The Prime Minister is appointed by the President and not directly elected by the Palestinian Legislative Council
(parliament) or Palestinian voters. Unlike prime ministers in many
other countries, the Palestinian Prime Minister does not serve as a
member of the legislature
while in office. Instead, the appointment is made independently by the
ruling party. The Prime Minister is expected to represent the majority
party or ruling coalition in the Legislative Council.
The leadership of the PNA has been disputed since the national unity government broke up on 14 June 2007 when President Abbas declared a state of emergency moved to dismiss Ismail Haniyeh
as Prime Minister but he and the Legislative Council, which was
controlled by Hamas, did not acknowledge the legitimacy of this step. Fighting
between Fatah and Hamas has left the former in control of the West Bank
and the latter in control of the Gaza Strip resulting in separate de facto leaderships in the territories both with dubious constitutional legitimacy. The situation was aggravated on 9 January 2009 when Abbas's term of office should have expired and Hamas appointed its own acting president in the form of Abdel Aziz Duwaik, who as the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council can take over the post for 60 days under certain circumstances.
The legislature of the Palestinian Authority is the Palestinian Legislative Council, which is not to be confused with the Palestine National Council,
which remains the national legislature of the Palestinian people as a
whole. The PLC passed a new law in June 2005 to increase the number of
members of the PLC from 88 to 132, half of which were to be elected
under a system of proportional representation and half by traditional constituencies.
The first legislative elections
under the new rules took place on 25 January 2006, which were
decisively won by Hamas. There have not been legislative elections
since.
In Area A, the PA has responsibility for civilian matters and control over security.
In Area B, the PA has responsibility for civilian matters while Israel has control over security.
In Area C, Israel has full control, including settlements.
Since June 2007, there have been two governments claiming to be the
legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority, one based in the
West Bank and the other based in the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations General Assembly
recognized the PLO as the "representative of the Palestinian people" in
Resolution 3210 and Resolution 3236, and granted the PLO observer
status on 22 November 1974 in Resolution 3237. On 12 January 1976 the UN Security Council
voted 11–1 with 3 abstentions to allow the Palestinian Liberation
Organization to participate in a Security Council debate without voting
rights, a privilege usually restricted to UN member states. It was
admitted as a full member of the Asia group on 2 April 1986.
After the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the PLO's representation was renamed Palestine. On 7 July 1998, this status was extended to allow participation in General Assembly debates, though not in voting.
By September 2012, with their application for full membership
stalled due to the inability of Security Council members to 'make a
unanimous recommendation', the Palestine Authority had decided to pursue
an upgrade in status from "observer entity" to "non-member observer state".
On 27 November it was announced that the appeal had been officially
made, and would be put to a vote in the General Assembly on November 29,
where their status upgrade was expected to be supported by a majority
of states. In addition to granting Palestine "non-member observer state
status", the draft resolution "expresses the hope that the Security
Council will consider favourably the application submitted on 23
September 2011 by the State of Palestine for admission to full
membership in the United Nations, endorses the two state solution based
on the pre-1967 borders, and stresses the need for an immediate
resumption of negotiations between the two parties."
On Thursday, 29 November 2012, In a 138–9 vote (with 41 abstaining) UN General Assembly resolution 67/19 passed, upgrading Palestine to "non-member observer state" status in the United Nations. The new status equates Palestine's with that of the Holy See. The change in status was described by The Independent as "de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine".
The vote was a historic benchmark for the sovereignState of Palestine
and its citizens; it was a diplomatic setback for Israel and the United
States. Status as an observer state in the UN will allow the State of
Palestine to join treaties and specialised UN agencies, such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation,
the Law of the Seas Treaty and the International Criminal Court. It
shall permit Palestine to claim legal rights over its territorial waters
and air space as a sovereign state recognised by the UN. It shall also
provide the citizens of Palestine with the right to sue for control of
the territory that is rightfully theirs in the International Court of
Justice and with the legal right to bring war-crimes charges, mainly
those relating to the illegal occupation of the State of Palestine,
against Israel in the International Criminal Court.
The UN has permitted Palestine to title its representative office
to the UN as "The Permanent Observer Mission of the State of Palestine
to the United Nations". Palestine has started to retitle its name accordingly on postal stamps, official documents and passports;moreover, it has instructed its diplomats to officially represent "State of Palestine", as opposed to the "Palestine National Authority".
Additionally, on 17 December 2012, UN Chief of Protocol Yeocheol Yoon
decided that "the designation of 'State of Palestine' shall be used by
the Secretariat in all official United Nations documents", thus recognising the PLO-proclaimed State of Palestine as being sovereign over the territories of Palestine and its citizens under international law.
The first written records referring to Palestine emerged in the 12th-century BCE Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt, which used the term Peleset for a neighboring people or land. In the 8th century BCE, the Assyrians referred to a region as Palashtu or Pilistu. In the Hellenistic period, these names were carried over into Greek, appearing in the Histories of Herodotus in 5th century BCE as Palaistine. The Roman Empire conquered the region and in 6 CE established the province known as Judaea, then in 132 CE in the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt the province was expanded and renamed Syria Palaestina. In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Tertia. Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin
was established. While Palestine's boundaries have changed throughout
history, it has generally comprised the southern portion of regions such
as Syria or the Levant. It also conceptually overlaps with several terms of Judeo-Christian tradition, including Canaan, the Promised Land, the Land of Israel, and the Holy Land.
As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the region has a tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. In the Bronze Age, it was inhabited by the Canaanites; the Iron Age saw the emergence of Israel and Judah, two related kingdoms inhabited by the Israelites. It has since come under the sway of various empires, including the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the Achaemenid Empire. Revolts by the region's Jews against Hellenistic rule brought a brief period of regional independence under the Hasmonean dynasty, which ended with its gradual incorporation into the Roman Empire (later the Byzantine Empire).
Modern archaeology has identified 12 ancient inscriptions from Egyptian and Assyrian records recording likely cognates of HebrewPelesheth. The term "Peleset" (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c. 1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. The first known mention is at the temple at Medinet Habu which refers to the Peleset among those who fought with Egypt in Ramesses III's reign, and the last known is 300 years later on Padiiset's Statue. Seven known Assyrian inscriptions refer to the region of "Palashtu" or "Pilistu", beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c. 800 BCE through to a treaty made by Esarhaddon more than a century later. Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term.
The term is generally accepted to be a cognate of the biblical name Peleshet (פלשתPəlésheth, usually transliterated as Philistia). The term and its derivates are used more than 250 times in Masoretic-derived versions of the Hebrew Bible, of which 10 uses are in the Torah, with undefined boundaries, and almost 200 of the remaining references are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel. The term is rarely used in the Septuagint, which used a transliteration Land of Phylistieim (Γῆ τῶν Φυλιστιείμ), different from the contemporary Greek place name Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη). It also theorized to be the portmanteau of the Greek word for the Philistines and palaistês, which means "wrestler/rival/adversary". This aligns with the Greek practice of punning place names since the latter is also the etymological meaning for Israel.
The Septuagint instead used the term "allophuloi" (άλλόφυλοι, "other nations") throughout the Books of Judges and Samuel, such that the term "Philistines" has been interpreted to mean
"non-Israelites of the Promised Land" when used in the context of
Samson, Saul and David, and Rabbinic sources explain that these peoples were different from the Philistines of the Book of Genesis.
The region was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization. During the Bronze Age, independent Canaanite city-states were established, and were influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550 and 1400 BCE, the Canaanite cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom who held power until the 1178 BCE Battle of Djahy (Canaan) during the wider Bronze Age collapse. The Israelites
emerged from a dramatic social transformation that took place in the
people of the central hill country of Canaan around 1200 BCE, with no
signs of violent invasion or even of peaceful infiltration of a clearly
defined ethnic group from elsewhere. During the Iron Age, the Israelites established two related kingdoms, Israel and Judah. The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power by the 10th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE. Israel's southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Judah, emerged in the 8th or 9th century BCE and later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire
before a revolt against the latter led to its destruction in 586 BCE.
The region became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from c. 740 BCE, which was itself replaced by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in c. 627 BCE.
In 539 BCE, the Babylonian empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. According to the Hebrew Bible and implications from the Cyrus Cylinder, the exiled Jews were eventually allowed to return to Jerusalem.
The returned population in Judah were allowed to self-rule under
Persian governance, and some parts of the fallen kingdom became a
Persian province known as Yehud.
Except Yehud, at least another four Persian provinces existed in the
region: Samaria, Gaza, Ashdod, and Ascalon, in addition to the
Phoenician city states in the north and the Arabian tribes in the south. During the same period, the Edomites migrated from Transjordan to the southern parts of Judea, which became known as Idumaea. The Qedarites were the dominant Arab tribe; their territory ran from the Hejaz in the south to the Negev in the north through the period of Persian and Hellenistic dominion.
Classical antiquity
In the 330s BCE, Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the region, which changed hands several times during the wars of the Diadochi and later Syrian Wars. It ultimately fell to the Seleucid Empire between 219 and 200 BCE. During that period, the region became heavily hellenized, building tensions between Greeks and locals. In 167 BCE, the Maccabean Revolt erupted, leading to the establishment of an independent Hasmonean Kingdom in Judea. From 110 BCE, the Hasmoneans extended their authority over much of Palestine, including Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Perea, and Idumea. The Jewish control over the wider region resulted in it also becoming known as Judaea, a term that had previously only referred to the smaller region of the Judaean Mountains. During the same period, the Edomites were converted to Judaism.
Between 73 and 63 BCE, the Roman Republic extended its influence into the region in the Third Mithridatic War. Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BCE, splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. In around 40 BCE, the Parthians conquered Palestine, deposed the Roman ally Hyrcanus II, and installed a puppet ruler of the Hasmonean line known as Antigonus II. By 37 BCE, the Parthians withdrew from Palestine.
In the first and second centuries CE, the province of Judea became the site of two large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome. During the First Jewish-Roman War, which lasted from 66 to 73 CE, the Romans razed Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple. In Masada, Jewish zealots preferred to commit suicide than endure Roman captivity. In 132 CE, another Jewish rebellion erupted. The Bar Kokhba revolt took three years to put down, incurred massive costs on both the Romans and the Jews, and desolated much of Judea. The center of Jewish life in Palestine moved to the Galile During or after the revolt, Hadrian joined the province of Iudaea with Galilee and the Paralia to form the new province of Syria Palaestina, and Jerusalem was renamed "Aelia Capitolina". Some scholars view these actions as an attempt to disconnect the Jewish people from their homeland, but this theory is debated.
Between 259 and 272, the region fell under the rule of Odaenathus as King of the Palmyrene Empire. Following the victory of Christian emperor Constantine in the Civil wars of the Tetrarchy, the Christianization of the Roman Empire began, and in 326, Constantine's mother Saint Helena visited Jerusalem
and began the construction of churches and shrines. Palestine became a
center of Christianity, attracting numerous monks and religious
scholars. The Samaritan Revolts during this period caused their near extinction. In 614 CE, Palestine was annexed by another Persian dynasty; the Sassanids, until returning to Byzantine control in 628 CE.
The majority of the population was Christian and was to remain so
until the conquest of Saladin in 1187. The Muslim conquest apparently
had little impact on social and administrative continuities for several
decades.
The word 'Arab' at the time referred predominantly to Bedouin nomads,
though Arab settlement is attested in the Judean highlands and near
Jerusalem by the 5th century, and some tribes had converted to
Christianity. The local population engaged in farming, which was considered demeaning, and were called Nabaț, referring to Aramaic-speaking villagers. A ḥadīth,
brought in the name of a Muslim freedman who settled in Palestine,
ordered the Muslim Arabs not to settle in the villages, "for he who
abides in villages it is as if he abides in graves".
The Umayyads, who had spurred a strong economic resurgence in the area, were replaced by the Abbasids in 750. Ramla became the administrative centre for the following centuries, while Tiberias became a thriving centre of Muslim scholarship. From 878, Palestine was ruled from Egypt by semi-autonomous rulers for almost a century, beginning with the Turkish freeman Ahmad ibn Tulun, for whom both Jews and Christians prayed when he lay dying and ending with the Ikhshidid rulers. Reverence for Jerusalem increased during this period, with many of the Egyptian rulers choosing to be buried there. However, the later period became characterized by persecution of Christians as the threat from Byzantium grew. The Fatimids, with a predominantly Berber
army, conquered the region in 970, a date that marks the beginning of a
period of unceasing warfare between numerous enemies, which destroyed
Palestine, and in particular, devastating its Jewish population. Between 1071 and 1073, Palestine was captured by the Great Seljuq Empire, only to be recaptured by the Fatimids in 1098.
Crusader/Ayyubid period
The Fatimids again lost the region to the Crusaders in 1099. The Crusaders set up the Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291). Their control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine lasted almost a century until their defeat by Saladin's forces in 1187, after which most of Palestine was controlled by the Ayyubids, except for the years 1229–1244 when Jerusalem and other areas were retaken by the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem, by then ruled from Acre (1191–1291), but, despite seven further crusades, the Franks were no longer a significant power in the region. The Fourth Crusade,
which did not reach Palestine, led directly to the decline of the
Byzantine Empire, dramatically reducing Christian influence throughout
the region.
In 1486, hostilities broke out between the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire in a battle for control over western Asia, and the Ottomans conquered Palestine in 1516. Between the mid-16th and 17th centuries, a close-knit alliance of three local dynasties, the Ridwans of Gaza, the Turabays of al-Lajjun and the Farrukhs of Nablus, governed Palestine on behalf of the Porte (imperial Ottoman government).
In the 18th century, the Zaydani clan under the leadership of Zahir al-Umar ruled large parts of Palestine autonomously until the Ottomans were able to defeat them in their Galilee strongholds in 1775–76. Zahir had turned the port city of Acre into a major regional power, partly fueled by his monopolization of the cotton and olive oil trade from Palestine to Europe. Acre's regional dominance was further elevated under Zahir's successor Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar at the expense of Damascus.
In 1830, on the eve of Muhammad Ali's invasion, the Porte transferred control of the sanjaks of Jerusalem and Nablus to Abdullah Pasha,
the governor of Acre. According to Silverburg, in regional and cultural
terms this move was important for creating an Arab Palestine detached
from greater Syria (bilad al-Sham). According to Pappe, it was an attempt to reinforce the Syrian front in face of Muhammad Ali's invasion. Two years later, Palestine was conquered by Muhammad Ali's Egypt, but Egyptian rule was challenged in 1834 by a countrywide popular uprising against conscription and other measures considered intrusive by the population. Its suppression devastated many of Palestine's villages and major towns.
In 1840, Britain intervened and returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans in return for further capitulations. The death of Aqil Agha marked the last local challenge to Ottoman centralization in Palestine,
and beginning in the 1860s, Palestine underwent an acceleration in its
socio-economic development, due to its incorporation into the global,
and particularly European, economic pattern of growth. The beneficiaries
of this process were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who emerged
as a new layer within the Arab elite. From 1880 large-scale Jewish immigration began, almost entirely from Europe, based on an explicitly Zionist ideology. There was also a revival of the Hebrew language and culture.
The British were formally awarded the mandate to govern the region in 1922. The Arab Palestinians rioted in 1920, 1921, 1929, and revolted in 1936. In 1947, following World War II and The Holocaust, the British Government announced its desire to terminate the Mandate, and the United Nations General Assembly adopted in November 1947 a Resolution 181(II) recommending partition into an Arab state, a Jewish state and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. A civil war began immediately after the Resolution's adoption. The State of Israel was declared in May 1948.
In 2000, the Second Intifada (also called al-Aqsa Intifada) began, and Israel built a separation barrier. In the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza,
Israel withdrew all settlers and military presence from the Gaza Strip,
but maintained military control of numerous aspects of the territory
including its borders, air space and coast. Israel's ongoing military
occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem continues
to be the world's longest military occupation in modern times.
The boundaries of Palestine have varied throughout history.The Jordan Rift Valley (comprising Wadi Arabah, the Dead Sea and River Jordan) has at times formed a political and administrative frontier, even within empires that have controlled both territories. At other times, such as during certain periods during the Hasmonean and Crusader states for example, as well as during the biblical period, territories on both sides of the river formed part of the same administrative unit. During the ArabCaliphate period, parts of southern Lebanon and the northern highland areas of Palestine and Jordan were administered as Jund al-Urdun, while the southern parts of the latter two formed part of Jund Dimashq, which during the 9th century was attached to the administrative unit of Jund Filastin.
The boundaries of the area and the ethnic nature of the people referred to by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE as Palaestina vary according to context. Sometimes, he uses it to refer to the coast north of Mount Carmel.
Elsewhere, distinguishing the Syrians in Palestine from the
Phoenicians, he refers to their land as extending down all the coast
from Phoenicia to Egypt. Pliny, writing in Latin in the 1st century CE, describes a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina" among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina (I and II, also known as Palaestina Prima, "First Palestine", and Palaestina Secunda,
"Second Palestine"), have served as a name for the geographic area
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Arab rule, Filastin (or Jund Filastin) was used administratively to refer to what was under the Byzantines Palaestina Secunda (comprising Judaea and Samaria), while Palaestina Prima (comprising the Galilee region) was renamed Urdunn ("Jordan" or Jund al-Urdunn).
1916–1922 various proposals: Three
proposals for the post World War I administration of Palestine. The red
line is the "International Administration" proposed in the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement, the dashed blue line is the 1919 Zionist Organization proposal at the Paris Peace Conference, and the thin blue line refers to the final borders of the 1923–48 Mandatory Palestine.
1937 British proposal: The first official proposal for partition, published in 1937 by the Peel Commission. An ongoing British Mandate was proposed to keep "the sanctity of Jerusalem and Bethlehem", in the form of an enclave from Jerusalem to Jaffa, including Lydda and Ramle.
The region of Palestine is the eponym for the Palestinian people and the culture of Palestine, both of which are defined as relating to the whole historical region, usually defined as the localities within the border of Mandatory Palestine. The 1968 Palestinian National Covenant described Palestine as the "homeland of the Arab Palestinian people", with "the boundaries it had during the British Mandate".
However, since the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the term State of Palestine
refers only to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This discrepancy was
described by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as a negotiated
concession in a September 2011 speech to the United Nations: "... we
agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory
of historical Palestine – on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by
Israel in 1967."
Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on two
methods – censuses and writings made at the times, and the scientific
method based on excavations and statistical methods that consider the
number of settlements at the particular age, area of each settlement,
density factor for each settlement.
The Bar Kokhba revolt
in the 2nd century CE saw a major shift in the population of Palestine.
The sheer scale and scope of the overall destruction has been described
by Dio Cassius in his Roman History,
where he notes that Roman war operations in the country had left some
580,000 Jews dead, with many more dying of hunger and disease, while 50
of their most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages
were razed to the ground. "Thus," writes Dio Cassius, "nearly the whole
of Judaea was made desolate."
According to Israeli archaeologists Magen Broshi and Yigal Shiloh, the population of ancient Palestine did not exceed one million. By 300 CE, Christianity had spread so significantly that Jews comprised only a quarter of the population.
Late Ottoman and British Mandate periods
In a study of Ottoman registers of the early Ottoman rule of Palestine, Bernard Lewis reports:
[T]he
first half century of Ottoman rule brought a sharp increase in
population. The towns grew rapidly, villages became larger and more
numerous, and there was an extensive development of agriculture,
industry, and trade. The two last were certainly helped to no small
extent by the influx of Spanish and other Western Jews.
From
the mass of detail in the registers, it is possible to extract
something like a general picture of the economic life of the country in
that period. Out of a total population of about 300,000 souls, between a
fifth and a quarter lived in the six towns of Jerusalem, Gaza, Safed, Nablus, Ramle, and Hebron.
The remainder consisted mainly of peasants, living in villages of
varying size, and engaged in agriculture. Their main food-crops were
wheat and barley in that order, supplemented by leguminous pulses,
olives, fruit, and vegetables. In and around most of the towns there was
a considerable number of vineyards, orchards, and vegetable gardens.
According to Alexander Scholch, the population of Palestine in 1850
was about 350,000 inhabitants, 30% of whom lived in 13 towns; roughly
85% were Muslims, 11% were Christians and 4% Jews.
According to Ottoman statistics studied by Justin McCarthy,
the population of Palestine in the early 19th century was 350,000, in
1860 it was 411,000 and in 1900 about 600,000 of whom 94% were Arabs. In 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews.
McCarthy estimates the non-Jewish population of Palestine at 452,789 in
1882; 737,389 in 1914; 725,507 in 1922; 880,746 in 1931; and 1,339,763
in 1946.
In 1920, the League of Nations' Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine described the 700,000 people living in Palestine as follows:
Of
these, 235,000 live in the larger towns, 465,000 in the smaller towns
and villages. Four-fifths of the whole population are Moslems. A small
proportion of these are Bedouin Arabs; the remainder, although they
speak Arabic and are termed Arabs, are largely of mixed race. Some
77,000 of the population are Christians, in large majority belonging to
the Orthodox Church, and speaking Arabic. The minority are members of
the Latin or of the Uniate Greek Catholic Church, or—a small number—are
Protestants.
The Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have
entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850, there were in
the country only a handful of Jews. In the following 30 years, a few
hundreds came to Palestine. Most of them were animated by religious
motives; they came to pray and to die in the Holy Land, and to be buried
in its soil. After the persecutions in Russia forty years ago, the
movement of the Jews to Palestine assumed larger proportions.
According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, as of 2015, the total population of Israel was 8.5 million people, of which 75% were Jews, 21% Arabs, and 4% "others". Of the Jewish group, 76% were Sabras (born in Israel); the rest were olim (immigrants)—16% from Europe, the former Soviet republics, and the Americas, and 8% from Asia and Africa, including the Arab countries.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics evaluations, in 2015 the Palestinian population of the West Bank was approximately 2.9 million and that of the Gaza Strip was 1.8 million.
Gaza's population is expected to increase to 2.1 million people in
2020, leading to a density of more than 5,800 people per square
kilometre.
Both Israeli and Palestinian statistics include Arab residents of East Jerusalem in their reports.
According to these estimates the total population in the region of
Palestine, as defined as Israel and the Palestinian territories, stands
approximately 12.8 million.
The World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions
is widely used in recording the distribution of plants. The scheme uses
the code "PAL" to refer to the region of Palestine – a Level 3 area.
The WGSRPD's Palestine is further divided into Israel (PAL-IS),
including the Palestinian territories, and Jordan (PAL-JO), so is larger
than some other definitions of "Palestine".