Palestinian people
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Palestinians
(الفلسطينيون, al-Filasṭīniyyūn)
|
| Total population |
| c. 11,000,000 |
| Regions with significant populations |
 State of Palestine |
4,420,549[1][a 1] |
| – West Bank |
2,719,112[1] |
| – Gaza Strip |
1,701,437[1] |
 Jordan |
3,240,000 |
 Israel |
1,658,000[2][a 1] |
 Syria |
630,000 |
 Chile |
500,000[3] |
 Lebanon |
402,582 |
 Saudi Arabia |
280,245 |
 Egypt |
270,245 |
 United States |
255,000[4] |
 Honduras |
250,000 |
 United Arab Emirates |
170,000 |
 Mexico |
120,000 |
 Qatar |
100,000 |
 Germany |
80,000[5] |
 Kuwait |
80,000[6] |
 El Salvador |
70,000[7] |
 Brazil |
59,000[8] |
 Iraq |
57,000[9] |
 Yemen |
55,000 |
 Canada |
50,975[10] |
 Australia |
45,000 |
 Libya |
44,000 |
 United Kingdom |
20,000[5] |
 Peru |
15,000 |
 Colombia |
12,000 |
 Pakistan |
10,500 |
 Netherlands |
9,000 |
 Sweden |
7,000[11] |
 Algeria |
4,030[12] |
| Languages |
Palestinian territories and Israel:
Palestinian Arabic, Hebrew, English, Neo-Aramaic, and Greek
Diaspora:
Other varieties of Arabic, the vernacular languages of other countries in the Palestinian diaspora. |
| Religion |
Majority: Sunni Islam
Minority: Christian, Druze, Shia Islam, Judaism,[citation needed] non-denominational Muslims[13] |
| Related ethnic groups |
| Other Levantines, Mediterraneans, Canaanites, Sea Peoples, Middle Eastern: Semitic peoples: Philistines, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, Samaritans, Arabs, Assyrians[14][15] |
The
Palestinian people (
Arabic:
الشعب الفلسطيني,
ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī), also referred to as
Palestinians (
Arabic:
الفلسطينيون,
al-Filasṭīniyyūn,
Hebrew:
פָלַסְטִינִים), are the modern descendants of the peoples who have lived in
Palestine over the centuries, and who today are largely culturally and linguistically
Arab due to
Arabization of the region.
[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Despite various wars and
exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in historic Palestine, the area encompassing the
West Bank, the
Gaza Strip and
Israel.
[24] In this combined area, as of 2004, Palestinians constituted 49% of all inhabitants,
[25]
encompassing the entire population of the Gaza Strip (1.6 million), the
majority of the population of the West Bank (approximately 2.3 million
versus close to 500,000 Jewish
Israeli citizens which includes about 200,000 in
East Jerusalem), and 16.5% of the population of
Israel proper as
Arab citizens of Israel.
[26] Many are
Palestinian refugees or
internally displaced Palestinians, including more than a million in the Gaza Strip,
[27] three-quarters of a million in the West Bank,
[28] and about a quarter of a million in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the
Palestinian diaspora, more than half are
stateless lacking
citizenship in any country.
[29] 3.24 million of the diaspora population live in neighboring
Jordan[30] where they make up approximately half the population, 1.5 million live between
Syria and
Lebanon, a quarter of a million in
Saudi Arabia, with
Chile's half a million representing the largest concentration outside the
Arab world.
Genetic analysis suggests that a majority of the
Muslims of Palestine, inclusive of Arab citizens of Israel, are descendants of
Christians,
Jews and other earlier inhabitants of the southern
Levant whose core may reach back to
prehistoric times. A study of high-resolution haplotypes demonstrated that a substantial portion of
Y chromosomes of Israeli Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool.
[31] Since the time of the
Muslim conquests in the 7th century,
religious conversions have resulted in Palestinians being predominantly
Sunni Muslim by
religious affiliation, though there is a significant
Palestinian Christian minority of various
Christian denominations, as well as
Druze and a small
Samaritan community. Though
Palestinian Jews made up part of the population of Palestine prior to the creation of the State of Israel, few identify as "Palestinian" today.
Acculturation, independent from conversion to
Islam, resulted in Palestinians being linguistically and culturally
Arab.
[16] The
vernacular of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the
Palestinian dialect of Arabic. Many Arab citizens of Israel including Palestinians are
bilingual and fluent in
Hebrew.
The history of a distinct
Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars.
[32]
Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that
Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th
century.
[32] "
Palestinian" was used to refer to the
nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by the Arabs of Palestine in a limited way until
World War I.
[20][21] The first demand for
national independence of the
Levant was issued by the
Syrian–Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921.
[33] After the creation of the State of Israel, the
exodus of 1948, and more so after the
exodus of 1967, the term came to signify not only a place of origin, but also the sense of a shared past and future in the form of a
Palestinian state.
[20] According to
Rashid Khalidi,
the modern Palestinian people now understand their identity as
encompassing the heritage of all ages from biblical times up to the
Ottoman period.
[34]
Founded in 1964, the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before the international community.
[35] The
Palestinian National Authority, officially established as a result of the
Oslo Accords,
is an interim administrative body nominally responsible for governance
in Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
[36] Since 1978, the
United Nations has observed an annual
International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
Etymology
A depiction of Syria and Palestine from CE 650 to 1500
The
Greek toponym
Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη), with which the
Arabic Filastin (فلسطين) is cognate, first occurs in the work of the 5th century BCE
Greek historian
Herodotus, where it denotes generally
[37] the coastal land from
Phoenicia down to
Egypt.
[38][39] Herodotus also employs the term as an
ethnonym, as when he speaks of the 'Syrians of Palestine' or 'Palestinian-Syrians',
[40] an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the
Phoenicians.
[41][42] Herodotus makes no distinction between the Jews and other inhabitants of Palestine.
[43] The Greek word bears comparison to a congeries of ancient
ethnonyms and
toponyms. In
Ancient Egyptian Peleset/Purusati[44] refers to one of the
Sea Peoples. Among
Semitic languages,
Assyrian Palastu generally refers to southern Palestine.
[45] Biblical Hebrew's cognate word
Plištim,
[46] usually translated
Philistines, does not distinguish them and the other Sea Peoples, who settled in Palestine around 1100 BCE.
[47]
Syria Palestina continued to be used by historians and geographers and others to refer to the area between the
Mediterranean sea and the
Jordan river, as in the writings of
Philo,
Josephus and
Pliny the Elder. After the
Romans
adopted the term as the official administrative name for the region in
the 2nd century CE, "Palestine" as a stand alone term came into
widespread use, printed on coins, in inscriptions and even in
rabbinic texts.
[48] The Arabic word
Filastin has been used to refer to the region since the time of the earliest
medieval Arab
geographers. It appears to have been used as an
Arabic adjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century CE.
[49] The Arabic language newspaper
Filasteen (est. 1911), published in
Jaffa by
Issa and Yusef al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians".
[50]
In the beginning of the 1900s, a group led by
Theodor Herzl
founded the Jewish Colonial Trust. The group's aim was to establish a
financial institution to promote Zionist colonization in the
Palestine region.
[51]
On 27 February 1902, a subsidiary of this Trust called the
"Anglo-Palestine Company" (APC) was established in London with the
assistance of Zalman David Levontin. This Company was to become the
future
Bank Leumi.
[52]
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".
[53] 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.
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. Jews in Israel and the West Bank today generally identify as Israelis.
Arab citizens of Israel identify themselves as Israeli and/or Palestinian and/or Arab.
[54]
The
Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO's
Palestine 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."
[55] Note that "Arab nationals" is
not religious-specific, and it
implicitly includes not only the Arabic-speaking Muslims of Palestine, but also the
Arabic-speaking Christians of Palestine 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."
[55][56]
History
Palestinian history and nationalism
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively
Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are
matters of scholarly disagreement. Some argue that it can be traced as
far back as the
1834 Arab revolt in Palestine (or even as early as the 17th century), while others argue that it did not emerge until after the Mandatory Palestine period.
[32][57]
According to legal historian Assaf Likhovski, the prevailing view is
that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th
century.
[32]
In his 1997 book,
Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, historian
Rashid Khalidi notes 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.
[34]
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 Palestinian nationalists to
"anachronistically" read back into history a nationalist consciousness
that is in fact "relatively modern".
[58][59]
Baruch Kimmerling
and Joel S. Migdal consider the 1834 revolt of the Arabs 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 brief period In the 1830s when an Egyptian vassal of the Ottomans,
Muhammad Ali, and his son
Ibrahim Pasha
asserted their own rule over the area. The revolt by Palestine's Arabs
was precipitated by popular resistance against heavy demands for
conscripts, with the peasants 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.
[60] Benny Morris argues that the Arabs in Palestine nevertheless remained part of a larger pan-Islamist or
pan-Arab national movement.
[61]
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."
[62]
Rashid 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.
[59] 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."
[59] 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."
[63] 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."[63]
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)."
[64]
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."
[21] 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."
[57]
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).
[65]
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.
[65]
The first Palestinian nationalist organisations emerged at the end of the
World War I.
[66] 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.
[67]
The historical record continued to reveal an interplay between "Arab"
and "Palestinian" identities and nationalism. The idea of a unique
Palestinian state separated out 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."
[68]
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.
[69][70] With the fall of the
Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of
Syria, 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".
[71]
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.
[72]
Struggle for self-determination
Boundaries defined in the UN partition plan of 1947:
Area assigned for a Jewish state;
Area assigned for an Arab state;
Corpus separatum of Jerusalem (neither Jewish nor Arab).
Armistice Demarcation Lines of 1949:
Arab territory until 1967;
Israel
UN stamp to commemorate the Palestinian struggle.
Palestinians have not exercised full
sovereignty
over the land in which they 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 occupied 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].
[73]
Today, the right of the Palestinian people to
self-determination has been affirmed by the
United Nations General Assembly, the
International Court of Justice[74] and several Israeli authorities.
[75] A total of 133 countries
recognize Palestine as a state.
[76]
However, Palestinian sovereignty over the areas claimed as part of the
Palestinian state remains limited, and the boundaries of the state
remain a point of contestation between Palestinians and Israelis.
British Mandate (1917–1948)
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.
[77]
The Mandate document divided the population into Jewish and non-Jewish,
and Britain, the Mandatory Power considered the Palestinian population
to be comprisd 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.
[78]
After the British general, Louis Bols, read out the
Balfour Declaration in February 1920, some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem.
[72]
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.
[72]
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."
[79] The Arabs tried to get the British to offer an Arab legal establishment again roughly ten years later, but to no avail.
[80]
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.
[72] The
Arab High 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.
[72]
The "lost years" (1948–1967)
After the
1948 Palestine war and the accompanying
Palestinian exodus, known to Palestinians as
Al Nakba
(the "catastrophe"), there was a hiatus in Palestinian political
activity. Khalidi attributes this to the tramautic events of 1947-49,
which included the depopulation of over
400 towns and villages and the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees.
[81]
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. 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.
[82]
Israeli historian
Efraim Karsh takes the view that the Palestinian identity did not develop until after the
1967 war
because the Palestinian exodus 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.
[83]
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.
[84]
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.
[84] 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
[85]—tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab states it subsumed.
[86]
1967–present
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.
[87]
In the meantime, pan-Arabism has waned as an aspect of Palestinian
identity. The Israeli capture 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.
[88] 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.
[34]
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.
[58]
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."
[89]
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.
[35][90] Israel rejected the resolution, calling it "shameful".
[91] 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."
[91]
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.
[92]
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.
[93] 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.
[94][95] The second intifada was more violent than the first.
[96]
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".
[97] 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".
[98]
Ancestral origins
Like the
Lebanese,
Syrians,
Egyptians,
Maghrebis, and most other people today commonly called
Arabs, the Palestinians are an Arab people in
linguistic and
cultural affiliation. Since the Islamic conquest in the 7th century, Palestine, a then
Hellenized location, came under the influence of Arabic-speaking Muslim dynasties, including the Kurdish-descent
Ayyubids, whose culture and language through the process of
Arabization was adopted by the people of Palestine.
[16] Genetic research
studies suggests that some or perhaps most of the present-day
Palestinians have roots that go back to before the 7th century, maybe
even ancient inhabitants of the area.
[99]
Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, explains:
"Throughout history a great diversity of peoples has moved into the region and made Palestine their homeland: Canaanites, Jebusites, Philistines from Crete, Anatolian and Lydian Greeks, Hebrews, Amorites, Edomites, Nabataeans, Arameans, Romans, Arabs, and Western European Crusaders,
to name a few. Each of them appropriated different regions that
overlapped in time and competed for sovereignty and land. Others, such
as Ancient Egyptians, Hittites, Persians, Babylonians, and the Mongol raids of the late 1200s,
were historical 'events' whose successive occupations were as ravaging
as the effects of major earthquakes ... Like shooting stars, the various
cultures shine for a brief moment before they fade out of official
historical and cultural records of Palestine. The people, however,
survive. In their customs and manners, fossils of these ancient
civilizations survived until modernity—albeit modernity camouflaged
under the veneer of Islam and Arabic culture."[100]
George Antonius, founder of modern Arab nationalist history, wrote in his seminal 1938 book
The Arab Awakening:
" The Arabs' connection with Palestine goes back uninterruptedly to
the earliest historic times, for the term 'Arab' [in Palestine] denotes
nowadays not merely the incomers from the Arabian Peninsula who occupied
the country in the seventh century, but also the older populations who
intermarried with their conquerors, acquired their speech, customs and
ways of thought and became permanently arabised."[101]
American historian 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..."[102]
Eric M. Meyers, a
Duke University historian of religion, writes:
"What is the significance of the Palestinians really being descended
from the Canaanites? In the early and more conservative reconstruction
of history, it might be said that this merely confirms the historic
enmity between Israel and its enemies. However, some scholars believe
that Israel actually emerged from within the Canaanite community itself
(Northwest Semites) and allied itself with Canaanite elements against
the city-states and elites of Canaan. Once they were disenfranchised by
these city-statres and elites, the Israelites and some disenfranchised
Canaanites joined together to challenge the hegemony of the heads of the
city-states and forged a new identity in the hill country based on
egalitarian principles and a common threat from without. This is another
irony in modern politics: the Palestinians in truth are blood brothers
or cousins of the modern Israelis."[103]
Politicized lineages
Depiction of Palestine in the time of Saul c. 1020 BC according to
George Adam Smith's 1915 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land.
Salim Tamari notes the paradoxes produced by the search for "nativist" roots among Zionist figures and the so-called
Canaanite followers of
Yonatan Ratosh.
[104] For example,
Ber Borochov, one of the key ideological architects of Socialist Zionism, claimed as early as 1905 that, "The
Fellahin in
Eretz-Israel are the descendants of remnants of the Hebrew agricultural community,"
[105]
believing them to be descendants of the ancient Hebrew and Canaanite
residents 'together with a small admixture of Arab blood'".
[104]
He further believed that the Palestinian peasantry would embrace
Zionism and that the lack of a crystallized national consciousness among
Palestinian Arabs would result in their likely assimilation into the
new Hebrew nationalism.
[104] David Ben-Gurion and
Yitzhak Ben Zvi,
later becoming Israel's first Prime Minister and second President,
respectively, tried to establish in a 1918 paper written in
Yiddish that Palestinian peasants and their mode of life were living historical testimonies to
Israelite practices in the biblical period.
[104][106]
Tamari notes that "the ideological implications of this claim became
very problematic and were soon withdrawn from circulation."
[104]
Ahad Ha'am
believed that, "the Moslems [of Palestine] are the ancient residents of
the land ... who became Christians on the rise of Christianity and
became Moslems on the arrival of Islam."
[104] Israel Belkind, the founder of the
Bilu movement also asserted that the Palestinian Arabs were the blood brothers of the Jews.
[107] In his book on the Palestinians,
The Arabs in Eretz-Israel, Belkind advanced the idea that the
dispersion of Jews out of the Land of Israel after the destruction of the
Second Temple by the
Roman emperor
Titus
is a "historic error" that must be corrected. While it dispersed much
of the land's Jewish community around the world, those "workers of the
land that remained attached to their land," stayed behind and were
eventually converted to Christianity and then Islam.
[107]
He therefore, proposed that this historical wrong be corrected, by
embracing the Palestinians as their own and proposed the opening of
Hebrew schools for Palestinian
Arab Muslims to teach them Arabic, Hebrew and universal culture.
[107] Tsvi Misinai, an Israeli researcher, entrepreneur and proponent of a
controversial alternative solution to the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, asserts that nearly 90% of all Palestinians living within Israel and the
occupied territories (including Israel's Arab citizens and Negev Bedouin)
[108]
are descended from the Jewish Israelite peasantry that remained on the
land, after the others, mostly city dwellers, were exiled or left.
[109]
Claims emanating from certain circles within Palestinian society and
their supporters, proposing that Palestinians have direct ancestral
connections to the ancient
Canaanites,
without an intermediate Israelite link, has been an issue of contention
within the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Bernard Lewis
wrote that "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."
[102][110]
Some Palestinian scholars, like Zakariyya Muhammad, have criticized
pro-Palestinian arguments based on Canaanite lineage, or what he calls
"Canaanite ideology". He states that it is an "intellectual fad,
divorced from the concerns of ordinary people."
[104] By assigning its pursuit to the desire to predate Jewish national claims, he describes
Canaanism as a "losing ideology", whether or not it is factual, "when used to manage our conflict with the Zionist movement" since
Canaanism "concedes
a priori
the central thesis of Zionism. Namely that we have been engaged in a
perennial conflict with Zionism—and hence with the Jewish presence in
Palestine—since the Kingdom of
Solomon
and before ... thus in one stroke Canaanism cancels the assumption that
Zionism is a European movement, propelled by modern European
contingencies..."
[104]
DNA and genetic studies
A rabbi in Palestine, circa 1930
In recent years, many genetic studies have demonstrated 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 or European Jews to non-Jewish Europeans.
[111]
One
DNA
study by Nebel found genetic evidence in support of historical records
that "part, or perhaps the majority" of Muslim Palestinians descend from
"local inhabitants, mainly
Christians and
Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD".
[111]
They also found substantial genetic overlap between Muslim Palestinians
and Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, though with some significant
differences that might be explainable by the geographical isolation of
the Jews and by immigration of Arab tribes in the first millennium.
[111]
In a
genetic study of
Y-chromosomal STRs
in two populations from Israel and the Palestinian Authority Area:
Christian and Muslim Palestinians showed genetic differences. The
majority of Palestinian Christians (31.82%) were a subclade of
E1b1b, followed by
G2a (11.36%), and
J1 (9.09%). The majority of Palestinian Muslims were haplogroup
J1 (37.82%) followed by
E1b1b (19.33%), and
T (5.88%). The study sample consisted of 44 Palestinian Christians and 119 Palestinian Muslims.
[112]
In a 2003
genetic study,
Bedouins showed the highest rates (62.5%) of the subclade
Haplogroup J-M267 among all populations tested, followed by Palestinian Arabs (38.4%),
Iraqis (28.2%), Ashkenazi Jews (14.6%) and Sephardic Jews (11.9%), according to Semino et al.
[113] Semitic
populations, including Jews, usually possess an excess of J1 Y
chromosomes compared to other populations harboring Y-haplogroup J.
[113][114][115][116][117]
According to a 2011 study by Balanovsky et al.,
Haplogroup J-M267 is actually most populous in the Northeastern
Caucasus region of
Dagestan with the highest frequency in
Kubachi (99%), followed by
Kaitak (85%), and
Dargins (69%).
[118]
The haplogroup J1, the ancestor of subclade M267, originates south of the
Levant and was first disseminated from there into
Ethiopia and
Europe in
Neolithic times. In Jewish populations, J1 has a rate of around 15%, with
haplogroup J2 (M172) (of eight sub-Haplogroups) being almost twice as common as J1 among Jews (<29 a="" common="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Levant" in="" is="" j1="" most="" the="" title="Southern Levant">southern Levant
, as well as
Syria,
Iraq,
Algeria, and
Arabia, and drops sharply at the border of non-semitic areas like
Turkey and
Iran. A second diffusion of the J1 marker took place in the 7th century CE when
Arabians brought it from
Arabia to
North Africa.
[113]
Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) includes the
modal haplotype of the Galilee Arabs
[111] and of Moroccan Arabs
[119] and the sister Modal Haplotype of the
Cohanim, the "Cohan Modale Haplotype", representing the descendents of the priestly caste
Aaron.
[120][121][122]
J2 is known to be related to the ancient Greek movements and is found
mainly in Europe and the central Mediterranean (Italy, the Balkans,
Greece).
According to a 2010 study by Behar et al. titled "The genome-wide
structure of the Jewish people", some Palestinians tested clustered
genetically close to Bedouins, Jordanians and Saudi Arabians which could
indicate a common ancestry or some recent ancestral influx from the
Arabian Peninsula.
[123]
A study found that the Palestinians, like Jordanians, Syrians,
Iraqis, Turks, and Kurds have what appears to be Female-Mediated gene
flow in the form of
Maternal DNA Haplogroups from
Sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 117 Palestinian individuals tested, 15 carried
maternal haplogroups
that originated in Sub-Saharan Africa. These results are consistent
with female migration from eastern Africa into Near Eastern communities
within the last few thousand years. There have been many opportunities
for such migrations during this period. However, the most likely
explanation for the presence of predominantly female lineages of African
origin in these areas is that they may trace back to women brought from
Africa as part of the Arab slave trade, assimilated into the areas
under Arab rule as a result of miscegenation and manumission.
[124]
A 2013 study of Haber and et al. found that "The predominantly Muslim
populations of Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians cluster on branches
with other Muslim populations as distant as Morocco and Yemen." The
authors explained that "religious affiliation had a strong impact on the
genomes of the Levantines. In particular, conversion of the region's
populations to Islam appears to have introduced major rearrangements in
populations' relations through admixture with culturally similar but
geographically remote populations leading to genetic similarities
between remarkably distant populations." The authors also reconstructed
the genetic structure of pre-Islamic Levant and found that "it was more
genetically similar to Europeans than to Middle Easterners."
[125]
Bedouin woman in Jerusalem, 1898–1914
Arabian origins of local Bedouin
The local Bedouins of Palestine originate from the
Arabian Peninsula and speak a distinct
variety of Arabic.
[126] Arabic onomastic elements began to appear in
Edomite
inscriptions starting in the 6th century BC and the inscriptions of the
Nabataeans who arrived in today’s Jordan in the 4th-3rd centuries BC.
[127]
A few Bedouin are found as far north as
Galilee; however, these seem to be much later arrival, rather than descendants of the Arabs that
Sargon II settled in
Samaria
in 720 BC. 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).
[128]
Following the
Muslim conquest of the Levant by the Arab Muslim
Rashiduns, the formerly dominant languages of the area,
Aramaic and Greek, were replaced by the Arabic language introduced by the new conquering administrative minority.
[129]
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.
[130][page needed]
Samaritan descent in Nablus
Much of the local Palestinian population in
Nablus is believed to be descended from
Samaritans who converted to Islam.
[131]
Even today, certain Nabulsi surnames including Muslimani, Yaish, and
Shakshir among others, are associated with a Samaritan origin.
[131]
Demographics
| Country or region |
Population |
| Palestinian Territories (Gaza Strip and West Bank including East Jerusalem) |
4,420,549[1] |
| Jordan |
2,700,000[132] |
| Israel |
1,318,000[133] |
| Chile |
500,000 (largest community outside the Arab world)[134][135][136] |
| Syria |
434,896[137] |
| Lebanon |
405,425[137] |
| Saudi Arabia |
327,000[133] |
| The Americas |
225,000[138] |
| Egypt |
44,200[138] |
| Kuwait |
(approx) 40,000[133] |
| Other Gulf states |
159,000[133] |
| Other Arab states |
153,000[133] |
| Other countries |
308,000[133] |
| TOTAL |
10,574,521 |
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 on 20 October 2004 that the number of Palestinians
worldwide at the end of 2003 was 9.6 million, an increase of 800,000
since 2001.
[139]
In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was
conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG).
[140] In their report,
[141]
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.
[142]
The study was criticised by
Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
[143]
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.
[144]
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.
[143]
The AIDRG study was also criticized by
Ian Lustick, who accused its authors of multiple methodological errors and a political agenda.
[145]
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."
[146]
Many Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.
[147][148]
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.
[149] 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.
[3] El Salvador[150] and
Honduras[151] 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.
[152] Schafik Jorge Handal,
Salvadoran politician and former
guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.
[153]
Refugees
Palestinian refugees in 1948
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.
[137]
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.
[154]
UNRWA figures do not include some 274,000 people, or 1 in 5.5 of all Arab residents of Israel, who are
internally displaced Palestinian refugees.
[155][156]
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."
[157]
Israeli policy to prevent the refugees returning to their homes was
initially formulated by David Ben Gurion and Joseph Weitz and formally
adopted by the Israeli cabinet in June 1948.
[158] 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."
[158][159]
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.
[159]
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.
[158][159]
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.
[158][160] In 2012, Egypt deviated from this practice by granting citizenship to 50,000 Palestinians, mostly from the Gaza Strip.
[160]
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.
[161]
Religion
Illustration of Palestinian Christian home in Jerusalem, ca 1850. By
W. H. Bartlett
93% of Palestinians are Muslim,
[162] the vast majority of whom are followers of the
Sunni branch of
Islam,
[163] with a small minority of
Ahmadiyya.
[164] Palestinian Christians represent a significant minority of 6%, followed by much smaller
religious communities, including Druze and Samaritans.
Palestinian Jews – considered Palestinian by the
Palestinian National Charter adopted by the PLO which defined them as those "Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the
Zionist invasion" – today identify as Israelis
[citation needed]
(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, largely composed of
Jewish immigrants from around the world.
Until the end of the 19th century, most Palestinian Muslim villagers in the countryside did not have local
mosques. Cross-cultural syncretism between Christian and Islamic symbols and figures in religious practice was common.
[100] Popular feast days, like
Thursday of the Dead, were celebrated by both Muslims and Christians and shared prophets and saints include
Jonah, who is worshipped in
Halhul as both a Biblical and Islamic prophet, and
St. George, who is known in Arabic as el Khader. Villagers would pay tribute to local patron saints at a
maqam – a domed single room often placed in the shadow of an ancient carob or oak tree.
[100] Saints, taboo by the standards of orthodox Islam, mediated between man and
Allah, and shrines to saints and holy men dotted the Palestinian landscape.
[100] 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."
[100]
Religion as constitutive of individual identity was accorded a minor
role within Palestinian tribal social structure until the latter half of
the 19th century.
[100]
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."
[100]
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.
[100]
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.
[100]
The
British census of 1922
registered 752,048 inhabitants in Palestine, consisting of 660,641
Palestinian Arabs (Christian and Muslim Arabs), 83,790 Palestinian Jews,
and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The corresponding
percentage breakdown is 87% Christian and Muslim Arab and 11% Jewish.
Bedouin were not counted in the census, but a 1930 British study
estimated their number at 70,860.
[165]
Bernard Sabella of
Bethlehem University estimates that 6% of the Palestinian population worldwide is Christian and that 56% of them live outside of historic Palestine.
[166] 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. The vast majority of the
Palestinian community in Chile follow Christianity, largely Orthodox Christian and some Roman Catholic, and in fact the number of
Palestinian Christians in
the diaspora in Chile alone exceeds the number of those who have remained in their homeland.
[167]
The Druze became Israeli citizens and Druze males serve in the
Israel Defense Forces, though some individuals identify as "Palestinian Druze".
[168]
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".
[169]
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.
[170] Those who live in the West Bank also are represented in the legislature for the Palestinian National Authority.
[170] They are commonly referred to among Palestinians as the "Jews of Palestine," and maintain their own unique cultural identity.
[170]
Jews who identify as Palestinian Jews are few, but include Israeli Jews who are part of the
Neturei Karta group,
[171] 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.
[172]
Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the
Baha'i Faith, was from Iran, but ended his life in
Acre, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He was confined there for 24 years. A
shrine has been erected there in his honor.
[173][174]
-
-
-
-
-
Jews in 'Ben Zakai' house of prayer, Jerusalem, 1893.
-
-
Current demographics
According to the PCBS, there is an estimated 4,420,549 Palestinians
in the Palestinian territories as of 2013, of which 2,719,112 live in
the West Bank and 1,701,437 in the Gaza Strip.
[1] According to the
Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, there is 1,658,000 Arab citizens of Israel.
[2] Both figures include Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
In Jordan, there is no official census data for how many inhabitants
are Palestinians but they are estimated to constitute half of the
population,
[175][176] which in 2008 amounted to about 3 million.
[176] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics put their number at 3.24 million in 2009.
[30]
Palestine's society
Areen Omari, a Palestinian actress and producer, attends a motion picture ceremony
Language
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 predominately
Christian and
Jewish communities, were
Aramaic,
Greek, and
Syriac.
[177] Arabic was also spoken in some areas.
[178] Palestinian Arabic, like other variations of the
Levantine dialect, exhibits substantial influences in
lexicon from Aramaic.
[179]
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].
[180]
Barbara McKean Parmenter has noted that the Arabs of Palestine have been credited with the preservation of the indigenous
Semitic place names of many sites mentioned in the Bible, as was documented by the American geographer
Edward Robinson in the 19th century.
[181]
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.
Education
Palestinian intellectuals, among them
May Ziade and
Khalil Beidas,
were an integral part of the Arab intelligentsia. 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.
[182] 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.’
[183]
Contributions to Palestinian culture have been made by diaspora figures like
Edward Said and
Ghada Karmi, Arab citizens of Israel like
Emile Habibi, and Jordanians like
Ibrahim Nasrallah.
[184][185]
-
Palestinian students and John Kerry
-
-
-
-
Women and family
In the 19th and early 20th century, there were some well known Palestinian families, which included the
Khalidi family, the
al-Husayni family, the
Nashashibi family, the
Touqan family, the
Nusaybah clan,
Qudwa family,
Shawish,
Shurrab family,
Al-Zaghab family,
Al-Khalil family,
Ridwan dynasty,
Al-Zeitawi family,
Abu Ghosh clan,
Barghouti family,
Doghmush family,
Douaihy family,
Hilles clan,
Jarrar clan, and the
Jayyusi
family. Since various conflicts with Zionists began, some of the
communities have subsequently left Palestine. The role of women varies
among Palestinians, with both progressive and ultra-conservative
opinions existing. Other groups of Palestinians, such as the
Negev Bedouins or
Druze may no longer self-identify as Palestinian for political reasons.
[186]
Culture
Palestinian identity
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 a 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.[100]
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,
[187]
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.
[104] 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)."[104]
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.
[188][189][190]
Al-Quds Capital of Arab Culture
is an initiative undertaken by UNESCO under the Cultural Capitals
Program to promote Arab culture and encourage cooperation in the Arab
region. The opening event was launched in March 2009.
Palestinian market at
Jaffa, 1877 painting
Cuisine
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.
[191]
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.
[192] 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.
[191]
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]
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.
[citation needed]
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.
[citation needed]
-
Musakhan: The Palestinian National dish.
-
-
-
Art
Similar to the structure of Palestinian society, the Palestinian field of arts extends over four main geographic centers: the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip,
Israel, the
Palestinian diaspora in the
Arab world, and the Palestinian diaspora in
Europe, the
United States and elsewhere.
[193]
Cinema
Palestinian cinematography, relatively young compared to
Arab cinema overall, receives much European and Israeli support.
[194] Palestinian films are not exclusively produced in
Arabic; some are made in English, French or Hebrew.
[195] 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.
-
The Alhamra Cinema,
Jaffa, 1937, bombed December 1947
[196]
-
Villagers in
Halhul at an open air cinema screening c. 1940
Handicrafts
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.
[197][198]
Costumes
Foreign travelers to Palestine in 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.
[199]
New styles began to appear the 1960s. For example the "six-branched
dress" named after the six wide bands of embroidery running down from
the waist.
[200]
These styles came from the refugee camps, particularly after 1967.
Individual village styles were lost and replaced by an identifiable
"Palestinian" style.
[201] 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.
[202]
-
A woman from Bethlehem, c. 1940s.
-
Young woman of Ramallah wearing
dowry headdress, c. 1898–1914
-
-
A Traditional Women's Dress in Ramallah, c. 1920.
-
Girls in Bethlehem costume pre-1885.
Palestinian narrative works
Palestinian Hikaye
The Palestinian Hikaye is a form of narration often told by women for
children and others. The tales are fictitious but usually deal with
real concerns of
Middle Eastern Arab
society and family issues. In this way, the Hikaye offers a critique of
society from the women’s perspective and draws a portrait of the social
structure that directly touch the lives of women. The majority of
conflicts narrated in the tales describe women torn between duty and
desire.
[203]
The Hikaye can be told at home during winter evenings, at spontaneous
and convivial events attended by small groups of mothers and children.
Men rarely attend as this is considered inappropriate. The expressive
power of the narration lies in the use of language, emphasis, speech
rhythms and vocal inflections as well as in the ability to capture the
attention of the listeners and successfully convey them into a world of
imagination and fantasy. Many Palestinian women over the age of 70 are
Hikaye
tellers,
and the tradition is mainly carried on by elder women. However, it is
not unusual for girls and young boys to tell tales to one another for
practice or pleasure. However, some say the Hikaye is in decline due to
the influence of television and other mass media.
Literature
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. Thus Egyptian literature
is that 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 "a literature written by Palestinians" regardless of their residential status.
[204][205]
Contemporary Palestinian literature is often characterized by its heightened sense of
irony and the exploration of existential themes and issues of identity.
[205] References to the subjects of resistance to occupation,
exile, loss, and love and longing for
homeland are also common.
[206] Palestinian literature can be intensely political, as underlined by writers like
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.
[207]
There is also resistance to this school of thought, whereby Palestinian
artists have "rebelled" against the demand that their art be
"committed".
[207] 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."
[207] 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,
[208][209] 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.
[210]
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).
[204] She also posits a temporal distinction between literature produced before 1948 and that produced thereafter.
[204] 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."
[210]
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.
[211]
After the 1948 Palestinian exodus, poetry was transformed into a
vehicle for political activism. 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.
[211]
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.
[211] Palestinian poets often write about the common theme of a strong affection and sense of loss and longing for a lost homeland.
[211] 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.
[212]
Folklore
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.
[104] Such efforts seem to have borne fruit as evidenced in the organization of celebrations like the
Qabatiya Canaanite festival and the annual Music Festival of
Yabus by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.
[104]
Folk tales
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..."
[211][213]
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)."
[211]
Music
Palestinian music is well known throughout the Arab world.
[215]
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).
[216] 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.
The Diaspora Palestinian
Reem Kelani
is one of the foremost researchers and performers in the present day of
music with a specifically Palestinian narrative and heritage.
[217] Her 2006 debut solo album
Sprinting Gazelle – Palestinian Songs from the Motherland and the Diaspora
comprised Kelani's research and arrangement of 5 traditional
Palestinian songs, whilst the other 5 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.
[218] All the songs on the album relate to 'pre-1948 Palestine'.
Palestinian hip hop
-
Palestinian radio personality and record producer
DJ Khaled
Palestinian hip hop reportedly started in 1998 with
Tamer Nafar's group
DAM.
[219] These Palestinian youth forged the new Palestinian musical sub-genre, 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
sub-genre has grown to include artists in the Palestinian territories,
Israel, Great Britain, the United States and Canada.
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.
[220]
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”.
[221]
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”.
[222]
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”.
[221] This sub genre has served as a way to politicize the Palestinian issue through music.
Dance
A common form of Palestinian dancing known as the
Dabke is a native folk dance of possible
Canaanite[223] or
Phoenician[224]
origin. 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.
Sport
Although sport facilities did exist before the
Nakba,
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.
-
Marco Zaror is a Palestinian martial artist.
-
Nicolás Massú is a Palestinian tennis player
-
