rule by many different empires is reflected in Palestinian cuisine, which has benefited from various cultural contributions and exchanges. Generally speaking, modern Syrian-Palestinian dishes have been influenced by the rule of three major Islamic groups: the Arabs, the Persian-influenced Arabs and the Turks.[257] The Arabs who conquered Syria and Palestine had simple culinary traditions primarily based on the use of rice, lamb and yogurt, as well as dates.[258] The already simple cuisine did not advance for centuries due to Islam's strict rules of parsimony and restraint, until the rise of the Abbasids, who established Baghdad as their capital. Baghdad was historically located on Persian soil and henceforth, Persian culture was integrated into Arab culture during the 9th–11th centuries and spread throughout central areas of the empire.[257]
There are several foods native to Palestine that are well known in the Arab world, such as, kinafe Nabulsi, Nabulsi cheese (cheese of Nablus), Ackawi cheese (cheese of Acre) and musakhan. Kinafe originated in Nablus, as well as the sweetened Nabulsi cheese used to fill it.[citation needed] Another very popular food is Palestinian Kofta or Kufta.[259]
Mezze describes an assortment of dishes laid out on the table for a meal that takes place over several hours, a characteristic common to Mediterranean cultures. Some common mezze dishes are hummus, tabouleh,baba ghanoush, labaneh, and zate 'u zaatar, which is the pita bread dipping of olive oil and ground thyme and sesame seeds.[260]
Entrées that are eaten throughout the Palestinian territories, include waraq al-'inib – boiled grape leaves wrapped around cooked rice and ground lamb. Mahashi is an assortment of stuffed vegetables such as, zucchinis, potatoes, cabbage and in Gaza, chard.[261]
Palestinian cinematography, relatively young compared to Arab cinema overall, receives much European and Israeli support.[263] Palestinian films are not exclusively produced in Arabic; some are made in English, French or Hebrew.[264] More than 800 films have been produced about Palestinians, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and other related topics.[citation needed] Examples include Divine Intervention and Paradise Now.
A wide variety of handicrafts, many of which have been produced in the area of Palestine for hundreds of years, continue to be produced today. Palestinian handicrafts include embroidery and weaving, pottery-making, soap-making, glass-making, and olive-wood and Mother of Pearl carvings, among others.[265][266]
Foreign travelers to Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries often commented on the rich variety of costumes among the area's inhabitants, and particularly among the fellaheen or village women. Until the 1940s, a woman's economic status, whether married or single, and the town or area they were from could be deciphered by most Palestinian women by the type of cloth, colors, cut, and embroidery motifs, or lack thereof, used for the robe-like dress or "thoub" in Arabic.[267]
New styles began to appear in the 1960s. For example, the "six-branched dress" named after the six wide bands of embroidery running down from the waist.[268] These styles came from the refugee camps, particularly after 1967. Individual village styles were lost and replaced by an identifiable "Palestinian" style.[269] The shawal, a style popular in the West Bank and Jordan before the First Intifada, probably evolved from one of the many welfare embroidery projects in the refugee camps. It was a shorter and narrower fashion, with a western cut.[270]
A woman from Bethlehem, c. 1940s.
Young woman of Ramallah wearing dowry headdress, c. 1898–1914
Palestinian literature forms part of the wider genre of Arabic literature. Unlike its Arabic counterparts, Palestinian literature is defined by national affiliation rather than territorially. For example, Egyptian literature is the literature produced in Egypt. This too was the case for Palestinian literature up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, but following the Palestinian Exodus of 1948 it has become "a literature written by Palestinians" regardless of their residential status.[271][272]
Contemporary Palestinian literature is often characterized by its heightened sense of irony and the exploration of existential themes and issues of identity.[272] References to the subjects of resistance to occupation, exile, loss, and love and longing for homeland are also common.[273] Palestinian literature can be intensely political, as underlined by writers such as Salma Khadra Jayyusi and novelist Liana Badr, who have mentioned the need to give expression to the Palestinian "collective identity" and the "just case" of their struggle.[274] There is also resistance to this school of thought, whereby Palestinian artists have "rebelled" against the demand that their art be "committed".[274] Poet Mourid Barghouti for example, has often said that "poetry is not a civil servant, it's not a soldier, it's in nobody's employ."[274]Rula Jebreal's novel Miral tells the story of Hind al-Husseini's effort to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Deir Yassin massacre,[275][276] and the establishment of the state of Israel.
Since 1967, most critics have theorized the existence of three "branches" of Palestinian literature, loosely divided by geographic location: 1) from inside Israel, 2) from the occupied territories, 3) from among the Palestinian diaspora throughout the Middle East.[277]
Hannah Amit-Kochavi recognizes only two branches: that written by Palestinians from inside the State of Israel as distinct from that written outside (ibid., p. 11).[271] She also posits a temporal distinction between literature produced before 1948 and that produced thereafter.[271] In a 2003 article published in Studies in the Humanities, Steven Salaita posits a fourth branch made up of English language works, particularly those written by Palestinians in the United States, which he defines as "writing rooted in diasporic countries but focused in theme and content on Palestine."[277]
Poetry, using classical pre-Islamic forms, remains an extremely popular art form, often attracting Palestinian audiences in the thousands. Until 20 years ago, local folk bards reciting traditional verses were a feature of every Palestinian town.[278] After the 1948 Palestinian exodus and discrimination by neighboring Arab countries, poetry was transformed into a vehicle for political activism.[161] From among those Palestinians who became Arab citizens of Israel after the passage of the Citizenship Law in 1952, a school of resistance poetry was born that included poets including Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Zayyad.[278] The work of these poets was largely unknown to the wider Arab world for years because of the lack of diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab governments. The situation changed after Ghassan Kanafani, another Palestinian writer in exile in Lebanon, published an anthology of their work in 1966.[278] Palestinian poets often write about the common theme of a strong affection and sense of loss and longing for a lost homeland.[278] Among the new generation of Palestinian writers, the work of Nathalie Handal an award-winning poet, playwright, and editor has been widely published in literary journals and magazines and has been translated into twelve languages.[279]
Samah Sabawi is a Palestinian dramatist, writer and journalist.
Palestinian folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of Palestinian culture. There was a folklorist revival among Palestinian intellectuals such as Nimr Sirhan, Musa Allush, Salim Mubayyid, and the Palestinian Folklore Society during the 1970s. This group attempted to establish pre-Islamic (and pre-Hebraic) cultural roots for a re-constructed Palestinian national identity. The two putative roots in this patrimony are Canaanite and Jebusite.[253] Such efforts seem to have borne fruit as evidenced in the organization of celebrations including the Qabatiya Canaanite festival and the annual Music Festival of Yabus by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.[253]
Traditional storytelling among Palestinians is prefaced with an invitation to the listeners to give blessings to God and the Prophet Mohammed or the Virgin Mary as the case may be, and includes the traditional opening: "There was, or there was not, in the oldness of time..."[278][280] Formulaic elements of the stories share much in common with the wider Arab world, though the rhyming scheme is distinct. There are a cast of supernatural characters: djinns who can cross the Seven Seas in an instant, giants, and ghouls with eyes of ember and teeth of brass. Stories invariably have a happy ending, and the storyteller will usually finish off with a rhyme like: "The bird has taken flight, God bless you tonight", or "Tutu, tutu, finished is my haduttu (story)."[278]
Palestinian music is well known throughout the Arab world.[282] After 1948, a new wave of performers emerged with distinctively Palestinian themes relating to dreams of statehood and burgeoning nationalist sentiments. In addition to zajal and ataaba, traditional Palestinian songs include: Bein Al-dawai, Al-Rozana, Zarif – Al-Toul, and Al-Maijana, Dal'ona, Sahja/Saamir, Zaghareet. Over three decades, the Palestinian National Music and Dance Troupe (El Funoun) and Mohsen Subhi have reinterpreted and rearranged traditional wedding songs such as Mish'al (1986), Marj Ibn 'Amer(1989) and Zaghareed (1997).[283]Ataaba is a form of folk singing that consists of four verses, following a specific form and meter. The distinguishing feature of ataaba is that the first three verses end with the same word meaning three different things, and the fourth verse serves as a conclusion. It is usually followed by a dalouna.
Reem Kelani is one of the foremost researchers and performers in the present day of music with a specifically Palestinian narrative and heritage.[284] Her 2006 debut solo album Sprinting Gazelle – Palestinian Songs from the Motherland and the Diaspora comprised Kelani's research and an arrangement of five traditional Palestinian songs, whilst the other five songs were her own musical settings of popular and resistance poetry by the likes of Mahmoud Darwish, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Rashid Husain and Mahmoud Salim al-Hout.[285] All the songs on the album relate to 'pre-1948 Palestine'.
Palestinian hip hop reportedly started in 1998 with Tamer Nafar's group DAM.[286] These Palestinian youth forged the new Palestinian musical subgenre, which blends Arabic melodies and hip hop beats. Lyrics are often sung in Arabic, Hebrew, English, and sometimes French. Since then, the new Palestinian musical subgenre has grown to include artists in the Palestinian territories, Israel, Great Britain, the United States and Canada.
American radio personality and record producer DJ Khaled, of Palestinian descent
Borrowing from traditional rap music that first emerged in New York in the 1970s, "young Palestinian musicians have tailored the style to express their own grievances with the social and political climate in which they live and work." Palestinian hip hop works to challenge stereotypes and instigate dialogue about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.[287] Palestinian hip-hop artists have been strongly influenced by the messages of American rappers. Tamar Nafar says, "When I heard Tupac sing 'It's a White Man's World' I decided to take hip hop seriously".[288] In addition to the influences from American hip hop, it also includes musical elements from Palestinian and Arabic music including "zajal, mawwal, and saj" which can be likened to Arabic spoken word, as well as including the percussiveness and lyricism of Arabic music.
Historically, music has served as an integral accompaniment to various social and religious rituals and ceremonies in Palestinian society (Al-Taee 47). Much of the Middle-Eastern and Arabic string instruments utilized in classical Palestinian music are sampled over Hip-hop beats in both Israeli and Palestinian hip-hop as part of a joint process of localization. Just as the percussiveness of the Hebrew language is emphasized in Israeli Hip-hop, Palestinian music has always revolved around the rhythmic specificity and smooth melodic tone of Arabic. "Musically speaking, Palestinian songs are usually pure melody performed monophonically with complex vocal ornamentations and strong percussive rhythm beats".[289] The presence of a hand-drum in classical Palestinian music indicates a cultural esthetic conducive to the vocal, verbal and instrumental percussion which serve as the foundational elements of Hip-hop. This hip hop is joining a "longer tradition of revolutionary, underground, Arabic music and political songs that have supported Palestinian Resistance".[288] This subgenre has served as a way to politicize the Palestinian issue through music.
Dance
The Dabke, a Levantine Arab folk dance style whose local Palestinian versions were appropriated by Palestinian nationalism after 1967, has, according to one scholar, possible roots that may go back to ancient Canaanite fertility rites.[290] It is marked by synchronized jumping, stamping, and movement, similar to tap dancing. One version is performed by men, another by women.
Palestinian Dabke folk dance being performed by men
Palestinian women dancing traditionally, Bethlehem c. 1936
Although sport facilities did exist before the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, many such facilities and institutions were subsequently shut down. Today there remains sport centers such as in Gaza and Ramallah, but the difficulty of mobility and travel restrictions means most Palestinian are not able to compete internationally to their full potential. However, Palestinian sport authorities have indicated that Palestinians in the diaspora will be eligible to compete for Palestine once the diplomatic and security situation improves.
Marko Zaror, Chilean martial artist of Palestinian descent.
Nicolás Massú, Chilean tennis player of Palestinian descent.
^Jorge Alberto Amaya (23 July 2015). "Los Árabes y Palestinos en Honduras: su establecimiento e impacto en la sociedad hondureña contemporánea:1900–2009". Archived from the original on 18 August 2016. 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.
^"Chapter 1: Religious Affiliation". The World’s Muslims: Unity and Diversity. Pew Research Center. 9 August 2012. Archived from the original on 21 May 2020. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
Dowty 2023, 10. The Perfect Conflict: "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."
Gelvin 2021, p. 100: "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'."
Danver 2015, p. 554: "The origin of the term Palestinian is uncertain. 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. Other scholars dispute this view, asserting that Jews and others resided in Palestine—usually defined as the narrow strip of land bordered by the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—long before these Arabs arrived in the seventh century."
Esposito 2004, Arab-Israeli Conflict: "Although their leaders welcomed the Jews as refugees, many Palestinians (the indigenous Arab population of Palestine) viewed the arrival of Jewish settlers as a threat to their security and to their land."
Wittes 2005, p. 5: "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 2002, p. 214: "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 & Shumock 2006, p. 269ff, 284: "The Palestinians...are an ethnic minority in their country of residence."
Nasser 2013, p. 69: "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 2011, p. 112: "...throughout the 1990s and 2000s a growing number of PAI political organizations have been increasingly promoting Palestinian consciousness, advancing ethnonationalist objectives, and demanding recognition of collective group rights."
Abu-Rayya, Hisham Motkal; Abu-Rayya, Maram Hussien (2009). "Acculturation, religious identity, and psychological well-being among Palestinians in Israel". International Journal of Intercultural Relations. 33 (4): 325–331. doi:10.1016/j.ijintrel.2009.05.006. ISSN0147-1767.
New York Times 1978: "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."
Yakobson & Rubinstein 2009, p. 179: "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."
Wilmer 2021, p. 14: "People know who they are, where they live, and where their families have lived for centuries or millennia."
Abu-Libdeh, Turnpenny & Teebi 2012, p. 700: "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."
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. 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."
Parkes 1970, pp. 209–10: "the word 'Arab' needs to be used with care. 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."
^ abcEncyclopedia 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."
^ abcLikhovski, Assaf (2006). Law and identity in mandate Palestine. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 174. ISBN978-0-8078-3017-8.
^Gelvin, James L. (2014). The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (3 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 93. ISBN978-1-107-47077-4. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2023. 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".
^ abAnderson, Perry (November–December 2015). "The House of Zion". New Left Review. No. 96. pp. 5–37, p.31 n.55. Archived from the original on 1 May 2021. Retrieved 21 September 2024, citing Brynen, Rex; E-Rifai, Roula, eds. (2013). Compensation to Palestinian Refugees and the Search for Palestinian-Israeli Peace. London: Pluto Press. p. 10,132–69.
^Farsoun, Samih K. (2005). "Palestinian Diaspora". In Ember, Melvin; Ember, Carol R.; Skoggard, Ian A. (eds.). Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World. Springer. pp. 234–. ISBN978-0-306-48321-9. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023. Retrieved 21 September 2024.
^With the exception of Bks. 1, 105; 3.91.1, and 4.39, 2.
^Herodotus describes its scope in the Fifth Satrapy of the Persians as follows: "From the town of Posidium, [...] on the border between Cilicia and Syria, as far as Egypt – omitting Arabian territory, which was free of tax, came 350 talents. This province contains the whole of Phoenicia and that part of Syria which is called Palestine, and Cyprus. This is the fifth Satrapy." (from Herodotus, Book 3, 8th logos).
^Asheri, David (2007). A Commentary on Herodotus, Books 1–4. Oxford University Press. p. 402. 'the Syrians called Palestinians', at the time of Herodotus were a mixture of Phoenicians, Philistines, Arabs, Egyptians, and perhaps also other peoples. . . Perhaps the circumcised 'Syrians called Palestinians' are the Arabs and Egyptians of the Sinai coast; at the time of Herodotus there were few Jews in the coastal area.
^How, W.W.; Wells, J., eds. (1928). A Commentary on Herodotus. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 219.
^ abStrange, John (1980). "pwlɜsɜtj". Caphtor/Keftiu: a new investigation. Brill. p. 159.
^Killebrew, Ann E. (2013), "The Philistines and Other "Sea Peoples" in Text and Archaeology", Society of Biblical Literature Archaeology and biblical studies, vol. 15, Society of Biblical Lit, p. 2, ISBN9781589837218, archived from the original on 29 November 2023, retrieved 29 November 2023. Quote: "First coined in 1881 by the French Egyptologist G. Maspero (1896), the somewhat misleading term "Sea Peoples" encompasses the ethnonyms Lukka, Sherden, Shekelesh, Teresh, Eqwesh, Denyen, Sikil / Tjekker, Weshesh, and Peleset (Philistines). [Footnote: The modern term "Sea Peoples" refers to peoples that appear in several New Kingdom Egyptian texts as originating from "islands" (tables 1–2; Adams and Cohen, this volume; see, e.g., Drews 1993, 57 for a summary). The use of quotation marks in association with the term "Sea Peoples" in our title is intended to draw attention to the problematic nature of this commonly used term. It is noteworthy that the designation "of the sea" appears only in relation to the Sherden, Shekelesh, and Eqwesh. Subsequently, this term was applied somewhat indiscriminately to several additional ethnonyms, including the Philistines, who are portrayed in their earliest appearance as invaders from the north during the reigns of Merenptah and Ramesses Ill (see, e.g., Sandars 1978; Redford 1992, 243, n. 14; for a recent review of the primary and secondary literature, see Woudhuizen 2006). Hencefore the term Sea Peoples will appear without quotation marks.]
^Drews, Robert (1993). The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton University Press. pp. 48–61. ISBN0-691-02591-6. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023. The thesis that a great "migration of the Sea Peoples" occurred ca. 1200 B.C. is supposedly based on Egyptian inscriptions, one from the reign of Merneptah and another from the reign of Ramesses III. Yet in the inscriptions themselves such a migration nowhere appears. After reviewing what the Egyptian texts have to say about 'the sea peoples', one Egyptologist (Wolfgang Helck) recently remarked that although some things are unclear, "eins ist aber sicher: Nach den ägyptischen Texten haben wir es nicht mit einer "Völkerwanderung" zu tun." ("one thing is clear: according to the Egyptian texts, we are not dealing here with a 'Völkerwanderung' [migration of peoples as in 4th–6th-century Europe].") Thus the migration hypothesis is based not on the inscriptions themselves but on their interpretation.
^Gitin, Seymour (2010). "Philistines in the Book of Kings". In Lemaire, André; Halpern, Baruch; Adams, Matthew Joel (eds.). The Books of Kings: Sources, Composition, Historiography and Reception. BRILL. pp. 301–363. ISBN978-90-04-17729-1. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023, for the Neo-Assyrian sources p.312: The four city-states of the late Philistine period (Iron Age II) are Amqarrūna (Ekron), Asdūdu (Ashdod), Hāzat (Gaza), and Isqalūna (Ashkelon), with the former fifth capital, Gath, having been abandoned at this late phase.
^ abBen-Sasson, H.H. (1976). A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press. p. 334. ISBN0-674-39731-2. In an effort to wipe out all memory of the bond between the Jews and the land, Hadrian changed the name of the province from Judaea to Syria-Palestina, a name that became common in non-Jewish literature.
^Lewin, Ariel (2005). The archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine. Getty Publications. p. 33. ISBN0-89236-800-4. It seems clear that by choosing a seemingly neutral name – one juxtaposing that of a neighboring province with the revived name of an ancient geographical entity (Palestine), already known from the writings of Herodotus – Hadrian was intending to suppress any connection between the Jewish people and that land.
^Feldman 1990, p. 19: "While it is true that there is no evidence as to precisely who changed the name of Judaea to Palestine and precisely when this was done, circumstantial evidence would seem to point to Hadrian himself, since he is, it would seem, responsible for a number of decrees that sought to crush the national and religious spirit of thejews, whether these decrees were responsible for the uprising or were the result of it. In the first place, he refounded Jerusalem as a Graeco-Roman city under the name of Aelia Capitolina. He also erected on the site of the Temple another temple to Zeus."
^Jacobson 2001, p. 44-45: "Hadrian officially renamed Judea Syria Palaestina after his Roman armies suppressed the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (the Second Jewish Revolt) in 135 C.E.; this is commonly viewed as a move intended to sever the connection of the Jews to their historical homeland. However, that Jewish writers such as Philo, in particular, and Josephus, who flourished while Judea was still formally in existence, used the name Palestine for the Land of Israel in their Greek works, suggests that this interpretation of history is mistaken. Hadrian's choice of Syria Palaestina may be more correctly seen as a rationalization of the name of the new province, in accordance with its area being far larger than geographical Judea. Indeed, Syria Palaestina had an ancient pedigree that was intimately linked with the area of greater Israel."
^"Palestine Facts". PASSIA: Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs. Archived from the original on 16 January 2013. Retrieved 23 April 2004.
^ abCubert, Harold M. (3 June 2014). The PFLP's Changing Role in the Middle East. Routledge. p. 36. ISBN978-1-135-22022-8. Retrieved 31 December 2023. That year, Al-Karmil was founded in Haifa 'with the purpose of opposing Zionist colonization...' and in 1911, Falastin began publication, referring to its readers, for the first time, as 'Palestinians'.
^Mandel, Neville J. (1976). The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I. University of California Press. p. 128. ISBN978-0-520-02466-3. Retrieved 31 December 2023. As befitted its name, Falastin regularly discussed questions to do with Palestine as if it were a distinct entity and, in writing against the Zionists, addressed its readers as 'Palestinians'.
^"Constitution of the State of Palestine"(PDF). Constitution Committee of the Palestine National Council Third Draft, 7 March 2003, revised on 25 March 2003. 25 March 2003. Archived from the original(PDF) on 8 July 2007. Retrieved 21 August 2007 – via Jerusalem Media and Communication Center. The most recent draft of the Palestinian constitution would amend that definition such that, "Palestinian nationality shall be regulated by law, without prejudice to the rights of those who legally acquired it prior to May 10, 1948 or the rights of the Palestinians residing in Palestine prior to this date, and who were forced into exile or departed there from and denied return thereto. This right passes on from fathers or mothers to their progenitor. It neither disappears nor elapses unless voluntarily relinquished."
^Nebel, Almut; Filon, Dvora; Weiss, Deborah A.; Weale, Michael; Faerman, Marina; Oppenheim, Ariella; Thomas, Mark G. (December 2000). "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews"(PDF). Human Genetics. 107 (6): 630–641. doi:10.1007/s004390000426. PMID11153918. S2CID8136092. According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992)... Thus, our findings are in good agreement with the historical record...
^ abAgranat-Tamir L, Waldman S, Martin MS, Gokhman D, Mishol N, Eshel T, Cheronet O, Rohland N, Mallick S, Adamski N, Lawson AM, Mah M, Michel MM, Oppenheimer J, Stewardson K, Candilio F, Keating D, Gamarra B, Tzur S, Novak M, Kalisher R, Bechar S, Eshed V, Kennett DJ, Faerman M, Yahalom-Mack N, Monge JM, Govrin Y, Erel Y, Yakir B, Pinhasi R, Carmi S, Finkelstein I, Reich D (May 2020). "The Genomic History of the Bronze Age Southern Levant". Cell. 181 (5): 1153–1154. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.04.024. PMC10212583. PMID32470400.
^Stavenhagen 2009, Indigenous Peoples: "One of the stumbling blocks to reaching an international consensus on the special character and scope of the human rights of indigenous peoples as well as the specific areas in which their protection may be ensured by state action is the ambiguity surrounding the definition of 'indigenous.' ... The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1995 adopted four principles to be taken into account in a definition of indigenous peoples"
^Day, John (2005). In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 47.5, 48. In this sense, the emergence of ancient Israel is viewed not as the cause of the demise of Canaanite culture but as its upshot.
^Smith, Mark (2002). The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities of Ancient Israel. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. pp. 6–7. Despite the long regnant model that the Canaanites and Israelites were people of fundamentally different culture, archaeological data now casts doubt on this view. The material culture of the region exhibits numerous common points between Israelites and Canaanites in the Iron I period (c. 1200–1000 BCE). The record would suggest that the Israelite culture largely overlapped with and derived from Canaanite culture... In short, Israelite culture was largely Canaanite in nature. Given the information available, one cannot maintain a radical cultural separation between Canaanites and Israelites for the Iron I period.
^DellaPergola, Sergio (2001). "Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History". Papers in Jewish Demography. The Hebrew University, Jerusalem: 11–33. The emergence of a second Jewish population peak can be posited toward the time of the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the Hasmonean period (3rd-2nd century B.C.E.). This new peak, variously estimated, and here cautiously put at around 4.5 million people during the first century B.C.E.
^Denova, Rebecca (22 March 2022). "Christianity". World History Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on 31 August 2023. Retrieved 3 January 2023.
^Goodblatt, David (2006). "The Political and Social History of the Jewish Community in the Land of Israel, c. 235–638". In Katz, Steven (ed.). The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. IV. Cambridge University Press. pp. 404–430. ISBN978-0-521-77248-8. Few would disagree that, in the century and a half before our period begins, the Jewish population of Judah () suffered a serious blow from which it never recovered. The destruction of the Jewish metropolis of Jerusalem and its environs and the eventual refounding of the city... had lasting repercussions. [...] However, in other parts of Palestine the Jewish population remained strong [...] What does seem clear is a different kind of change. Immigration of Christians and the conversion of pagans, Samaritans and Jews eventually produced a Christian majority
^ abEhrlich, Michael (2022). The Islamization of the Holy Land, 634–1800. Leeds, UK: Arc Humanities Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN978-1-64189-222-3. OCLC1302180905. Archived from the original on 9 July 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2023. Samaritan rebellions during the fifth and sixth centuries were crushed by the Byzantines and as a result, the main Samaritan communities began to decline. Similarly, the Jewish community strove to recover from the catastrophic results of the Bar Kokhva revolt (132–135 ce). During the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, many Jews emigrated to thriving centres in the diaspora, especially Iraq, whereas some converted to Christianity and others continued to live in the Holy Land, especially in Galilee and the coastal plain. [...] Accordingly, most of the Muslims who participated in the conquest of the Holy Land did not settle there, but continued on to further destinations. For most of the Muslims who settled in the Holy Land were either Arabs who immigrated before the Muslim conquest and then converted to Islam, or Muslims who immigrated after the Holy Land's conquest. [...] Consequently, many local Christians converted to Islam. Thus, almost twelve centuries later, when the army led by Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in the Holy Land, most of the local population was Muslim. [...] The Holy Land's transformation from an area populated mainly by Christians into a region whose population was predominantly Muslim was the result of two processes: immigration and conversion
^Bar, Doron (2003). "The Christianisation of Rural Palestine during Late Antiquity". The Journal of Ecclesiastical History. 54 (3): 401–421. doi:10.1017/s0022046903007309. ISSN0022-0469. Archived from the original on 6 April 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2023. The dominant view of the history of Palestine during the Byzantine period links the early phases of the consecration of the land during the fourth century and the substantial external financial investment that accompanied the building of churches on holy sites on the one hand with the Christianisation of the population on the other. Churches were erected primarily at the holy sites, 12 while at the same time Palestine's position and unique status as the Christian 'Holy Land' became more firmly rooted. All this, coupled with immigration and conversion, allegedly meant that the Christianisation of Palestine took place much more rapidly than that of other areas of the Roman empire, brought in its wake the annihilation of the pagan cults and meant that by the middle of the fifth century there was a clear Christian majority.
^Ehrlich, Michael (2022). The Islamization of the Holy Land, 634–1800. Arc Humanities Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN978-1-64189-222-3. OCLC1302180905. The Jewish community strove to recover from the catastrophic results of the Bar Kokhva revolt (132–135 CE). Although some of these attempts were relatively successful, the Jews never fully recovered. During the Late Roman and Byzantine periods, many Jews emigrated to thriving centres in the diaspora, especially Iraq, whereas some converted to Christianity and others continued to live in the Holy Land, especially in Galilee and the coastal plain. During the Byzantine period, the three provinces of Palestine included more than thirty cities, namely, settlements with a bishop see. After the Muslim conquest in the 630s, most of these cities declined and eventually disappeared. As a result, in many cases the local ecclesiastical administration weakened, while in others it simply ceased to exist. Consequently, many local Christians converted to Islam. Thus, almost twelve centuries later, when the army led by Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in the Holy Land, most of the local population was Muslim.
^Ellenblum, Ronnie (2010). Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-0-511-58534-0. OCLC958547332. Archived from the original on 10 July 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2023. From the data given above it can be concluded that the Muslim population of Central Samaria, during the early Muslim period, was not an autochthonous population which had converted to Christianity. They arrived there either by way of migration or as a result of a process of sedentarization of the nomads who had filled the vacuum created by the departing Samaritans at the end of the Byzantine period [...] To sum up: in the only rural region in Palestine in which, according to all the written and archeological sources, the process of Islamization was completed already in the twelfth century, there occurred events consistent with the model propounded by Levtzion and Vryonis: the region was abandoned by its original sedentary population and the subsequent vacuum was apparently filled by nomads who, at a later stage, gradually became sedentarized
^Wickham, Chris (2005). Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–900. Oxford University Press. p. 130. ISBN978-0-19-926449-0. Archived from the original on 29 November 2023. In Syria and Palestine, where there were already Arabs before the conquest, settlement was also permitted in the old urban centres and elsewhere, presumably privileging the political centres of the provinces.
^Avni, Gideon (2014). The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach. Oxford University Press. pp. 312–324, 329. (theory of imported population unsubstantiated).
^Grossman, David (2017). Distribution and Population Density During the Late Ottoman and Early Mandate Periods (9781315128825 ed.). New York: Routledge. pp. 44–52. doi:10.4324/9781315128825. ISBN9781315128825. Archived from the original on 29 June 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2023. They came from Circassia and Chechnya, and were refugees from territories annexed by Russia in 1864, and the Bosnian Muslims, whose province was lost to Serbia in 1878. Belonging to this category were the Algerians (Mughrabis), who arrived in Syria and Palestine in several waves after 1850 in the wake of France's conquest of their country and the waves of Egyptian migration to Palestine and Syria during the rule of Muhammad Ali and his son, Ibrahim Pasha. [...] In most cases the Egyptian army dropouts and the other Egyptian settlers preferred to settle in existing localities, rather than to establish new villages. In the southern coastal plain and Ramla zones there were at least nineteen villages which had families of Egyptian origin, and in the northern part of Samaria, including the 'Ara Valley, there are a number of villages with substantial population of Egyptian stock.
^Swedenburg, Ted (2003). Memories of Revolt: The 1936–1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. University of Arkansas Press. p. 81. ISBN978-1-55728-763-2. These primordialist claims regarding the Palestinians' primeval and prior roots in the land operated at the level of the collective. When it came to an individual's own family, however, Arab-Islamic discourse took precedence over archaeological justifications. I ran across no Palestinian villager (or urbanite) who claimed personal descent from the Canaanites. Villagers typically traced their family or their hamila's origins back to a more recent past in the Arabian peninsula. Many avowed descent from some nomadic tribe that had migrated from Arabia to Palestine either during or shortly after the Arab-Islamic conquests. By such a claim they inserted their family's history into the narrative of Arab and Islamic civilization and connected themselves to a genealogy that possessed greater local and contemporary prestige than did ancient or pre-Islamic descent. Several men specifically connected their forefathers' date of entry into Palestine to their participation in the army of Salih al-Din al-Ayyubi (Saladin), a historical figure whose significance has been retrospectively enlarged by nationalist discourse such that he is now regarded not merely as a hero of "Islamic" civilization but as a "national" luminary as well.+ (Modern nationalist discourse tends to downplay Salah al-Din's Kurdish origins.) Palestinians of all political stripes viewed Salah al-Din's wars against the Crusaders as a forerunner of the current combats against foreign intruders. Many considered Salah al-Din's victory over the Crusaders at Hittin (A.D. 1187) as a historical precedent that offered hope for their own eventual triumph even if, like the Crusader wars, the current struggle with Israel was destined to last more than two centuries. Family histories affiliated to earlier "patriotic" struggles against European aggression tied interviewees to a continuous narrative of national resistance. Villagers claiming descent from Arabs who entered Palestine during the Arab-Islamic conquest equally viewed these origins as establishing their historical precedence over the Jews
^Lowin, Shari (1 October 2010), "Khaybar", Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Brill, pp. 148–150, doi:10.1163/1878-9781_ejiw_com_0012910, retrieved 22 June 2023, Khaybar's Jews appear in Arab folklore as well. [...] The Muḥamara family of the Arab village of Yutta, near Hebron, trace their descent to the Jews of Khaybar. Families in other nearby villages tell of similar lineages.
^Doron M. Behar; Bayazit Yunusbayev; Mait Metspalu; Ene Metspalu; Saharon Rosset; Jüri Parik; Siiri Rootsi; Gyaneshwer Chaubey; Ildus Kutuev; Guennady Yudkovsky; Elza K. Khusnutdinova; Oleg Balanovsky; Olga Balaganskaya; Ornella Semino; Luisa Pereira; David Comas; David Gurwitz; Batsheva Bonne-Tamir; Tudor Parfitt; Michael F. Hammer; Karl Skorecki; Richard Villems (July 2010). "The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people". Nature. 466 (7303): 238–42. Bibcode:2010Natur.466..238B. doi:10.1038/nature09103. PMID20531471. S2CID4307824.
^Ana Teresa Fernandes; Rita Gonçalves; Sara Gomes; Dvora Filon; Almut Nebel; Marina Faerman; António Brehm (November 2011). "Y-chromosomal STRs in two populations from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area: Christian and Muslim Arabs". Forensic Science International: Genetics. 5 (5): 561–562. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2010.08.005. hdl:10400.13/4485. PMID20843760.
^Nebel, Almut; Filon, Dvora; Weiss, Deborah A.; Weale, Michael; Faerman, Marina; Oppenheim, Ariella; Thomas, Mark G. (December 2000). "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews"(PDF). Human Genetics. 107 (6): 630–641. doi:10.1007/s004390000426. PMID11153918. S2CID8136092. According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Muslim Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992)... Thus, our findings are in good agreement with the historical record...
^Nebel A, Filon D, Weiss DA, Weale M, Faerman M, Oppenheim A, Thomas MG (December 2000). "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews". Human Genetics. 107 (6): 630–41. doi:10.1007/s004390000426. PMID11153918. S2CID8136092.
^Foster, Zachary J. (6 October 2015). "What's a Palestinian?". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 15 October 2023. Retrieved 29 November 2023.
^Karsh, Efraim. Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest. New York: Grove Press, 2003. p. 43. "Upon occupying the West Bank during the 1948 war, King Abdallah moved quickly to erase all traces of corporate Palestinian identity."
^Yehoshua Porath (1977). Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929–1939, vol. 2. Frank Cass and Co., Ltd. pp. 81–82.
^Only "peoples" are entitled to self-determination in contemporary international law (See Self-determination and National Minorities, Oxford Monographs in International Law, Thomas D. Musgrave, Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN0-19-829898-6, p. 170). In 2004, the International Court of Justice said that Israel had recognized the existence of a "Palestinian people" and referred a number of times to the Palestinian people and its "legitimate rights" in international agreements. The Court said those rights include the right to self-determination(See paragraph 118 of Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory "Cour internationale de Justice – International Court of Justice | International Court of Justice"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 6 July 2010. Retrieved 6 July 2010.). Judge Koroma explained "The Court has also held that the right of self-determination as an established and recognized right under international law applies to the territory and to the Palestinian people. Accordingly, the exercise of such right entitles the Palestinian people to a State of their own as originally envisaged in resolution 181 (II) and subsequently confirmed." Judge Higgins also said "that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State"(See paragraph 5, Separate opinion of Judge Koroma "Cour internationale de Justice – International Court of Justice | International Court of Justice"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2010. and paragraph 18, Separate opinion of Judge Higgins "Cour internationale de Justice – International Court of Justice | International Court of Justice"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 12 January 2011. Retrieved 7 February 2010.). Paul De Waart said that the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2004 "ascertained the present responsibility of the United Nations to protect Palestine's statehood. It affirmed the applicability of the prohibition of acquisition of Palestinian territory by Israel and confirmed the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Moreover, the existence of the Palestinian people as the rightful claimant to the Occupied Palestinian Territory is no longer open to question (See De Waart, Paul J. I. M., "International Court of Justice Firmly Walled in the Law of Power in the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process", Leiden Journal of International Law, 18 (2005), pp. 467–487).
^Weldon Matthews, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation,I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 33. Both Weldon Matthews and Prasenjit Duara interpret this aspect of the mandate system as tailored to the needs of imperial powers, which found it useful to avoid classifying colonies as nations: "This outlook was carried over to Palestine from India and Egypt where British administrators did not merely doubt the existence of a unifying national identity, but thwarted its development by creating sectarian institutions as a matter of policy."
^ abSela and Neil Caplan. "Epilogue: Reflections on Post-Oslo Israeli and Palestinian History and Memory of 1948." The War of 1948: Representations of Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Narratives, edited by Sela and Alon Kadish, Indiana University Press, 2016, pp. 203–221.
^Avram Bornstein, 'Military Occupation as Carceral Society: Prisons, Checkpoints, and Wall in the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle,' in Avram Bornstein, Paul E. Farmer (et al.)An Anthropology Of War: Views from the Frontline, Berghahn Books, 2009 pp.106–130, p.108:'On the whole, the Israeli Occupation has created an increasing prison-like society for Palestinians'.
^"The PNC program of 1974". Mideastweb.org. 8 June 1974. Archived from the original on 15 November 2017. Retrieved 17 August 2007.The PNC adopted the goal of establishing a national state in 1974.
^Khalidi, 1997, p. 149. Khalidi writes: 'As with other national movements, extreme advocates of this view go further than this, and anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, a nationalist consciousness and identity that are in fact relatively modern.'
^Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) – Norwegian Refugee Council. "Internal Displacement Monitoring Center". Internal-displacement.org. Archived from the original on 3 September 2006. Retrieved 22 April 2009.
^R. Conder, Claude (1877). "The Moslem Mukams". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 9 (2): 89–91. doi:10.1179/peq.1877.9.2.89. ISSN0031-0328. In their religious observances and sanctuaries we find, as in their language, the true history of the country. On a basis of polytheistic faith which most probably dates back to pre-Israelite times, we find a growth of the most heterogeneous description: Christian tradition, Moslem history and foreign worship are mingled so as often to be entirely indistinguishable, and the so-called Moslem is found worshipping at shrines consecrated to Jewish, Samaritan, Christian, and often Pagan memories. It is in worship at these shrines that the religion of the peasantry consists. Moslem by profession, they often spend their lives without entering a mosque, and attach more importance to the favour and protection of the village Mukam than to Allah himself, or to Mohammed his prophet... The reverence shown for these sacred spots is unbounded. Every fallen stone from the building, every withered branch of the tree, is carefully preserved.
^Melton, J. Gordon (2021). Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations. ABC-CLIO. p. 334. ISBN9781598842050. He is also the patron saint of the Palestinian Christian community.
^ ab"Education (2014)"(PDF). United Nations Development Programme. United Nations. Archived from the original(PDF) on 11 March 2017. Retrieved 30 January 2017.
^West Bank 44.6% versus 22.8% in Lebanon. See Elias H. Tuma, Haim Darin-Drabkin, The Economic case for Palestine, London: Croom Helm, 1978, p 48.
^Interview with Elias Sanbar. Claude Cheysson, "The Right to Self-Determination", Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 16, no. 1 (Autumn 1986), pp. 3–12; p. 3.
^Books, General L.L.C (June 2010). Jordanian Poets: Samer Raimouny, Mustafa Wahbi, Haider Mahmoud, Ibrahim Nasrallah. ISBN978-1158408894.
^Regev Motti (1993), Oud and Guitar: The Musical Culture of the Arabs in Israel (Institute for Israeli Arab Studies, Beit Berl), ISBN965-454-002-9, p. 4.
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