|
|
This article or section may be inaccurate or unbalanced in favor of certain viewpoints.
Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
| Palestinians |
 |
| Palestinian "Ayoub" family of Ghassanid ancestry from Ramallah ca 1905 |
| Total population |
|
10,574,521 (estimated)
|
| Regions with significant populations |
 Palestinian territories: 3,760,000[1] |
 Jordan |
2,700,000[2] |
|
 Israel |
1,318,000 |
|
 Syria |
434,896 |
|
 Lebanon |
405,425 |
|
 Chile |
400,000 |
|
 USA |
200,000 |
|
 Egypt |
70,245 |
|
 Honduras |
54,000[3] |
|
 Kuwait |
50,000 |
|
 Brazil |
50,000[4] |
|
 Yemen |
24,000[3] |
|
 Canada |
23,975 (2006 Census)[5] |
|
 Australia |
15,000 |
|
 Colombia |
12,000[3] |
|
 Guatemala |
1,400[3] |
|
|
| Languages |
| Arabic, English |
| Religion |
| Sunni Islam, Christianity, others |
| Related ethnic groups |
| Other Arabs; and other Semitic peoples |
Palestinian people (Arabic: الشعب الفلسطيني, ash-sha`b al-filasTīni), Palestinians (Arabic: الفلسطينيون, al-filasTīnīyyūn), or Palestinian Arabs (Arabic: العرب الفلسطينيون, al-`arab al-filasTīnīyyūn) are terms used to refer to an Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine, or those who migrated into the area after 1917.
The total Palestinian population worldwide is estimated to be between 10 and 11 million people, over half of whom are stateless, lacking citizenship in any country.[6] Palestinians are predominantly Sunni Muslims, though there is a significant Christian minority as well as smaller religious communities.
The first widespread use of "Palestinian" as an endonym to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by the Arabs of Palestine began prior to the outbreak of World War I,[7] and the first demand for national independence was issued by the Syrian-Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921.[8] After the exodus of 1948, and even 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 nation-state.[7]
Roughly half of all Palestinians continue to live in Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.[9] The other half, many of whom are refugees, live elsewhere in different places throughout the world. (See Palestinian diaspora)
The Palestinian people as a whole are represented before the international community by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).[10] 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.
Origins
Etymology
- See also: Palestine
![A map of Palestine as described by the medieval Arab geographers, with the Jund Filastin[13] highlighted in grey](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Medieval_Arab_Palestine.jpg/200px-Medieval_Arab_Palestine.jpg)
A map of Palestine as described by the medieval Arab geographers, with the Jund Filastin[13] highlighted in grey
The Greek toponym Palaistinê (Παλαιστίνη), with which the Arabic Filastin (فلسطين) is cognate, first occurs in the work of the Ionian historian Herodotus, active in the middle of the 5th century BCE, where it denotes generally[11] the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt.[12] Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the 'Syrians of Palestine' or 'Palestinian-Syrians',[13] an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians.[14] The word bears comparison to a congeries of ethnonyms in Semitic languages, Ancient Egyptian Prst, Assyrian Palastu, and the Hebraic Plishtim, the latter term used in the Bible to signify the Philistines.[15]
The Romans popularised the term Palestina after their destruction of the 2nd Jewish Temple in Jerusalem when they uprooted and exiled the majority of Jews from the land, then known as Judea. This was an attempt to revoke the Jewish connection with the land of Israel in both name and substance.[16]
The Arabic word Filastin has been used to refer to the region since the earliest medieval Arab geographers adopted the Greek name. Filastini (فلسطيني), also derived from the Latinized Greek term Palaestina (Παλαιστίνη), appears to have been used as an Arabic adjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century CE.[17]
Nablus city in 19th century
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".[18] Following the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, the use and application of the terms "Palestine" and "Palestinian" by and to Palestinian Jews largely dropped from use. The English-language newspaper The Palestine Post for example — which, since 1932, primarily served the Jewish community in the British Mandate of Palestine — 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.[19]
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."[20] This definition also extends to, "The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion." The Charter also states that "Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit."[21][20]
History
- See also: Palestine
- See also: History of Palestine
a Palestinian family portrait ca 1900
Mixed ancestry
Palestinians, like most other Arabic-speakers, combine ancestries from those who have come to settle the region throughout history, a matter on which genetic evidence (see below) has begun to shed some light.[22] American Jewish historian Bernard Lewis writes:
"Clearly, in Palestine as elsewhere in the Middle East, the modern inhabitants include among their ancestors those who lived in the country in antiquity. Equally obviously, the demographic mix was greatly modified over the centuries by migration, deportation, immigration, and settlement. This was particularly true in Palestine..."[23]
Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist explains:
"Throughout history a great diversity of peoples has moved into the region and made Palestine their homeland: Jebusites, Canaanites, Philistines from Crete, Anatolian and Lydian Greeks, Hebrews, Amorites, Edomites, Nabateans, Arameans, Romans, Arabs, and European crusaders, to name a few. Each of them appropriated different regions that overlapped in time and competed for sovereignty and land. Others, such as Ancient Egyptians, Hittites, Persians, Babylonians, and Mongols, were historical 'events' whose successive occupations were as ravaging as the effects of major earthquakes ... Like shooting stars, the various cultures shine for a brief moment before they fade out of official historical and cultural records of Palestine. The people, however, survive. In their customs and manners, fossils of these ancient civilizations survived until modernity—albeit modernity camouflaged under the veneer of Islam and Arabic culture."[24]
Kermit Zarley writes that, "The early ancestors of some of today's Palestinians are no doubt the Canaanites, Philistines, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Idumaeans, Nabateans and Samaritans. In later periods, their intermarriage with conquering peoples, such as Greeks, Romans, Arabians and Turks, merely added to the genetic mix in Palestine."[25] Much of the local Palestinian population in Nablus, for example, is believed to be descended from Samaritans who converted to Islam.[26] Even today, certain Nabulsi family names including Muslimani, Yaish, and Shakshir among others, are associated with Samaritan ancestry.[26]
Disputes over ancient Canaanite ancestry
Some modern Palestinians claim ancestral and cultural connections to the ancient populations that dwelled in Palestine, particularly the Canaanites, an issue of contention within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Noting "the rewriting of the past is usually undertaken to achieve specific political aims" Bernard Lewis explains that, "in bypassing the biblical Israelites and claiming kinship with the Canaanites, the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Palestine, it is possible to assert a historical claim antedating the biblical promise and possession put forward by the Jews."[23]
Some Palestinian scholars, like Zakariyya Muhammad, have criticized the search for Canaanite roots, what he calls "Canaanite ideology", as an "intellectual fad, divorced from the concerns of ordinary people."[27] Assigning its pursuit to the desire to predate Jewish national claims, he describes "Canaanism" as a "losing ideology when used to manage our conflict with the Zionist movement," since it, "concedes a priori the central thesis of Zionism. Namely that we have been engaged in a perennial conflict with Zionism—and hence with the Jewish presence in Palestine—since the Kingdom of Solomon and before ... thus in one stroke Canaanism cancels the assumption that Zionism is a European movement, propelled by modern European contingencies..."[27]
Salim Tamari notes the paradoxes produced by the search for "nativist" roots among Zionist figures and the so-called Canaanite (anti-Zionist) followers of Yonatan Ratosh.[27] For example, Ber Borochov claimed that the lack of a crystallized national consciousness among Palestinian Arabs would result in their likely assimilation into the new Hebrew nationalism, basing this on the belief that: "the fellahin are considered in this context as the descendants of the ancient Hebrew and Canaanite residents 'together with a small admixture of Arab blood'".[27] Ahad Ha'am also shared the belief that: "the Moslems [of Palestine] are the ancient residents of the land ... who became Christians on the rise of Christianity and became Moslems on the arrival of Islam."[27] Even David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi tried to establish in a 1918 paper written in Yiddish that Palestinian peasants and their mode of life were living historical testimonies to Israelite practices in the biblical period.[27] Tamari notes that "the ideological implications of this claim became very problematic and were soon withdrawn from circulation."[27]
Arab origins of the indigenous Bedouin
The Bedouins of Palestine are said to be more securely known to be Arab ancestrally as well as by culture; their distinctively conservative dialects and pronunciation of qaaf as gaaf group them with other Bedouin across the Arab world and confirm their separate history.citation needed Arabic onomastic elements began to appear in Edomite inscriptions starting in the 6th century BC, and are nearly universal in the inscriptions of the Nabataeans, who arrived in today’s Jordan in the 4th-3rd centuries BC.[28] It has thus been suggested that the present day Bedouins of the region may have their origins as early as this period. A few Bedouin are found as far north as Galilee; however, these seem to be much later arrivals, rather than descendants of the Arabs that Sargon II settled in Samaria in 720 BC. The term “Arab,” as well as the presence of Arabs in the Syrian desert and the Fertile Crescent, is first seen in the Assyrian sources from the 9th century bce (Eph'al 1984).[29]
Following the Muslim conquest of Syria, the local languages of Aramaic and Greek were replaced by Arabic as the area's dominant language.[30] Among the cultural survivals from pre-Islamic times are the significant Palestinian Christian community, and smaller Jewish and Samaritan ones, as well as an Aramaic and possibly Hebrew sub-stratum in the local Palestinian Arabic dialect.[31]
European and Orientalist views
The British Mandate referred to native Palestinians and European Jewish settlers alike as "Palestinians," consistent with an Orientalist view of all Jews as Eastern people. Thus figures such as Emmanuel Kant could refer to European Jews as "Palestinians living among us."[32]
Palestinian nationalism
Palestinian girl with the flag
-
-
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement.
In his 1997 book, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, historian Rashid Khalidi notes that the archaeological strata that denote the history of Palestine — encompassing the Biblical, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Fatimid, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods — form part of the identity of the modern-day Palestinian people, as they have come to understand it over the last century.[36] Khalidi stresses that Palestinian identity has never been an exclusive one, with "Arabism, religion, and local loyalties" continuing to play an important role.[37]
Echoing this view, Walid Khalidi writes that Palestinians in Ottoman times were "[a]cutely aware of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history ..." and that "[a]lthough proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry, the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial, including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them."[38]
Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal consider the 1834 revolt of the Arabs in Palestine as constituting the first formative event of the Palestinian people. Under the Ottomans, Palestine's Arab population mostly saw themselves as Ottoman subjects. In the 1830s however, Palestine was occupied by the Egyptian vassal of the Ottomans, Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim Pasha. The revolt was precipitated by popular resistance against heavy demands for conscripts, as 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. In response, Ibrahim Pasha sent in an army, finally defeating the last rebels on 4 August in Hebron.[39] Nevertheless, Benny Morris argues that the Arabs in Palestine remained part of a larger Pan-Islamist or Pan-Arab national movement.[40]
Rashid Khalidi argues that the modern national identity of Palestinians has its roots in nationalist discourses that emerged among the peoples of the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century, and which sharpened following the demarcation of modern nation-state boundaries in the Middle East after World War I.[37] 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."[37]
Historian James L. Gelvin argues that Palestinian nationalism was a direct reaction to Zionism. In his book The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War he states that "Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement."[41] Gelvin argues that this fact does not make the Palestinian identity any less legitimate:
"The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other." Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose."[41]
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."[42]
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."[43]
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).[44] Filasteen, published in Jaffa by Issa and Yusef al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians",[45] first focusing its critique of Zionism around the failure of the Ottoman administration to control Jewish immigration and the large influx of foreigners, later exploring the impact of Zionist land-purchases on Palestinian peasants (Arabic: فلحين, fellahin), expressing growing concern over land dispossession and its implications for the society at large.[44]
The first Palestinian nationalist organisations emerged at the end of the World War I.[46] 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.[47]
The historical record continued to reveal an interplay between "Arab" and "Palestinian" identities and nationalisms. The idea of a unique Palestinian state separated out from its Arab neighbors was at first rejected by some Palestinian representatives. The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (in Jerusalem, February 1919), which met for the purpose of selecting a Palestinian Arab representative for the Paris Peace Conference, adopted the following resolution: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds."[48]
After the Nabi 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.[49][50] With the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, the formerly pan-Syrianist mayor of Jerusalem, Musa Qasim Pasha al-Husayni, said "Now, after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine".citation needed
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.[51]
Struggle for self-determination
Palestinians have never exercised full sovereignty over the land in which they have lived. Palestine was administered by the Ottoman Empire until World War I, and then 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 and East Jerusalem were occupied by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip by Egypt, with both countries continuing to administer these areas until Israel occupied them during the 1967 war. Avi Shlaim explains that the argument that "you never had sovereignty over this land, and therefore you have no rights," has been used by Israelis to deny Palestinian rights and attachment to the land.[52]
Today, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination is generally recognized, having been affirmed by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice and even by Israel itself.[53] About 100 nations recognize Palestine as a state,[54] with Costa Rica being the most recent country to do so, in February of 2008.[55] However, Palestinian sovereignty over the areas claimed as part of the Palestinian state remains limited, and the boundaries of the state remain a point of contestation between Palestinians and Israelis.
British Mandate 1917-1948
British Indian Soldiers search Arab sheikhs in the streets of Jerusalem during the 1920 Palestine riots
After the British general, Louis Bols, declared the enforcement of the Balfour Declaration in February 1920, some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem.[51] A month later, during the 1920 Palestine riots, the protests against British rule and Zionist immigration became violent and Bols banned all demonstrations. In May 1921 however, further anti-Zionist riots broke out in Jaffa and dozens of Arabs and Jews were killed in the confrontations.[51]
In 1922, the British authorities over Mandate Palestine proposed a draft constitution that would have granted the Palestinian Arabs representation in a Legislative Council. 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."[56] The Arabs tried to get the British to offer an Arab legal establishment again roughly ten years later, but to no avail.[57]
After the killing of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam by the British in 1935, his followers initiated the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, which began with a general strike in Jaffa and attacks on Jewish and British installations in Nablus.[51] The Arab High Committee called for a nationwide general strike, non-payment of taxes, and the closure of municipal governments, and demanded an end to Jewish immigration and a ban of the sale of land to Jews. By the end of 1936, the movement had become a national revolt, and resistance grew during 1937 and 1938. In response, the British declared martial law, dissolved the Arab High Committee and arrested officials from the Supreme Muslim Council who were behind the revolt. By 1939, 5,000 Palestinians had been killed in British attempts to quash the revolt; more than 15,000 were wounded.[51]
The "lost years" (1948 - 1967)
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the accompanying Palestinian exodus, known to Palestinians as Al Nakba (the "catastrophe"), there was a hiatus in Palestinian political activity which Khalidi partially attributes to "the fact that Palestinian society had been devastated between November 1947 and mid-May 1948 as a result of a series of overwhelming military defeats of the disorganized Palestinians by the armed forces of the Zionist movement."[58] Those parts of British Mandate Palestine which did not become part of the newly declared Israeli state were occupied by Egypt and Jordan. During what Khalidi terms the "lost years" that followed, Palestinians lacked a center of gravity, divided as they were between these countries and others such as Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere.[59]
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.[60] 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.[60] The potency of the pan-Arabist ideology put forward by Gamel Abdel Nasser—popular among Palestinian for whom Arabism was already an important component of their identity[61]—tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab nation-states it subsumed.[62]
Developments (1967 - present)
Since 1967, pan-Arabism has diminished as an aspect of Palestinian identity. The Israeli capture of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War prompted fractured Palestinian political and militant groups to give up any remaining hope they had placed in pan-Arabism. Instead, they rallied around the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, and its nationalistic orientation.[63] 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 others.[64] These groups gave voice to a tradition that emerged in 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.[65]
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 symbolising continuity and connections with the land, with peasantry and a rural way of life."[66]
In 1974, the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Arab states and was granted observer status as a national liberation movement by the United Nations that same year.[10][67] Israel rejected the resolution, calling it "shameful".[68] In a speech to the Knesset, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon outlined the government's view that: 'No one can expect us to recognize the terrorist organization called the PLO as representing the Palestinians—because it does not. No one can expect us to negotiate with the heads of terror-gangs, who through their ideology and actions, endeavour to liquidate the State of Israel.'[68]
The British historian Eric Hobsbawn allows that an element of justness can be discerned in skeptical outsider views that dismiss the propriety of using the term 'nation' to peoples like the Palestinians: such language arises often as the rhetoric of an evolved minority out of touch with the larger community that lacks this modern sense of national belonging. But at the same time, he argues, this outsider perspective has tended to "overlook the rise of mass national identification when it did occur, as Zionist and Israeli Jews notably did in the case of the Palestinian Arabs."[69]
From 1948 through until the 1980’s, according to Eli Podeh, professor at Hebrew University, the textbooks used in Israeli schools tried to disavow a unique Palestinian identity, referring to 'the Arabs of the land of Israel' instead of 'Palestinians.' Israeli textbooks now widely use the term 'Palestinians.' Podeh believes that Palestinian textbooks of today resemble those from the early years of the Israeli state.[70]
The First Intifada (1987-1993) 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 signing of the Oslo Accords failed to bring about a Palestinian state, a Second Intifada (2000-) began, more deadly than the first.
Today, most Palestinian organizations conceive of their struggle as either Palestinian-nationalist or Islamic in nature, and these themes predominate even more today. Within Israel itself, there are political movements, such as Abnaa el-Balad that assert their Palestinian identity, to the exclusion of their Israeli one.
Palestinian ethnic identity is based primarily on two elements: the village of origin and family networks. The village of origin holds a privileged place in Palestinian memory because of its historically important role as a center for religious and political power throughout Palestine's administration by various empires. The village of origin also represents "the very expression of their Arabic Palestinian culture and identity," and is a site central to kinship and familial ties. The progressive deterritorialization experienced by Palestinians has rendered the village of origin a symbol of lost territory, and it forms a central part of a diasporic consciousness among Palestinians.[71]
Demographics
In the absence of a comprehensive census including all Palestinian diaspora populations, and those that have remained within what was British Mandate Palestine, exact population figures are difficult to determine.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) announced on October 20, 2004 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2003 was 9.6 million, an increase of 800,000 since 2001.[72]
Palestinians living outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip
| Country or region |
Population |
| West Bank and Gaza Strip |
3,760,000[73] |
| Jordan |
2,700,000[2] |
| Israel |
1,318,000[74] |
| Syria |
434,896[75] |
| Lebanon |
405,425[75] |
| Chile |
300,000[76] |
| Saudi Arabia |
327,000[74] |
| The Americas |
225,000[77] |
| Egypt |
44,200[77] |
| Kuwait |
(approx) 40,000[74] |
| Other Gulf states |
159,000[74] |
| Other Arab states |
153,000[74] |
| Other countries |
308,000[74] |
| TOTAL |
10,574,521 |
In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group.[78] In their report,[79] they claimed that several errors in the PCBS methodology and assumptions artificially inflated the numbers by a total of 1.3 million. The PCBS numbers were cross-checked against a variety of other sources (e.g., asserted birth rates based on fertility rate assumptions for a given year were checked against Palestinian Ministry of Health figures as well as Ministry of Education school enrollment figures six years later; immigration numbers were checked against numbers collected at border crossings, etc.). The errors claimed in their analysis included: birth rate errors (308,000), immigration & emigration errors (310,000), failure to account for migration to Israel (105,000), double-counting Jerusalem Arabs (210,000), counting former residents now living abroad (325,000) and other discrepancies (82,000). The results of their research was also presented before the United States House of Representatives on March 8, 2006.[80]
The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[81] DellaPergola accused the authors of misunderstanding basic principles of demography on account of their lack of expertise in the subject. He also accused them of selective use of data and multiple systematic errors in their analysis. For example, DellaPergola claimed that the authors assumed the Palestinian Electoral registry to be complete even though registration is voluntary and good evidence exists of incomplete registration, and similarly that they used an unrealistically low Total Fertility Ratio (a statistical abstraction of births per woman) incorrectly derived from data and then used to reanalyse that data in a "typical circular mistake".
DellaPergola himself estimated the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza at the end of 2005 as 3.33 million, or 3.57 million if East Jerusalem is included. These figures are only slightly lower than the official Palestinian figures.[81]
In Jordan today, there is no official census data that outlines how many of the inhabitants of Jordan are Palestinians, but estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics cite a population range of 50% to 55%.[82][83]
Many Arab Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.[84][85]
In total, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas. Arab Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre-dated the Arab-Israeli conflict, but continued to grow thereafter.[86] 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. El Salvador[87] and Honduras[88] also have substantial Arab Palestinian populations. These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry (in El Salvador Antonio Saca, currently serving; in Honduras Carlos Roberto Flores Facusse). Belize, which has a smaller Palestinian population, has a Palestinian minister — Said Musa.[89] Schafik Jorge Handal, Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.[90]
Refugees
-
Palestinian refugees in 1948
There are 4,255,120 Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This number includes the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, but excludes those who have emigrated to areas outside of UNRWA's remit.[75] Based on these figures, almost half of all Palestinians are registered refugees. The 993,818 Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and 705,207 Palestinian refugees in the West Bank who hail from towns and villages that now located in Israel are included in these UNRWA figures.[91] UNRWA figures do not include some 274,000 people, or 1 in 4 of all Arab citizens of Israel, who are internally displaced Palestinian refugees.[92][93]
Virtually every Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank is 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."[94]
Religion
Background
A medieval drawing by a German traveller of Jerusalem in the fifteenth century showing the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the middle of the "City of Minarets"
Until the end of the nineteenth century, most villages in the countryside did not have local mosques. Cross-cultural syncretism between Biblical and Islamic symbols and figures in religious practice was common.[24] For example, popular feast days, like Thursday of the Dead, were celebrated by both Muslims and Christians and shared prophets and saints include Jonah, who is worshipped in Halhul as both a Biblical and Islamic prophet, and St. George, who is known in Arabic as el Khader. Villagers would pay tribute to local patron saints at a maqam — a domed single room often placed in the shadow of an ancient carob or oak tree.[24] Saints, taboo by the standards of orthodox Islam, mediated between man and Allah, and shrines to saints and holy men dotted the Palestinian landscape.[24] 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."[24]
Religion as constitutive of individual identity was accorded a minor role within Palestinian tribal social structure until the latter half of the 19th century.[24] 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."[24]
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.[24] 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.[24]
The British census of 1922 registered 752,048 inhabitants in Palestine, consisting of 589,177 Palestinian Muslims, 83,790 Palestinian Jews, 71,464 Palestinian Christians (including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and others) and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The corresponding percentage breakdown is 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish, and 9% Christian. Palestinian Bedouin were not counted in the census, but a 1930 British study estimated their number at 70,860.[95]
Today
Palestinians attending prayers at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem old city
Currently, no comprehensive data on religious affiliation among the worldwide Palestinian population is available. Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University estimates that 6% of the Palestinian population is Christian.[96] According to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is 97% Muslim and 3% Christian.[97]
All of the Druze living in what was then British Mandate Palestine became Israeli citizens, though some individuals identify themselves as "Palestinian Druze".[98] According to Salih al-Shaykh, most Druze do not consider themselves to be Palestinian: "their Arab identity emanates in the main from the common language and their socio-cultural background, but is detached from any national political conception. It is not directed at Arab countries or Arab nationality or the Palestinian people, and does not express sharing any fate with them. From this point of view, their identity is Israel, and this identity is stronger than their Arab identity".[99]
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.[97] Those who live in the West Bank also are represented in the legislature for the Palestinian National Authority.[100] They are commonly referred to among Palestinians as the "Jews of Palestine."[100]
Jews who identify as Palestinian Jews are few, but include Israeli Jews who are part of the Neturei Karta group,[101] and Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen and self-described Palestinian Jew who serves as an observer member in the Palestine National Council.[102]
Language
-
|
![A map of Palestine as described by the medieval Arab geographers, with the Jund Filastin[13] highlighted in grey](/Image:Medieval_Arab_Palestine.jpg)
![[13]](http://www.mideastweb.org/caliph2m.gif){kind=link}