Palestinians

For other uses of "Palestinian", see Definitions of Palestine and Palestinian.

Template:Palestinian ethnicity Palestinians are people with family origins in Palestine. Their religion is primarily Islam, with Christianity, Judaism, Druze, and other minorities. Today, they are mainly Arabic-speaking.

Under British rule period from 1918 to 1948, the term "Palestinian" refers to anyone native to Palestine, regardless of religion; Muslim, Christian, Jew, or Druze. Following the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, the use and application of "Palestinian" by and to Palestinian Jews abated. The English-language newspaper The Palestine Post for example, primarily served the Jewish community in British Mandate Palestine; after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the newspaper's name was changed to The Jerusalem Post. Today, Palestinian Jews generally identify as "Israelis". The more precise terminology Palestinian Arab which was in wide use until the 1960s is often contracted/abbreviated - at the expense of some linguistic clarity - to the now commonly used Palestinian. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, it is common for Arab citizens of Israel to identify themselves as both "Israeli" and "Palestinian" and/or "Palestinian Arab".

The Palestinian National Covenant, as adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, defines Palestinians as those "Arab citizens" who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, and all their descendants through the male line. As used in this context modelled by traditional Arab nationalism, "Arab citizenship" is independent of any specific religious affiliation. Jews of Palestinian origin, however, were only considered Palestinians "if they were willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine". The most recent draft of the Palestinian constitution states: "Palestinian citizenship shall be organized by law without prejudicing the right of anyone who acquired it before 15 May 1948 in accordance with the law or the right of the Palestinian who was resident in Palestine before that date. This right is transmitted from fathers and mothers to their children. The right endures unless it is given up voluntarily."

Demographics

Palestinians living outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip

While the largest single population of Palestinians is found in the lands which constituted Mandate for Palestine, over half of Palestinians live elsewhere as refugees and emigrants. In the absence of actual censuses, counting large populations is very difficult.

Country or region	Population
West Bank and Gaza Strip	3,900,000
Jordan	1,835,704
Israel	1,318,000
Syria	434,896
Lebanon	405,425
Chile	300,000
Saudi Arabia	327,000
The Americas	225,000
Egypt	44,200
Other Gulf states	159,000
Other Arab states	153,000
Other countries	308,000
TOTAL	9,410,225

In Jordan today, there is no official census data about how many of the inhabitants of Jordan are Palestinians; estimates range from 40% to 50%. Some political researchers attribute this to the Jordanian policy of not further widening the gap between the two main population groups in Jordan: its original Bedouin population that holds most of the administrative posts and the Palestinians who are predominant in the economy.

Many Arab Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.

Around 600,000 Arab Palestinians reside in the Americas. Arab Palestinian emigration to South America took place largely, but not exclusively, for economic reasons before the Arab-Israeli conflict. Many came from the Bethlehem area. Those emigrating to Latin America were mainly Christian. Half of the Palestinian-origin people in Latin America are in Chile. El Salvador and Honduras also have substantial Palestinian populations. These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry (in El Salvador Antonio Saca, currently serving; in Honduras Carlos Roberto Flores). Belize, which has a smaller Palestinian population, has a Palestinian minister — Said Musa.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics announced on October 20, 2004 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2003 is 9.6 million, an increase of 800,000 since 2001.

In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group. In their report, 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 March 8, 2006. The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. DellaPergola accused the authors of misunderstanding basic principles of demography on account of their lack of expertise in the subject. He also accused them of selective use of data and multiple systematic errors in their analysis. For example, DellaPergola claimed that the authors assumed the Palestinian Electoral registry to be complete even though registration is voluntary and good evidence exists of incomplete registration, and similarly that they used an unrealistically low Total Fertility Ratio (a statistical abstraction of births per woman) incorrectly derived from data and then used to reanalyse that data in a "typical circular mistake". DellaPergola himself 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.

Palestinian Arabs

Palestinian children in Jenin, 2002

A Palestinian Arab (or Arab Palestinian) is an Arab of Palestine - either the historical region of Palestine or any of the political divisions designated as "Palestine". Journalists, historians and some diplomats or government officials frequently refer to Palestinian Arabs as "Palestinians" for short.

As used in the context of definition by the Palestinian National Covenant adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, "Arab citizenship" is independant of any specific religious affiliation and is modelled according to traditional Arab nationalism. Jews of Palestinian or any other origin elsewhere in the Arab world, however, are today typically not considered Arab due to modern politics, including the establishment of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli conflicts. For this reason, those Palestinian Jews, if and when considered to be Palestinians, would in most cases today still not be identified as Palestinian Arabs. (see Arabs, Palestinian Jews, Mizrahi Jews)

According to the PLO, the "homeland of Arab Palestinian people" is Palestine, an "indivisible territorial unit" having "the boundaries it had during the British Mandate".

Refugees

Main article: Palestinian refugees

4,255,120 Palestinians are registered as refugees with UNRWA; this number includes the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, but excludes those who have emigrated to areas outside of the UNRWA's remit. Thus, almost half of all Palestinians are registered refugees according to these estimates. This figure represents Palestinian Arabs and not Jews of Palestine who mostly became citizens of the new State of Israel. Jews were expelled from and not admitted into the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, which came under Jordanian and Egyptian occupation respectively, from 1948 to 1967. UNRWA figures do not include some 274,000 people, or 1 in 4 of all Arab citizens of Israel, who are internally displaced Palestinian refugees.

Religions

The British census of 1922 counted 752,048 in Palestine, comprising 589,177 Palestinian Muslims, 83,790 Palestinian Jews, 71,464 Christians (including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and others) and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups (corresponding to 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish, and 9% Christian) (1922 census report). Palestinian Bedouin were not counted, but a British study estimated their number at 70,860 in 1930.

Currently, no reliable data are available for the worldwide Palestinian (i.e. non-Jewish Palestinian) population; Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University estimates it as 6% Christian. However, within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, the (non-Jewish) Palestinian population is 97% Muslim and 3% Christian; there are also about 300 Samaritans and a few thousand Jews of the eccentric Neturei Karta group who may consider themselves non-Israeli Palestinian Jews. Within Israel, 68% of the non-Jewish population is Muslim, 9% Christian, 7% Druze, and 15% "other".

The Ancestry of the Palestinians

File:Palestijnse familie rond 1900 .jpg

Family in Palestine, c. 1900

Canaanites are considered to be among the earliest inhabitants of the region today known as Palestine/Israel, Canaan being its earliest known denomination. Some of the Canaanites are believed to have migrated in the 3rd millennium BC from the inner Arabian Peninsula. Later, Hebrews (Israelites), Philistines, Romans, Arab Nabateans, Arab Ghassanids, Arabs, Crusaders, and other people have all passed through or settled in the region, and some intermarried. Some of their descendants systematically converted from earlier beliefs to newer introduced ones, including Judaism, Christianity, and later most predominantly to Islam. Different languages have been spoken maternally depending on the lingua franca of the time.

Although many Arabian tribes inhabited Palestine since the 3rd millennium BC, for the most part, the Arabization of Palestine and the Palestinians began in Umayyad times. Increasing conversions to Islam among the local population, together with the immigration of Arabs from Arabia and inland Syria, led to the replacement of Aramaic by Arabic as the area's dominant language. Among the cultural survivals from pre-Islamic times are the significant Palestinian Christian community, and smaller Jewish and Samaritan ones, as well as an Aramaic and possibly Hebrew sub-stratum in the local Palestinian Arabic dialect. One distinguishing characteristic of their dialect, unusual among Arabic speakers, is that speakers of rural Palestinian dialects pronounce the letter qaaf as k (Arabic kaaf).

Palestinians, like most other Arabic-speakers, thus combine ancestries from all the pre-Arab peoples and Arab tribes who have come to settle the region throughout history; the precise mixture is a matter of debate, on which genetic evidence (see below) has begun to shed some light. The findings apparently confirm Ibn Khaldun's argument that most Arabic-speakers throughout the Arab world descend mainly from culturally assimilated non-Arabs who are indigenous to their own regions. This process can still be witnessed today in some areas, as with the continued Arabization of Berber-identified North Africans in countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.

The Bedouins of Palestine, however, are said to be more securely known to be Arab ancestrally as well as by culture; their distinctively conservative dialects and pronunciation of qaaf as gaaf group them with other Bedouin across the Arab world and confirm their separate history. Arabic onomastic elements began to appear in Edomite inscriptions starting in the 6th century BC, and are nearly universal in the inscriptions of the Nabataeans, who arrived there in the 4th-3rd centuries BC. It has thus been suggested that the present day Bedouins of the region may have their origins as early as this period. A few Bedouin are found as far north as Galilee; however, these seem to be much later arrivals, rather than descendants of the Arabs that Sargon II settled in Samaria in 720 BC.

DNA clues

Palestinian Family, 2004

As genetic techniques have advanced, it has become possible to look directly into the question of the ancestry of the Palestinians. Various studies have sought to address the genetic kinship between Palestinians (as a culturally and linguistically Arab population) and various other Arab groups, as well as between Palestinians (as inhabitants of what was once ancient Israel) and the variously distinct groups of the Jewish ethnic divisions, most of whom are largely descended of exiled ancient Israelites.

In recent years, many genetic surveys have suggested that, at least paternally, most groups of the Jewish ethnic divisions and the Palestinians — and in some cases other Levantines — are genetically closer to one another than either the Palestinians are to the true Arabs of Arabia, or most of the world's Jewish groups are to their non-Jewish co-regionalists (such as European Jews to non-Jewish European).

The studies look at the prevalence of specific inherited genetic differences among populations, which then allow the relatedness of these populations to be determined, and their ancestry to be traced back through population genetics. These differences can be the cause of genetic disease or be completely neutral (Single nucleotide polymorphism). They can be inherited maternally (mitochondrial DNA), paternally (Y chromosome), or as a mixture from both parents; the results obtained may vary from polymorphism to polymorphism.

One study on congenital deafness identified an allele only found in Palestinian and Ashkenazi Jewish communities (i.e. Jews from Northern and Eastern Europe), suggesting a common origin; an investigation of a Y-chromosome polymorphism found Lebanese, Palestinian, Sephardi Jewish (i.e in the traditional definition of Jews from Iberia, excluding "Oriental Jews" from the Middle East, also known as Mizrahi Jews) populations to be particularly closely related; a third study, looking at Human leukocyte antigen differences among a broad range of populations, found Palestinians to be particularly closely related to Jewish groups, as well as to Middle Eastern and Mediterranean populations, postulating that "genetic data support[s] that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian peoples in ancient times".

The latter study by Antonio Arnaiz-Villena has been the subject of intense controversy, it was retracted by the journal and removed from its website, leading to further controversy; the main accusations made were that the authors used their scientific findings to justify making one-sided political proclamations in the paper; that the retraction followed lobbyist pressure because the results contradicted certain political beliefs; some suggested that the broad scientific interpretation was based on too narrow data, whereas others support the scientific content as valid.

One point in which Palestinians and Ashkenazi Jews and most Near Eastern Jewish communities appear to contrast is in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools. One study found that Palestinians and some other populations of an Arabic-speaking heritage — specifically Jordanians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Bedouins — have what appears to be substantial gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa, amounting to 10-15% of lineages within the past three millennia. By contrast, in other populations of an Arabic-speaking heritage, the African gene types are rarely shared, except among Yemenites. Yemenites actually averaged higher, at 35% African lineages, and Yemenite Jews, being a mixture of local Yemenite and Israelite ancestries, are also included in those findings, though they average a quarter of the frequency of the non-Jewish Yemenite sample. Other Midde Eastern populations, particularly those without an Arabic-speaking heritage — Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris, and Georgians — have few or no such lineages. The findings suggest that gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa has been specifically into Arabic-speaking populations (including at least one Jewish population of an Arabic-speaking heritage, as indicated in Yemenite Jews), possibly due to the Arab slave trade. Other Near Eastern Jewish groups (whose Arabic-speaking heritage was not indicated by the study) almost entirely lack haplogroups L1–L3A, which is also the case with Ashkenazi Jews. The sub-Saharan African genetic component of Ethiopian Jews and other African Jewish groups were not contrasted in the study, however, independant studies have shown those Jewish groups to be principally indigenous African in origin.

The origins of Palestinian identity

A map of Palestine as described by the medieval Arab geographers, with the junds of Jordan and Filistin highlighted in grey

In Arabic, Filasteen (فلسطين) has been the name of the region since the earliest medieval Arab geographers (adopted from the then-current Greek term Palaestina (Παλαιστινη), first used by Herodotus, itself derived ultimately from the name of the Philistines), and Filasteeni (فلسطيني) was always a common adjectival noun (see Arabic grammar) adopted by natives of the region, starting as early as the first century after the Hijra (eg `Abdallah b. Muhayriz al-Jumahi al-Filastini, an ascetic who died in the early 700s).

Whereas European colonialism and to a lesser extent Turkish nationalism in the Ottoman Empire was the main spur in forming national identities and borders elsewhere, the main force in reaction to which Palestinian nationalism developed was Zionism. One of the earliest Palestinian newspapers, Filastin founded in Jaffa in 1911 by Issa al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians".

Even before the end of Ottoman administration, Palestine, rather than the Ottoman Empire, was considered by the Palestinians to be their country. On 25 July 1913, for instance, the Palestinian newspaper al-Karmel wrote: "This team possessed tremendous power; not to ignore that Palestine, their country, was part of the Ottoman Empire." The idea of a specifically Palestinian state, however, was at first rejected by most Palestinians; 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." However, particularly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, the notion took on greater appeal; in 1920, for instance, 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". Similarly, the Second Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (December 1920), passed a resolution calling for an independent Palestine; they then wrote a long letter to the League of Nations about "Palestine, land of Miracles and the supernatural, and the cradle of religions", demanding, amongst other things, that a "National Government be created which shall be responsible to a Parliament elected by the Palestinian People, who existed in Palestine before the war."

Conflict between Palestinian nationalists and various types of pan-Arabists continued during the British Mandate, but the latter became increasingly marginalised. The most prominent leader of the Palestinain nationalists was Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. By 1937, only one of the many Arab political parties in Palestine (the Istiqlal party) promoted political absorption into a greater Arab nation as its main agenda. During World War II, al-Husayni maintained close relations with Nazi officials seeking German support for an independent Palestine. However, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War resulted in those parts of Palestine which were not part of Israel being occupied by Egypt and Jordan.

Originally the headwear of Palestinian peasants, the keffiyeh, worn here by Yasser Arafat, first came to symbolize Palestinian nationalism during the British Mandate period.

The idea of an independent nationality for Palestinian Arabs was greatly boosted by the 1967 Six Day War in which these lands were conquered by Israel; instead of being ruled by different Arab states encouraging them to think of themselves as Jordanians or Egyptians, those in the West Bank and Gaza were now ruled by a state with no desire to make them think of themselves as Israelis, and an active interest in discouraging them from regarding themselves as Egyptians, Jordanians, or Syrians. Moreover, the natives of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip now shared many interests and problems in common with each other that they did not share with the neighboring countries.

Because of the gradualness of the creation of a unique Palestinian national identity (as opposed to a regional Arab identity) - and, many allege, for reasons of political convenience - many Israelis did not accept the existence of an independent Palestinian people, as in Golda Meir's statement: "There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist." (see History of Palestine). Today the existence of a unique Palestinian nationality/identity is generally recognized.

During the few decades after the State of Israel came into existence, Palestinian expressions of pan-Arabism could be heard from time to time, but usually under outside influence. This was particularly true in Syria under the influence of the Baath party. For example, Zuhayr Muhsin, the leader of the Syrian-funded as-Sa'iqa Palestinian faction and its representative on the PLO Executive Committee, told a Dutch newspaper in 1977 that "There is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. It is for political reasons only that we carefully emphasize our Palestinian identity." However, most Palestinian organizations conceived of their struggle as either Palestinian-nationalist or Islamic in nature, and these themes predominate even more today. For example, even within Israel itself, there are political movements, such as Abnaa el-Balad that assert their Palestinian identity, to the exclusion of their Israeli one.

In 1977, the United Nations General Assembly created the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People", an annual observance on November 29.

See also

• Arab–Israeli conflict
• Mandate for Palestine
• Definitions of "Palestine" and "Palestinian"
• Palestinian Jews
• List of famous Palestinians
• Palestine region
• Palestinian Arabic
• Palestinian economy
• Palestinian exodus
• Palestinian music
• Palestinian Christian
• Palestinian refugees
• PLO
• Hamas
• Palestinian National Authority
• International aid to Palestinians
• Palestinian territories

References

• Boyle, Kevin and Sheen, Juliet (1997). Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415159776
• Cohen, Robin (1995). The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521444055
• Drummond, Dorothy Weitz (2004). Holy Land, Whose Land?: Modern Dilemma, Ancient Roots. Fairhurst Press. ISBN 0974823325
• Farsoun, Samih K. (2004). Culture and Customs Of The Palestinians. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313320519
• Guzmán, Roberto Marín (2000). A Century of Palestinian Immigration Into Central America. Editorial Universidad de C.R. ISBN 9977675872
• Healey, John F. (2001). The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 9004107541
• Khalidi, Rashid (1997). Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. (New York: Columbia University Press.
• Khalidi, Rashid (2006). The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-8070-0308-5
• Porath, Yehoshua (1977). Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929-1939, vol. 2, London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd.

External links

• BBC: Israel and the Palestinians
• Save the Children: life in a refugee camp
• Guardian Special Report: Israel and the Middle East
• United Nations Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People
• al-Jazeera: Palestine, the People and the Land
• The Palestine National Charter
• Palestine: Contemporary Art - online magazine articles