Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the region of Palestine.[
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: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous population, descended from Jews, other Semitic groups, and non-Semitic groups such as the Philistines, had been mostly Christianized. Over succeeding centuries it was Islamicized, and Arabic replaced Aramaic (a Semitic tongue closely related to Hebrew) as the dominant language"
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: "Palestinians are the descendants of all the indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine over the centuries; since the seventh century, they have been predominantly Muslim in religion and almost completely Arab in language and culture."
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: "Furthermore, Zionism itself was also defined by its opposition to the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants of the region. Both the 'conquest of land' and the 'conquest of labor' slogans that became central to the dominant strain of Zionism in the Yishuv originated as a result of the Zionist confrontation with the Palestinian 'other'."
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: "The origin of the term Palestinian is uncertain. Some historians connect it to the Philistines, a biblical people that resided on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea as early as the twelfth century B.C.E. Thus, Palestinians are considered by some to be the indigenous people of present-day Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Other scholars dispute this view, asserting that Jews and others resided in Palestine—usually defined as the narrow strip of land bordered by the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea—long before these Arabs arrived in the seventh century."
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: "Although their leaders welcomed the Jews as refugees, many Palestinians (the indigenous Arab population of Palestine) viewed the arrival of Jewish settlers as a threat to their security and to their land."
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: "Although at the beginning of the twentieth century a considerable proportion of the Palestinian Arabs were evidently immigrants from adjacent countries, some may be the descendents of the ancient inhabitants of the country. Thus, some Palestinian Arabs, like the Jews, may claim a genetic relationship to the ancient inhabitants of the country."; "Even though not a race in a biological sense, political Zionism, after a century of attempts to prove contemporary Jews' material, biological relationships – not merely their spiritual, cultural ones – to the ancient people of the biblical stories, in spite of widespread interspersing with local communities, finally has succeeded. It is tragic that Zionism, as well as Arab Nationalism, have failed to recognize the Palestinians, many of whom similarly appear to share phylogenetic relations to the historic inhabitants of the country, as equal partners."
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: "But given that the groups we are concerned with (Israelis and Palestinians) are ethnonational groups, their political cultures are heavily shaped by their ethnonational identities."
: "This blurring has led to a situation in which characteristics of the State of Israel are presented as characteristics of a nation-state, even though (de facto) it is a binational state, and Palestinian citizens are presented as an ethnic minority group although they are a homeland majority."
: "The Palestinians...are an ethnic minority in their country of residence."
: "What is noteworthy here is the use of a general category 'Arabs', instead of a more specific one of 'Palestinians.' By turning to a general category, the particularity of Palestinians, among other ethnic and national groups, is erased and in its place Jordanian identity is implanted."
: "...throughout the 1990s and 2000s a growing number of PAI political organizations have been increasingly promoting Palestinian consciousness, advancing ethnonationalist objectives, and demanding recognition of collective group rights."
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: "The Palestinians are an Arab people, largely Moslem but with important numbers of Christians, who live in, once lived in, or trace their descent through parents or grandparents to the land once known as Palestine, which came under a British mandate in 1922 and now is the land of Israel, the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza Strip."
: "Of course, the notion that the Palestinians are an Arab people, an integral part of the Arab world ('the Arab nation'), is wholly legitimate and natural, given the history and culture of the people in question."
: "People know who they are, where they live, and where their families have lived for centuries or millennia."
: "Palestinians are an indigenous people who either live in, or originate from, historical Palestine.... Although the Muslims guaranteed security and allowed religious freedom to all inhabitants of the region, the majority converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture."
: "The process of Arabization and Islamization was gaining momentum there. It was one of the mainstays of Umayyad power and was important in their struggle against both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula.... Conversions arising from convenience as well as conviction then increased. These conversions to Islam, together with a steady tribal inflow from the desert, changed the religious character of Palestine's inhabitants. The predominantly Christian population gradually became predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. At the same time, during the early years of Muslim control of the city, a small permanent Jewish population returned to Jerusalem after a 500-year absence."
: "the word 'Arab' needs to be used with care. It is applicable to the Bedouin and to a section of the urban and effendi classes; it is inappropriate as a description of the rural mass of the population, the fellaheen. The whole population spoke Arabic, usually corrupted by dialects bearing traces of words of other origin, but it was only the Bedouin who habitually thought of themselves as Arabs. Western travelers from the sixteenth century onwards make the same distinction, and the word 'Arab' almost always refers to them exclusively.... Gradually it was realized that there remained a substantial stratum of the pre-Israelite peasantry, and that the oldest element among the peasants were not 'Arabs' in the sense of having entered the country with or after the conquerors of the seventh century, had been there already when the Arabs came."][ They represent a highly homogeneous community who share one cultural and ethnic identity,]
In 1919, Palestinian Muslims and Christians constituted 90 percent of the population of Palestine, just before the Third Aliyah of Aliyah and the setting up of British Mandatory Palestine after World War I.[ After the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the 1948 Palestinian expulsion, and more so after the 1967 Palestinian exodus, the term "Palestinian" evolved into a sense of a shared future in the form of aspirations for a Palestinian state.][: "The Arabs of Palestine began widely using the term Palestinian starting in the pre–World War I period to indicate the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people. But after 1948—and even more so after 1967—for Palestinians themselves the term came to signify not only a place of origin but also, more importantly, a sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state."]
Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states.[, citing ]
Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, now encompassing Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Etymology
The Greek language toponym Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη), which is the origin of the Arabic Filasṭīn (فلسطين), first occurs in the work of the 5th century BCE Ancient Greece historian Herodotus, where it denotes generally[With the exception of Bks. 1, 105; 3.91.1, and 4.39, 2.] the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt.[Herodotus describes its scope in the Fifth Satrapy of the Persians as follows: "From the town of Posidium, ... on the border between Cilicia and Syria, as far as Egypt – omitting Arabian territory, which was free of tax, came 350 talents. This province contains the whole of Phoenicia and that part of Syria which is called Palestine, and Cyprus. This is the fifth Satrapy." (from ).]
The Greek word reflects an ancient Eastern Mediterranean-Near Eastern word which was used either as a toponym or ethnonym. In Ancient Egyptian Peleset/Purusati[. Quote: "First coined in 1881 by the French Egyptologist G. Maspero (1896), the somewhat misleading term "Sea Peoples" encompasses the ethnonyms Lukka, Sherden, Shekelesh, Teresh, Eqwesh, Denyen, Sikil / Tjekker, Weshesh, and Peleset (Philistines). Footnote:][, for the Neo-Assyrian sources p.312: The four city-states of the late Philistine period (Iron Age II) are Amqarrūna (Ekron), Asdūdu (Ashdod), Hāzat (Gaza City), and Isqalūna (Ashkelon), with the former fifth capital, Gath, having been abandoned at this late phase.] Biblical Hebrew's cognate word Plištim, is usually translated Philistines.[
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When the Ancient Rome conquered the region in the first century BCE, they used the name Judaea for the province that covered most of the region. At the same time, the name Syria Palestina continued to be used by historians and geographers to refer to the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, as in the writings of Philo, Josephus and Pliny the Elder. During the early 2nd century CE, Syria Palaestina became the official administrative name in a move viewed by scholars as an attempt by emperor Hadrian to disassociate Jews from the land as punishment for the Bar Kokhba revolt.[: "While it is true that there is no evidence as to precisely who changed the name of Judaea to Palestine and precisely when this was done, circumstantial evidence would seem to point to Hadrian himself, since he is, it would seem, responsible for a number of decrees that sought to crush the national and religious spirit of thejews, whether these decrees were responsible for the uprising or were the result of it. In the first place, he refounded Jerusalem as a Graeco-Roman city under the name of Aelia Capitolina. He also erected on the site of the Temple another temple to Zeus."] Jacobson suggested the change to be rationalized by the fact that the new province was far larger. The name was thenceforth inscribed on coins, and beginning in the fifth century, mentioned in rabbinic texts.
In modern times, the first person to self-describe Palestine's Arabs as "Palestinians" was Khalil Beidas in 1898, followed by Salim Quba'in and Najib Nassar in 1902. After the 1908 Young Turk Revolution, which eased press censorship laws in the Ottoman Empire, dozens of newspapers and periodicals were founded in Palestine, and the term "Palestinian" expanded in usage. Among those were the Al-Quds, Al-Munadi, Falastin, Al-Karmil and Al-Nafir newspapers, which used the term "Filastini" more than 170 times in 110 articles from 1908 to 1914. They also made references to a "Palestinian society", "Palestinian nation", and a "Palestinian diaspora". Article writers included Christian and Muslim Arab Palestinians, Palestinian emigrants, and non-Palestinian Arabs.
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".
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. The term Arab Jews can include Jews with Palestinian heritage and Israeli citizenship, although some Arab Jews prefer to be called Mizrahi Jews. Non-Jewish Arab citizens of Israel with Palestinian heritage identify themselves as Arabs or Palestinians.
The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO's Palestinian 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."[ The most recent draft of the Palestinian constitution would amend that definition such that, "Palestinian nationality shall be regulated by law, without prejudice to the rights of those who legally acquired it prior to May 10, 1948 or the rights of the Palestinians residing in Palestine prior to this date, and who were forced into exile or departed there from and denied return thereto. This right passes on from fathers or mothers to their progenitor. It neither disappears nor elapses unless voluntarily relinquished."]
Origins
Historical records and later genetic studies indicate that the Palestinian people descend mostly from Ancient Levantines extending back to Bronze Age inhabitants of Levant.[ In a human rights context, the word indigenous may have different definitions; the UN Commission on Human Rights uses several criteria to define this term.][: "One of the stumbling blocks to reaching an international consensus on the special character and scope of the human rights of indigenous peoples as well as the specific areas in which their protection may be ensured by state action is the ambiguity surrounding the definition of 'indigenous.' ... The United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 1995 adopted four principles to be taken into account in a definition of indigenous peoples"]
Palestine has undergone many demographic and religious upheavals throughout history. During the 2nd millennium BCE, it was inhabited by the Canaanites, Semitic-speaking peoples who practiced the Canaanite religion.[ubb, 1998. pp. 13–14]
In the centuries that followed, the region experienced political and economic unrest and the religious persecution of minorities.
In the 7th century, the Arab Rashiduns conquered the Levant; they were later succeeded by other Arab Muslim dynasties, including the Umayyads, Abbasids and the Fatimids.[ (theory of imported population unsubstantiated).] Some scholars suggest that by the arrival of the Crusades, Palestine was already overwhelmingly Muslim,[Ira M. Lapidus, Islamic Societies to the Nineteenth Century: A Global History , Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 201.]
For several centuries during the Ottoman Syria the population in Palestine declined and fluctuated between 150,000 and 250,000 inhabitants, and it was only in the 19th century that a rapid population growth began to occur.
Many Palestinian villagers claim ancestral ties to Arab tribes from the Arabian Peninsula that settled in Palestine during or after the Muslim conquest of the Levant.
Genetics
Early farming populations in the Levant, Iran, and Anatolia have significantly influenced modern-day genomes.
Lazaridis et al. (2022) clarified that ancient Levantines and their descendants exhibit a decrease of ~8% local Neolithic ancestry, which is mostly Natufian culture, every millennium, starting from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period. It was largely replaced by Caucasus-related and Anatolian-related ancestries, from the north and west respectively. However, despite the decline in the Natufian component, this key ancestry source made an important contribution to peoples of later periods, continuing until the present.
Genetic studies indicate a genetic affinity between Palestinians and other Arabs and Semitic people groups in the Middle East and North Africa.[
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Identity
Emergence of a distinct identity
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national identity among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement. Some argue that it can be traced as far back as the peasants' revolt in Palestine in 1834 (or even as early as the 17th century), while others argue that it did not emerge until after the Mandatory Palestine period.[Rashid Khalidi, "Palestinian Identity", pp. 117ff, p. 142 .] The term itself Filasṭīnī was first introduced by Khalil Beidas in a translation of a Russian work on the Holy Land into Arabic in 1898. After that, its usage gradually spread so that, by 1908, with the loosening of censorship controls under late Ottoman rule, a number of Muslim, Christian and Jewish correspondents writing for newspapers began to use the term with great frequency in referring to the 'Palestinian people' ( ahl/ahālī Filasṭīn), 'Palestinians' ( al-Filasṭīnīyūn), the 'sons of Palestine' ( abnā’ Filasṭīn) or to 'Palestinian society' ( al-mujtama' al-filasṭīnī).[Zachary J Foster, Emanuel Beška, "The Origins of the term 'Palestinian' ('Filasṭīnī') in late Ottoman Palestine, 1898–1914 ", Academic Letters 2021 pp.1–22], the coat of arms and emblem of the Palestinian Authority]]
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).[Khalidi, 1997, pp. 124–127.] 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 (, fellahin), expressing growing concern over land dispossession and its implications for the society at large.[
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Historian Rashid Khalidi's 1997 book Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness is considered a "foundational text" on the subject.[ "Palestinian Identity – The ...." Columbia University Press. 10 December 2018.] He notes that the archaeological strata that denote the history of Palestine – encompassing the Biblical, Ancient Rome, Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, , Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman empire periods – form part of the identity of the modern-day Palestinian people, as they have come to understand it over the last century.[Khalidi, 2010, p. 149 .][Khalidi, 1997, pp. 19–21.]
Khalidi argues that the modern national identity of Palestinians has its roots in nationalism 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.[ 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."][
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's 1898 use of the word "Palestinians" in the preface to his translation of A Description of the Holy Land[Zachary Foster, "Who Was The First Palestinian in Modern History" The Palestine Square 18 February 2016]]]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 Zionism immigration and settlement."
David Seddon writes that "the 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)."[David Seddon (ed.) A political and economic dictionary of the Middle East, Taylor & Francis, 2004. p. 532.]
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal consider the 1834 Peasants' revolt 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 decade from the 1830s to the 1840s when an Egyptian vassal of the Ottomans, Muhammad Ali, and his son Ibrahim Pasha successfully broke away from Ottoman leadership and, conquering territory spreading from Egypt to as far north as Damascus, asserted their own rule over the area. The so-called Peasants' Revolt by Palestine's Arabs was precipitated by heavy demands for conscripts. The local leaders and urban notables were unhappy about the loss of traditional privileges, while the peasants were 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.[Kimmerling and Migdal, 2003, p. 6–11] Benny Morris argues that the Arabs in Palestine nevertheless remained part of a larger national pan-Arab or, alternatively, pan-Islamist movement.[Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, pp.40–42 in the French edition.] Walid Khalidi argues otherwise, writing that Palestinians in Ottoman empire times were "acutely aware of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history ..." and "although 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."[Khalidi, W., 1984, p. 32]
Zachary J. Foster argued in a 2015 Foreign Affairs article that "based on hundreds of manuscripts, Islamic court records, books, magazines, and newspapers from the Ottoman period (1516–1918), it seems that the first Arab to use the term "Palestinian" was Farid Georges Kassab, a Beirut-based Orthodox Christian." He explained further that Kassab's 1909 book Palestine, Hellenism, and Clericalism noted in passing that "the Orthodox Palestinian Ottomans call themselves Arabs, and are in fact Arabs," despite describing the Arabic speakers of Palestine as Palestinians throughout the rest of the book."
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."[ 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."]
Israeli historian Efraim Karsh takes the view that the Palestinian identity did not develop until after the Six-Day War because the Palestinian exodus/expulsion 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.[Efraim Karsh. Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest. New York: Grove Press, 2003. p. 43. "Upon occupying the West Bank during the 1948 war, King Abdallah moved quickly to erase all traces of corporate Palestinian identity."]
The idea of a unique Palestinian state distinct 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, natural language, natural, economic and geographical bonds."
Rise of Palestinian nationalism
An independent Palestinian state has not exercised full sovereignty over the land in which the Palestinians 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 ruled 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.
Today, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination has been affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly, the International Court of Justice[Only "peoples" are entitled to self-determination in contemporary international law (See Self-determination and National Minorities, Oxford Monographs in International Law, Thomas D. Musgrave, Oxford University Press, 1997, , p. 170). In 2004, the International Court of Justice said that Israel had recognized the existence of a "Palestinian people" and referred a number of times to the Palestinian people and its "legitimate rights" in international agreements. The Court said those rights include the right to self-determination(See paragraph 118 of Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory ). Judge Koroma explained "The Court has also held that the right of self-determination as an established and recognized right under international law applies to the territory and to the Palestinian people. Accordingly, the exercise of such right entitles the Palestinian people to a State of their own as originally envisaged in resolution 181 (II) and subsequently confirmed." Judge Higgins also said "that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State"(See paragraph 5, Separate opinion of Judge Koroma and paragraph 18, Separate opinion of Judge Higgins ). Paul De Waart said that the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2004 "ascertained the present responsibility of the United Nations to protect Palestine's statehood. It affirmed the applicability of the prohibition of acquisition of Palestinian territory by Israel and confirmed the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Moreover, the existence of the Palestinian people as the rightful claimant to the Occupied Palestinian Territory is no longer open to question (See De Waart, Paul J. I. M., "International Court of Justice Firmly Walled in the Law of Power in the Israeli–Palestinian Peace Process", Leiden Journal of International Law, 18 (2005), pp. 467–487).] and several Israeli authorities.
British Mandate (1917–1947)
The first Palestinian nationalist organizations emerged at the end of the World War I.[Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 48 in the French edition.] 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.[Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p.49 in the French edition.]
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.[Weldon Matthews, Confronting an Empire, Constructing a Nation,I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 33. Both Weldon Matthews and Prasenjit Duara interpret this aspect of the mandate system as tailored to the needs of imperial powers, which found it useful to avoid classifying colonies as nations: "This outlook was carried over to Palestine from India and Egypt where British administrators did not merely doubt the existence of a unifying national identity, but thwarted its development by creating sectarian institutions as a matter of policy."] (1897–1984) was a Palestinian nationalist and politician, viewed in the 1940s as a leader of the Palestinians|left]]
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."["Palestine Arabs." The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. Ed. Avraham Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002.]
After the British general, Louis Bols, read out the Balfour Declaration in February 1920, some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem.
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 Jaffa riots and dozens of Arabs and Jews were killed in the confrontations.
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.[Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, pp. 49–50 in the French edition.][Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, p. 139n.] With the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, coupled with the British conquest and administration of Palestine, 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".[Khalidi, 1997, p. 165.]
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.[ The Arab Higher 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.][
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War (1947–1949)
In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Partition Plan, which divided the mandate of Palestine into two states: one majority Arab and one majority Jewish. The Palestinian Arabs rejected the plan and attacked Jewish civilian areas and paramilitary targets. Following Israel's declaration of independence in May 1948, five Arab armies (Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan) came to the Palestinian Arabs' aid against the newly founded State of Israel.[ "Milestones: 1945–1952." Office of the Historian. 7 December 2018.]
The Palestinian Arabs suffered such a major defeat at the end of the war, that the term they use to describe the war is Nakba (the "catastrophe").[Sela and Neil Caplan. "Epilogue: Reflections on Post-Oslo Israeli and Palestinian History and Memory of 1948." The War of 1948: Representations of Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Narratives, edited by Sela and Alon Kadish, Indiana University Press, 2016, pp. 203–221.] Israel took control of much of the territory that would have been allocated to the Arab state had the Palestinian Arabs accepted the UN partition plan.[Thrall, Nathan. "How 1948 Still Influences the ..." Time. 14 May 2018. 7 December 2018.]
"Lost years" (1949–1967)
After the war, there was a hiatus in Palestinian political activity. Khalidi attributes this to the traumatic events of 1947–49, which included the depopulation of over 400 towns and villages and the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees.[Khalidi, 1997, pp. 178–180.] 418 villages had been razed, 46,367 buildings, 123 schools, 1,233 mosques, 8 churches and 68 holy shrines, many with a long history, destroyed by Israeli forces.[Nurhan Abujidi, Urbicide in Palestine: Spaces of Oppression and Resilience , Routledge 2014 p.95.] In addition, Palestinians lost from 1.5 to 2 million acres of land, an estimated 150,000 urban and rural homes, and 23,000 commercial structures such as shops and offices.[Philip Mattar, The Encyclopedia of the Palestinians , InfoBase Publishing 2005 p.329.] Recent estimates of the cost to Palestinians in property confiscations by Israel from 1948 onwards has concluded that under international law the fair value of compensation to Palestinians would total $300 billion in 2008–2009 prices.[
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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. At the Jericho Conference on 1 December 1948, 2,000 Palestinian delegates supported a resolution calling for "the unification of Palestine and Transjordan as a step toward full Arab unity".[Benvenisti, Meron (1996), City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem, University of California Press, . 27] 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.[Khalidi, 1997, p. 179.]
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.[Khalidi, 1997, p. 180.] 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.[ The potency of the pan-Arabism ideology put forward by Gamal Abdel Nasser—popular among Palestinians for whom Arabism was already an important component of their identity][Khalidi, 1997, p. 182.]—tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab states it subsumed.[Khalidi, 1997, p. 181.]
1967–present
Since 1967, Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have lived under military occupation, creating, according to Avram Bornstein, a prison.[Avram Bornstein, 'Military Occupation as Carceral Society: Prisons, Checkpoints, and Wall in the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle,' in Avram Bornstein, Paul E. Farmer (et al.) An Anthropology Of War: Views from the Frontline, Berghahn Books, 2009 pp.106–130, p.108:'On the whole, the Israeli Occupation has created an increasing prison-like society for Palestinians'.] In the meantime, pan-Arabism has waned as an aspect of Palestinian identity. The Israeli occupation 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.[The PNC adopted the goal of establishing a national state in 1974.] 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.[ 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.][Khalidi, 1997, p. 149. Khalidi writes: 'As with other national movements, extreme advocates of this view go further than this, and anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, a nationalist consciousness and identity that are in fact relatively modern.'], Nayef Hawatmeh and Kamal Nasser in a Jordan press conference in Amman, 1970]]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."[Schulz and Hammer, 2003, p. 105.]
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.[
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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.[See Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People [11] ]
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.
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.
Following the failures of the Second Intifada, a younger generation is emerging that cares less about nationalist ideology than about economic growth. This has been a source of tension between some of the Palestinian political leadership and Palestinian business professionals who desire economic cooperation with Israelis. At an international conference in Bahrain, Palestinian businessman Ashraf Jabari said, "I have no problem working with Israel. It is time to move on. ... The Palestinian Authority does not want peace. They told the families of the businessmen that they are wanted by for participating in the Bahrain workshop."[Sonnenfeld, Jeffrey. "The Bahrain Conference: What the Experts and the Media Missed." Fortune. 30 June 2019. 3 July 2019.]
Demographics
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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 at the end of 2015 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2015 was 12.37 million of which the number still residing within historic Palestine was 6.22 million.[Meron Rapaport, 'The Israeli right is the minority — the left need only realize it,' +972 magazine 12 January 2023][ "Jews now a 47% minority in Israel and the territories, demographer says" , The Times of Israel 30 August 2022.] Within Israel proper, Palestinians constitute almost 21 percent of the population as part of its Arab citizens.
In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG).[ American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG) , is led by Bennett Zimmerman, Yoram Ettinger, Roberta Seid, and Michael L. Wise] In their report,[Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, and Michael L. Wise, "Voodoo Demographics" , Azure, Summer 5766/2006, No. 25.]
The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[Sergio DellaPergola, Letter to the editor, Azure, 2007, No. 27, [17] ] 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.[ The Israeli Civil Administration put the number of Palestinians in the West Bank at 2,657,029 as of May 2012.]
The AIDRG study was also criticized by Ian Lustick, who accused its authors of multiple methodological errors and a political agenda.
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."[ "Jordan revokes Palestinians' citizenships" . JTA. 21 July 2009.]
Many Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.
In total, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas. Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre-dated the Arab-Israeli conflict, but continued to grow thereafter.[Farsoun, 2004, p. 84.] 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,[Guzmán, 2000, p. 85.] Schafik Jorge Handal, El Salvador politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.
Refugees
In 2006, there were 4,255,120 Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This number includes the Kinship 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.
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."[McDowall, 1989, p. 90.]
Israeli policy to prevent the refugees from returning to their homes was initially formulated by David Ben Gurion and Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund was formally adopted by the Israeli cabinet in June 1948.[Randa F arah, "The Marginalizastion of Palestinian Refugees", Niklaus Steiner, Mark Gibney, Gil Loescher (eds.) Problems of Protection: The UNHCR, Refugees, and Human Rights , Psychology Press, 2003 pp.155–178 p.161.] 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."[UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), "Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator", U.N. Doc.
A/RES/194 (11 December 1948), para. 11, cited Leila Hilal, Transitional Justice Responses to Palestinian Dispossession: Focus on Restitution , Brookings Institution/LSE August 2012 p.8.][ 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.][
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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.[ In 2012, Egypt deviated from this practice by granting citizenship to 50,000 Palestinians, mostly from the Gaza Strip.]
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.
Religion
The majority of Palestinians are Muslim,[Lybarger, 2007, p. 114.] with a small minority of Ahmadiyya.[ Palestinians and Israel p. 53] (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, which was originally composed of Aliyah from around the world.]]Until the end of the 19th century, cross-cultural syncretism between Islamic and Christian symbols and figures in religious practice was common in the Palestinian countryside, where most villages did not have local mosques or churches.[ 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."][
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Religion as constitutive of individual identity was accorded a minor role within Palestinian social structure until the latter half of the 19th century.[ 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."][
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.][ 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.][
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The British census of 1922 registered 752,048 inhabitants in Palestine, consisting of 660,641 Palestinian Arabs (Muslim and Christian Arabs), 83,790 Palestinian Jews, and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The corresponding percentage breakdown is 87% Muslim and Christian Arab and 11% Jewish.
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.
The Druze became Israeli citizens and Druze males serve in the Israel Defense Forces, though some individuals identify as "Palestinian Druze".[Nissim Dana, The Druze in the Middle East: Their Faith, Leadership, Identity and Status, Sussex Academic Press, 2003, p. 201.]
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.[ They are commonly referred to among Palestinians as the "Jews of Palestine", and maintain their own unique cultural identity.][
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Jews who identify as Palestinian Jews are few, but include Israeli Jews who are part of the Neturei Karta group,
Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Baháʼí Faith spent his last years in Acre, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He remained there for 24 years, where a shrine was erected in his honor.[http://www.bic.org/statements-and-reports/bic-statements/47-0715.htm]
File:Exterior of the Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem2.jpg|The Dome of the Rock in the Old City of Jerusalem
File:The Church of the Holy Sepulchre-Jerusalem.JPG|The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the holiest site in Christianity
File:Palestinian Christian Scouts Nativity Church in Bethlehem Christmas Eve 2006.jpg|Palestinian Christian Scouts on Christmas Eve in front of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, 2006
File:Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron 2007.jpg|Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron
File:Ben Zakai.jpg|Palestinian Jews in Ben Zakai house of prayer, Jerusalem, 1893
File:PikiWiki Israel 6935 In the holy place of jethro.jpg|Tomb of Shuaib in Hittin
File:1840 jer salat.jpg|Palestinian Muslims pray in Jerusalem, 1840. By David Roberts, in The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia
File:Ramallah-Family-1905.jpg|A Palestinian Christian family in Ramallah, 1905
File:Orthodox priest family.jpg|Palestinian Eastern Orthodox priest from Jerusalem with his family of three generations, circa 1893
Current demographics
According to the PCBS, there are an estimated 4,816,503 Palestinians in the Palestinian territories , of whom 2,935,368 live in the West Bank and 1,881,135 in the Gaza Strip.
In 2008, Minority Rights Group International estimated the number of Palestinians in Jordan to be about 3 million.[
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Society
Language
, a Palestinian actress and producer, attends a motion picture ceremony]]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 predominantly Christian and Palestinian Jews communities, were Aramaic, Greek language, and Syriac language.[Greenfield et al., 2001, p. 158.]
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.
Barbara McKean Parmenter has noted that the Arabs of Palestine have been credited with the preservation of the original Semitic place names of many sites mentioned in the Bible, as was documented by the American geographer Edward Robinson in the 19th century.[Parmenter, 1994, p. 11.]
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
The literacy rate of Palestine was 96.3% according to a 2014 report by the United Nations Development Programme, which is high by international standards. There is a gender difference in the population aged above 15 with 5.9% of women considered illiterate compared to 1.6% of men.[
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Palestinian intellectuals, among them May Ziadeh 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.[West Bank 44.6% versus 22.8% in Lebanon. See Elias H. Tuma, Haim Darin-Drabkin, The Economic case for Palestine, London: Croom Helm, 1978, p 48.] 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.'[Interview with Elias Sanbar. Claude Cheysson, "The Right to Self-Determination", Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 16, no. 1 (Autumn 1986), pp. 3–12; p. 3.]
Contributions to Palestinian culture have been made by diaspora figures including Edward Said and Ghada Karmi, Arab citizens of Israel including Emile Habibi, and Jordanians including Ibrahim Nasrallah.
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 Tuqan family, the Nusaybah family, Qudwa family, Shawish clan, Shurrab family, Al-Zaghab family, Al-Khalil family, Ridwan dynasty, Al-Zeitawi family, Abu Ghosh clan, Barghouti family, Doghmush clan, Douaihy family, Hilles clan, Jarrar family, 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 or Druze, may no longer self-identify as Palestinian for political reasons.[Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools, p 8, 2001]
Culture
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 historiography, he writes: 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,[Parkes, 1970, pp. 209–210.] and these ideas were to influence 20th-century debates on Palestinian identity by local and international ethnographers.
The contributions of the 'nativist' Ethnography 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.[Regev Motti (1993), Oud and Guitar: The Musical Culture of the Arabs in Israel (Institute for Israeli Arab Studies, Beit Berl), , p. 4.]
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.
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 cuisine-influenced Arabs and the Turkey.[ Revisiting our table... Nasser, Christiane Dabdoub, This week in Palestine, Turbo Computers & Software Co. Ltd. June 2006. Retrieved 8 January 2008.] 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.[ ABC of Arabic Cuisine ArabNet. Retrieved 25 December 2007.] The already simple cuisine did not advance for centuries due to Islam's strict rules of parsimony and restraint, until the rise of the , 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.[
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There are several foods native to Palestine that are well known in the Arab world, such as, kanafeh, 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. Another very popular food is Palestinian Kofta or Kufta.
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.[ Once Upon a Time in Jerusalem ch. 2]
Entrées that are eaten throughout the Palestinian territories, include dolma – boiled grape leaves wrapped around cooked rice and ground domestic sheep. Mahashi is an assortment of stuffed vegetables such as, zucchinis, potatoes, cabbage and in Gaza, chard.
File:Mushakhan Dish.jpg|Musakhan: The Palestinian National dish.
File:Hummuswithpinenuts.jpg|A plate of hummus, garnished with paprika and olive oil and
File:Il Falafel di Ramallah.JPG|A Palestinian youth serving Falafel in Ramallah.
File:Künefe.jpg|Kanafeh: a Palestinian dessert.
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.
- Cinema
Palestinian cinematography, relatively young compared to Arab cinema overall, receives much European and Israeli support.
File:Jaffa Alhambra Cinema03562ucroped.jpg|The Alhamra Cinema, Jaffa, 1937, bombed December 1947
File:Halhul, 1940.jpg|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, Nabulsi soap-making, Hebron glass, and olive-wood and Mother of Pearl carvings, among others.[Jacobs et al., 1998, p. 72.][Karmi, 2005, p. 18.]
- Traditional costumes
Foreign travelers to Palestine in the 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.
New styles began to appear in the 1960s. For example, the "six-branched dress" named after the six wide bands of embroidery running down from the waist.[Weir, Shelagh (1989) Palestinian Costume. British Museum. . p. 112.] These styles came from the refugee camps, particularly after 1967. Individual village styles were lost and replaced by an identifiable "Palestinian" style.[Skinner, Margarita (2007) PALESTINIAN EMBROIDERY MOTIVES. A Treasury of Stitches 1850–1950. Melisende. . p. 21.] The shawal, a style popular in the West Bank and Jordan before the First Intifada, probably evolved from one of the many NGO embroidery projects in the refugee camps. It was a shorter and narrower fashion, with a western cut.[Weir, Shelagh (1989) Palestinian Costume. British Museum. . pp. 88, 113.]
File:Betlehem woman b.jpg|A woman from Bethlehem, c. 1940s.
File:Ramallah woman2.jpg|Young woman of Ramallah wearing dowry headdress, c. 1898–1914
File:Ramlah costumewo.jpg|Ramallah woman, c. 1920, Library of Congress
File:Arabic-traditional-Dress.jpg|A Traditional Women's Dress in Ramallah, c. 1920.
File:Bethlehengirlsintraditionaldresspre1918.jpg|Girls in Bethlehem costume pre-1885.
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. For example, Egyptian literature is the 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 literature written by Palestinians" regardless of their residential status.
Contemporary Palestinian literature is often characterized by its heightened sense of irony and the exploration of existential themes and issues of identity.[ References to the subjects of resistance to occupation, exile, loss, and love and longing for homeland are also common.][ 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."][ 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,]
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.
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).[ She also posits a temporal distinction between literature produced before 1948 and that produced thereafter.][ 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."][
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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.[Shahin, 2005, p. 41.] After the 1948 Palestinian exodus and discrimination by neighboring Arab countries, 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 including Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Zayyad.][ The work of these poets was largely unknown to the wider Arab world for years because of the lack of diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab governments. The situation changed after Ghassan Kanafani, another Palestinian writer in exile in Lebanon, published an anthology of their work in 1966.][ Palestinian poets often write about the common theme of a strong affection and sense of loss and longing for a lost homeland.][ 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.]
Palestinian folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, , oral tradition, , jokes, popular beliefs, tradition, 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.[
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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..."[Muhawi, 1989.] 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: jinns 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)."[
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Music
Palestinian music is well known throughout the Arab world.
Reem Kelani is one of the foremost researchers and performers in the present day of music with a specifically Palestinian narrative and heritage.
Palestinian hip hop
Palestinian hip hop reportedly started in 1998 with Tamer Nafar's group DAM.
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".[ This subgenre has served as a way to politicize the Palestinian issue through music.
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Dance
The Dabke, a Levantine Arab folk dance style whose local Palestinian versions were appropriated by Palestinian nationalism after Six-Day War, has, according to one scholar, possible roots that may go back to ancient fertility rites.
File:Debka.jpg|Palestinian Dabke folk dance being performed by men
File:Betlehem woman dancing.jpg|Palestinian women dancing traditionally, Bethlehem c. 1936
Sport
Although sport facilities did exist before the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, 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.
File:"Machete Kills" red carpet - 10594982886.jpg|Marko Zaror, Chilean martial artist of Palestinian descent.
File:Nicolas Massu 2007 Australian Open R1.jpg|Nicolás Massú, Chilean tennis player of Palestinian descent.
File:Palestino - O'Higgins 20190405 13.jpg|Roberto Bishara is a footballer of Palestinian descent.
See also
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List of Palestinians
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History of agriculture in Palestine
Notes
Citations
Sources
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Barzilai, Gad. (2003). Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
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Boyle, Kevin and Sheen, Juliet (1997). Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report. London: Routledge.
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Cohen, Hillel, Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917–1948
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Cohen, Robin (1995). The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Cambridge University Press.
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Cordesman, Anthony H (2005). The Israeli-Palestinian War: Escalating to Nowhere. Greenwood Publishing Group.
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Drummond, Dorothy Weitz (2004). Holy Land, Whose Land?: Modern Dilemma, Ancient Roots. Fairhurst Press.
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Farsoun, Samih K. (2004). Culture and Customs of the Palestinians. Greenwood Press.
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Guzmán, Roberto Marín (2000). A Century of Palestinian Immigration into Central America. Editorial Universidad de C.R.
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Healey, John F. (2001). The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus. Brill Academic Publishers.
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Eric Hobsbawm (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge University Press.
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Howell, Mark (2007). What Did We Do to Deserve This? Palestinian Life under Occupation in the West Bank, Garnet Publishing.
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Rashid Khalidi (2006). The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Houghton Mifflin.
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Walid Khalidi (1984). Before Their Diaspora. Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington D.C.
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Kimmerling, Baruch and Joseph S. Migdal (2003). The Palestinian People: A History. Harvard University Press. . .
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Kunstel, Marcia and Joseph Albright (1990). Their Promised Land: Arab and Jew in History's Cauldron-One Valley in the Jerusalem Hills. Crown.
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