Posted By simmons on July 15, 2015
Palestinians (, al-Filasniyyn) Total population c. 12,100,000[1] Regions with significant populations State of Palestine 4,420,549[2][a 1] West Bank 2,719,112[2] Gaza Strip 1,701,437[2] Jordan 3,240,000 Israel 1,658,000[3][a 1] Syria 630,000 Chile 500,000[4] Lebanon 402,582 Saudi Arabia 280,245 Egypt 270,245 United States 255,000[5] Honduras 250,000 United Arab Emirates 170,000 Mexico 120,000 Qatar 100,000 Germany 80,000[6] Kuwait 80,000[7] El Salvador 70,000[8] Brazil 59,000[9] Iraq 57,000[10] Yemen 55,000 Canada 50,975[11] Australia 45,000 Libya 44,000 United Kingdom 20,000[6] Peru 15,000 Colombia 12,000 Pakistan 10,500 Netherlands 9,000 Sweden 7,000[12] Algeria 4,030[13] 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: Christianity, Druze, Shia Islam, Judaism,[citation needed], non-denominational Muslims[14] Related ethnic groups Other Levantines, Mediterraneans, Semitic peoples: Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, Samaritans, other Arabs, Assyrians, Canaanites[15]
The Palestinian people (Arabic: , ash-shab al-Filasn), also referred to as Palestinians (Arabic: , al-Filasniyyn, Hebrew: ), 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 (such as that in 1948), 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.
A genetic study has suggested that a majority of the Muslims of Palestine, inclusive of Arab citizens of Israel, could be 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[citation needed] 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.[citation needed] 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 SyrianPalestinian 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.
The Greek toponym Palaistn (), with which the Arabic Filastin () 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] has been conjectured to refer to the "Sea Peoples".[45][46] Among Semitic languages, Assyrian Palastu generally refers to an undefined area.[47]Biblical Hebrew's cognate word Plitim,[48] is usually translated Philistines.[49]
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.[50] 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.[51] The Arabic language newspaper Filasteen (est. 1911), published in Jaffa by Issa and Yusef al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians".[52]
The first Zionist bank, the Jewish Colonial Trust, was founded at the Second Zionist Congress and incorporated in London in 1899. The JCT was intended to be the financial instrument of the Zionist Organization, and was to obtain capital and credit to help attain a charter for Palestine. 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.[53] 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".[54] 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.[55]
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."[56] 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."[56][57]
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