Palestinians
(الفلسطينيون al-Filasṭīniyyūn)

Tawfiq Canaan • Edward Said • Mahmoud Darwish • Leila Khaled Yassir Arafat • Mohammad Bakri • Hanan Ashrawi • Queen Rania of Jordan
Total population
c. 11,000,000
Regions with significant populations
Palestinian territories 3,760,000 [1] – West Bank (inc. East Jerusalem) 2,345,000 [1] – Gaza Strip 1,416,000 [1]  Jordan 2,700,000 [2][3]  Israel 1,000,000+ [4]  Syria 630,000  Chile 500,000 [5]  Lebanon 402,582  Saudi Arabia 280,245  Egypt 270,245  United States 255,000 [6]  Honduras 250,000  United Arab Emirates 170,000  Mexico 120,000  Qatar 100,000  Germany 80,000 [7]  Kuwait 70,000  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 [7]  Peru 15,000  Colombia 12,000  Pakistan 8,500  Sweden 7,000 [12]  Guatemala 1,400
Languages
Palestinian territories Palestinian Arabic, Modern Hebrew, English, Neo-Aramaic, and Greek Israel Palestinian Arabic, Modern Hebrew, English, Neo-Aramaic, and Greek Diaspora: Other varieties of Arabic, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and others.
Religion
Majority: Sunni Islam Minority: Christian, Druze, Shia Islam, Judaism, Samaritanism
Related ethnic groups
Other Levantines, Mediterraneans, Sea Peoples, Middle Eastern: Semitic peoples: Jews, Arabs, Assyrians.[13] [14]

The Palestinian people, (Arabic: الشعب الفلسطيني‎, ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī) also referred to as Palestinians (Arabic: الفلسطينيون‎, al-Filasṭīniyyūn), are descendants of the peoples who have lived in Palestine over the centuries.^[15][16] Today, Palestinians are largely culturally and linguistically Arab. Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Israel. In this combined area, as of 2004, Palestinians constituted 49% of all inhabitants,^[17] 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.^[4]

Throughout the aforementioned combined area, many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians, including more than a million in the Gaza Strip,^[18] three-quarters of a million in the West Bank,^[18], and about a quarter of a million in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, making up what is known as the Palestinian diaspora, more than half of these are stateless refugees lacking citizenship in any country.^[19] About 2.6 million of the diaspora population live in neighboring Jordan where they make up approximately half the population,^[20] 1.5 million live between Syria and Lebanon, a quarter of a million in Saudi Arabia, with Chile's half a million representing the largest concentration outside the Arab world.

Genetic analysis suggests that many of the Muslims of Palestine are descendants of Christians, Jews, and other earlier inhabitants of the Levant and surrounding area, and that over 70% of Jewish men and half of the Palestinian and Israeli Arab male population share genetics with populations throughout the centuries, some even to prehistoric times.^[21] Since the time of the Muslim conquests in the 7th century, religious conversions have resulted in Palestinians being predominantly Sunni Muslim by religious affiliation, though there is a significant Palestinian Christian minority of various Christian denominations, as well as Druze and a small Samaritan community. Though Palestinian Jews made up part of the population of Palestine prior to the creation of the State of Israel, very few identify as "Palestinian" today. Acculturation, independent from conversion to Islam, resulted in Palestinians being linguistically and culturally Arab.^[15] The vernacular of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. For those who are Arab citizens of Israel, many are bilingual and fluent in Modern Hebrew. Those in the diaspora speak the languages of their host countries, in addition to, or to the exclusion of, Palestinian Arabic.

The history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars.^[22] Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the twentieth century.^[22] "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.^[23][24] The first demand for national independence of the Levant was issued by the Syrian–Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921.^[25] 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 the sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian state.^[23] 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.^[26]

Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before the international community.^[27] 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.

Etymology[link]

Historical Palestine as described by medieval Arab geographers showing the derived Arabic term Jund Filastin (meaning "Division of Palestine") as was used by Umayyad Caliphate 7th century AD

The Greek toponym Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη), with which the Arabic Filastin (فلسطين) is cognate, first occurs in the work of the 5th. century BCE Greek historian Herodotus, where it denotes generally^[28] the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt.^[29][30] Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the 'Syrians of Palestine' or 'Palestinian-Syrians',^[31] an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians).^[32] The Greek word bears comparison to a congeries of ancient ethnonyms and toponyms. In Ancient Egyptian Peleset/Purusati^[33] refers to one of the Sea Peoples. Among Semitic languages, Assyrian Palastu generally refers to southern Palestine.^[34] Old Hebrew's cognate word Plištim,^[35] usually translated Philistines, does not distinguish them and the other Sea Peoples, who settled in Palestine around 1100 BCE.^[36]

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.^[37] 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.^[38] The Arabic language newspaper Filasteen (est. 1911), published in Jaffa by Issa and Yusef al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians".^[39]

A Palestinian Family from Ramallah, 1905.

During the British Mandate of Palestine, the term "Palestinian" was used to refer to all people residing there, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and those granted citizenship by the Mandatory authorities were granted "Palestinian citizenship".^[40] 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.