Palestinians

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

Template:Palestinian ethnicity Palestinian people, Palestinians, or Palestinian Arabs are terms used today to refer mainly to Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine. Most Palestinians are Muslim, with Christian and Druze minorities.

During the British Mandate of Palestine, the term "Palestinian" referred to all people residing there, regardless of religion, and those granted citizenship by the Mandatory authorities were granted "Palestinian citizenship".

Following the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, the use and application of "Palestine" and "Palestinian" by and to Palestinian Jews largely dropped from use. The English-language newspaper The Palestine Post for example - which primarily served the Jewish community in British Mandate Palestine - changed its name after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War to The Jerusalem Post. Today, Jews in Israel and the West Bank generally identify as "Israelis". It is common for Arab citizens of Israel to identify themselves as both "Israeli" and "Palestinian" and/or "Palestinian Arab" or "Israeli Arab".

The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the Palestine National Congress in July 1968, states that "The Palestinians are 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." It further states that "Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion are considered Palestinians," and that the "homeland of Arab Palestinian people" is Palestine, an "indivisible territorial unit" having "the boundaries it had during the British Mandate".

The most recent draft of the Palestinian constitution expands the right of Palestinian citizenship to include all those resident in Palestine before 15 May 1948 and their descendants, specifying that, "This right is transmitted from fathers and mothers to their children ... and endures unless it is given up voluntarily."

Origins of Palestinian identity

See also: History of Palestine

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

The name of the region known today as Israel/Palestine, has been called In Arabic, Filasteen (فلسطين) since the earliest medieval Arab geographers adopted the then-current Greek term Palaestina (Παλαιστινη). Herodotus calls the coast of the Mediterranean Sea running from Phoenicia to Egypt "the coast of Palestine-Syria". This name ultimately was derived from the name of the Philistines (Plishtim) mentioned in the Bible as residing on the Mediterranean coast.

Filasteeni (فلسطيني), meaning Palestinian, was a common adjectival noun (see Arabic grammar) adopted by natives of the region, starting as early as about a hundred years after the Hijra (eg `Abdallah b. Muhayriz al-Jumahi al-Filastini, an ascetic who died in the early 700s).

In his book, Palestinian Identity:The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, published in 1997, Rashid Khalidi states that the archaeological strata that denote the history of Palestine - encompassing the biblical, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, 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. 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, becoming particularly acute following the demarcation of modern nation-state boundaries in the Middle East after World War I. Edward Said states, on the back cover of the book, "It is the first book to work from the premise that such an identity does in fact exist." In Khalidi's view, Palestinian identity has never been an exclusive one, with "Arabism, religion, and local loyalties" continuing to play an important role. He 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."

James L. Gelvin, however, argues that this identity is 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.” Gelvin argues that, nonetheless, 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.

Even before the end of Ottoman administration, Palestine, rather than the Ottoman Empire, was considered by some Palestinians to be their country. One of the earliest Palestinian newspapers, Filastin founded in Jaffa in 1911 by Issa al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians". Evidence of Palestinian conceptions of Palestine as a distinct country within the Ottoman Empire can be found in another Palestinian newspaper, al-Karmel, which on 25 July 1913, wrote: "This team possessed tremendous power; not to ignore that Palestine, their country, was part of the Ottoman Empire."

The idea of a unique and separate Palestinian state 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."

See also: Palestinian flag

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, however, 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.

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.

In an interview conducted by The Sunday Times on June 15, 1969, Golda Meir was party to the following exchange:

Q:Do you think the emergence of the Palestinian fighting forces, the Fedayeen, is an important new factor in the Middle East?

A:Important, no. A new factor, yes. There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the first world war and then it wa a Palestine including Jordan. 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.

The use of the above quote as a proof that there was the belief among Israelis that there were no Palestinians is disputed. Gelvin says that Meir was neither denying indigenous Palestinian people nor the existence of the Palestinian nation. Rather, her remarks are directed at the Fedayeen's causing of the nation to exist. Gelvin states that while Meir's “assertion that a Palestinian nation did not exist until after 1967 war is absurd, the sketch she provides of the historical nationalism that engendered that nation—and her implicit understanding of the unpredictable and conditional evolution of nationalism in general—is, in the main, accurate.”

Today the existence of a unique Palestinian nationality/identity is generally recognized.

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

During the few decades after the State of Israel came into existence, Palestinian expressions of pan-Arabism could be heard from time to time. 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.

Demographics

Palestinians living outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip

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.

Country or region	Population
West Bank and Gaza Strip	3,900,000
Jordan	3,000,000
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	10,574,521

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) announced on October 20, 2004 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2003 was 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 children in Jenin, 2002

In Jordan today, there is no official census data that outlines how many of the inhabitants of Jordan are Palestinians, but estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics cite a population range of 50% to 55%.

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

In total, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas. Arab Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre-dated the Arab-Israeli conflict, but continued to grow thereafter. 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. El Salvador and Honduras also have substantial Arab Palestinian populations. These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry (in El Salvador Antonio Saca, currently serving; in Honduras Carlos Roberto Flores Facusse). Belize, which has a smaller Palestinian population, has a Palestinian minister — Said Musa. Schafik Jorge Handal, Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.[4]

Refugees

Main article: Palestinian refugees

Palestinian refugees in 1948

There are 4,255,120 Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This number includes the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, but excludes those who have emigrated to areas outside of UNRWA's remit. Therefore, based on these figures, almost half of all Palestinians are registered refugees. Included among them are 993,818 Palestinian refugees of towns and villages inside present-day Israel who currently live in the Gaza Strip and 705,207 Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank. 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 registered 752,048 inhabitants in Palestine, consisting of 589,177 Palestinian Muslims, 83,790 Palestinian Jews, 71,464 Palestinian Christians (including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and others) and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The corresponding percentage breakdown is 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish, and 9% Christian. Palestinian Bedouin were not counted in the census, but a 1930 British study estimated their number at 70,860.

Currently, no reliable data are available for the worldwide Palestinian population. Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University estimates that 6% of the Palestinian population is Christian. According to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is 97% Muslim and 3% Christian. There are also about 350 Samaritans who are Palestinian citizens and live in the West Bank. Jews that identify as Palestinian Jews are rare, but include Israeli Jews who are part of the Neturei Karta group.

Culture

Palestinian culture is most closely related to the cultures of the nearby Levantine countries such as Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan and of the Arab World. It includes unique literature, music, costume and cuisine. Though separated geographically, Palestinian culture continues to survive and flourish in the Palestinian territories, Israel and the Diaspora.

Language

Main article: Palestinian Arabic

Arabic is the primary language of the Muslim and Christian Palestinian Arabs. Palestinian Arabic is a subgroup of the Levantine Arabic dialect spoken by Palestinians. It has three primary sub-variations with the pronunciation of the qāf serving as a shibboleth to distinguish between the three main Palestinian dialects: In most cities, it is a glottal stop; in smaller villages and the countryside, it is a pharyngealized k; and in the far south, it is a g, as among Bedouin speakers. In a number of villages in the Galilee (e.g. Maghār), and particularly, though not exclusively among the Druze, the qāf is actually pronounced qāf as in Classical Arabic.

In dialects where qāf is pronounced as k, a true kāf is often pronounced /tʃ/, as in some dialects of Gulf Arabic. This is generally a feature of more conservative idiolects. This pronunciation of kāf also happens in the northern West Bank Samaria and adjacent Palestinian populated areas in Israel, known as "the triangle".

Barbara McKean Parmenter has noted that the Arabs of Palestine have been credited with the preservation of the indigenous Semitic place names for many sites mentioned in the Bible which were documented by the American archaeologist Edward Robinson in the early 20th century.

Literature

The long history of the Arabic language and its rich written and oral tradition form part of the Palestinian literary tradition as it has developed over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Poetry

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.

After the Nakba of 1948, poetry was transformed into a vehicle for resistance and the assertion of identity. 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 like Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Zayyad.

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.

Palestinian poets often write about the common theme of a strong affection and sense of loss and longing for a lost homeland.

Folk tales

After an invitation to the listeners to give blessings to God and the Prophet Mohammed or the Virgin Mary as the case may be, storytelling in rural Palestine almost always begins with: "There was, or there was not, in the oldness of time ..."

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)."

Intellectuals

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Palestinian intellectuals were integral parts of wider Arab intellectual circles, as represented by individuals such as May Ziade and Khalil Beidas.

Diaspora figures like Edward Said and Ghada Karmi, Arab citizens of Israel like Emile Habibi, refugee camp residents like Ibrahim Nasrallah have made contributions to a number of fields, exemplifying the diversity of experience and thought among Palestinians.

Music

Main article: Palestinian music

Palestinian music is well-known and respected throughout the Arab world. After 1948, and a new wave of performers emerged with distinctively Palestinian themes, relating to the dreams of statehood and the burgeoning nationalist sentiments.

A traditional folk dance, the dabke, is still danced at Palestinian weddings.

Cuisine

Main article: Palestinian cuisine

File:Bethlehengirlsintraditionaldresspre1918.JPG

Girls in Bethlehem costume pre-1918, Bonfils Portrait

Palestinian cuisine is divided into two groups: In the Galilee and northern West Bank the cuisine is similar to that of Lebanon and Syria while other parts of the West Bank, such as the Jerusalem, and the Hebron region, locals have a heavy cooking style of their own. Gaza is more likely to be piquant, incorporating fresh green or dried red hot peppers, reflecting the culinary influences of Egypt.

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. One of the primary mezze dishes is hummus. Hummus u ful is another type of hummus dish cooked in a similar way except it is mixed in with boiled and ground fava beans. Tabouleh is a favourite type of salad.

Other common mezze dishes include baba ghanoush, labaneh, and zate u zaatar which is the pita bread dipping of olive oil and ground thyme and sesame seeds. Kebbiyeh or kubbeh is another popular dish made of minced meat enclosed in a case of burghul (cracked wheat) and deep fried.

Famous entrées in Palestine are waraq al-'inib - boiled grape leaves wrapped around cooked rice and lamb pieces. One of the most distinctive Palestinian dishes, said to originate in the Northern West Bank, near Jenin and Tulkarem, is musakhan - roasted chicken smothered in fried onions, pine nuts, and sumac (a dark red, lemony flavored spice), and laid over taboon..

Lamb leg in a thick and cooked goat milk yogurt, laban, is also common as is imhamar, a dish of roasted chicken and potatoes in a thick sauce of diced chili peppers and onions.

Costume and embroidery

Main article: Palestinian costumes

Foreign travelers to Palestine often commented on the rich variety of costumes among the Palestinian people, especially among the village women. One could often see what village a woman came from by the embroidery or cut of her dress.

Film

Main article: Cinema of Palestine

It is believed that there are over 800 films produced by Palestinian, Arab and non-Arab artists about Palestine and the Palestinian people.[5]

Ancestry of the Palestinians

See also: Palestine

The Palestinian "Ayoub" family of Ghassanids ancestry from Ramallah AKA 1905

Modern day Palestinians are said to be partially descended from both the Arab population that settled in the area after the Arab conquest and from the native population that existed there earlier.

Major Arabization of Palestine began in the Umayyad era. 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 and Greek 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.

The claim that Palestinians are descendants of Canaanites has often been put forward by a number of Palestinian newspapers and magazines. According to the journal Science, "most Palestinian archaeologists [are] quick to distance themselves from [that] idea, and in general, most historians give little credence to it. On the subject, Bernard Lewis writes:

"Clearly, in Palestine as elsewhere in the Middle East, the modern inhabitants include among their ancestors those who lived in the country in antiquity. Equally obviously, the demographic mix was greatly modified over the centuries by migration, deportation, immigration, and settlement. This was particularly true in Palestine..."

One point of contention raised by Lewis is the approach taken by some of those who wish to associate the Palestinians to the Canaanites in a scholarly unsustainable modern Arab context, that is, seeking to assert the Cannanites as having been an Arab people for political purposes:

"The rewriting of the past is usually undertaken to achieve specific political aims... in bypassing the biblical Israelites and claiming kinship with the Canaanites, the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Palestine, it is possible to assert a historical claim antedating the biblical promise and possession put forward by the Jews... In terms of scholarship, as distinct from politics, there is no evidence whatsoever for the assertion that the Canaanites were Arabs.

Ultimately, the definitive answer to the question of Canaanite and/or other ancestries of the Palestinians will be left to scientists and geneticists to resolve. In recent years there have been great leaps in the field of genetics, and results of various studies are explore below in greater depth.

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 in today’s Jordan 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

Results of a DNA study by geneticist Ariella Oppenheim matched historical accounts that "some Moslem Arabs are descended from Christians and Jews who lived in the southern Levant, a region that includes Israel and the Sinai. They were descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times."

In genetic genealogy studies, Palestinian Arabs were found to have the highest rate of Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) among Arab countries (Semino et al., 2004, pp 1029) at 62.5%. (See also J1 Haplogroup frequencies:[6])

Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) (previously known as J-M267 and Eu10) is thought to be the haplogroup of Semitic-speaking peoples in the Middle East. The two main subclades of J1 are J1-M267 and J2-M172; their frequencies decrease with distance from the Levant in all directions, reinforcing this region as the most probable origin of its dispersions (Semino et al. 1996; Rosser et al. 2000; Quintana-Murci et al. 2001). J1-M267 is more common throughout the Levant itself, including Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon with decreasing frequencies northward to Turkey and the Caucasus, while J2-M172 is more abundant in adjacent southern areas such as Somalia, Egypt, and Oman.

According to a study in the European Journal of Human Genetics, "Arab and other Semitic populations usually possess an excess of J1 Y chromosomes compared to other populations harboring Y-haplogroup J". Furthermore, the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH Haplotype) is considered a putative ancestral haplotype of haplogroup J1 (Di Giacomo et al. 2004) and it is the CMH Haplotype in J1 that is considered the Jewish priestly signature or Y-chromosomal Aaron.

According to Semino et al. (2004), J-M267 (ie. J1) shows its highest frequencies in the Middle East. It is also found Northeast Africa and Europe, having spread in late Neolithic times; and during a second-wave in the southern part of the Middle East and in Northwest Africa.

Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) includes the modal haplotype of the Galilee Arabs (Nebel et al. 2000) and of Moroccan Arabs (Bosch et al. 2001). According to a 2002 study by Nebel et al., on Genetic evidence for the expansion of Arabian tribes, the highest frequency of Eu10 (i.e. J1) (30%–62.5%) has been observed so far in various Moslem Arab populations in the Middle East. (Semino et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2001). The most frequent Eu10 microsatellite haplotype in NW Africans is identical to a modal haplotype of Moslem Arabs who live in a small area in the north of Israel, the Galilee. (Nebel et al. 2000) termed the modal haplotype of the Galilee (MH Galilee). Interestingly, this modal haplotype is also the most frequent haplotype in the population from the town of Sena, in Yemen (Thomas et al. 2000). Its single-step neighbor is the most common haplotype of the Yemeni Hadramaut sample (Thomas et al. 2000). The presence of this particular modal haplotype at a significant frequency in three separate geographic locales makes independent genetic-drift events unlikely. The term “Arab,” as well as the presence of Arabs in the Syrian desert and the Fertile Crescent, is first seen in the Assyrian sources from the 9th century bce (Eph'al 1984).

A coffee house in Palestine, ca 1900

In recent years, many genetic surveys have suggested that, at least paternally, most of the various Jewish ethnic divisions and the Palestinians — and in some cases other Levantines — are genetically closer to each other than the Palestinians to the original Arabs of Arabia or [European] Jews to non-Jewish Europeans. {Nebel et Al, 2001} adds that their "recent study of high-resolution microsatellite haplotypes demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool (Nebel et al. 2000)."[7]

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 communities, suggesting a common origin. An investigation of a Y-chromosome polymorphism found Lebanese, Palestinian, and Sephardic populations to be particularly closely related; a third study [8], looking at Human leukocyte antigen differences among a broad range of populations, found Palestinians to be particularly closely related to Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews, as well as Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean populations.

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 Arabic-speaking populations — 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. In a context of contrast with other Arab populations not mentioned, the African gene types are rarely shared, except among Yemenites, where the average is actually higher at 35%. Yemenite Jews, being a mixture of local Yemenite and Israelite ancestries, are also included in the findings for Yemenites, though they average a quarter of the frequency of the non-Jewish Yemenite sample. Other Middle Eastern populations, particularly non-Arabic speakers — 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 Arabic-speaking Jewish population, 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, as is 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, independent studies have shown those Jewish groups to be principally indigenous African in origin.

See also

• Arab–Israeli conflict
• Mandate for Palestine
• Definitions of "Palestine" and "Palestinian"
• Palestinian Jews
• List of famous Palestinians
• Palestinian Arabic
• Palestinian economy
• Palestinian exodus
• Palestinian music
• Palestinian costumes
• Palestinian Christian
• Palestinian refugees
• Arab diaspora
• Palestinian Chilean
• Islam in Honduras
• 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). Identity:The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231105142. OCLC 35637858. LCCN 96-0 – 0.
• 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