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Palestinians)
- The term "Palestinian" has other usages, for which see definitions of Palestinian.
The Palestinians are a mainly Arabic-speaking people with family origins mainly in Palestine. The Palestinian population is primarily Muslim, with Christian, Druze, Jewish, and other minorities.
Under the British mandate period from 1918 to 1948, the term "Palestinian" usually referred to anyone native to Palestine, whatever religion they may be (Muslim, Christian, Druze, Jew, etc.) (See map). Since the creation of Israel, this encompassing of native Palestinian Jews has practically ceased among Israelis, as native Palestinian Jews are now simply identified - and most identify themselves - as "Israelis", and are not distinguished from the majority of Israeli Jews who are either olim (immigrants to Israel) or sabras (their Israeli-born descendants); except perhaps when distinguishing between Jewish ethnic divisions. While some exclude Israeli Arabs from today's definition of "Palestinians", others (including most Palestinians) do consider them to be Palestinians. Thus the term over the centuries has shifted from ethnic to regional and again to an ethnic description.
A distinguishing characteristic of Palestinians is their dialect; unusually among Arabic speakers, speakers of rural Palestinian dialects pronounce the letter qaaf as k (Arabic kaaf).
The Palestinian National Covenant, devised by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1968, defines Palestinians as "those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled" and their descendants through the male line. Article 6 states "Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist Invasion will be considered Palestinians."
According to the current (2003) draft of the Palestinian constitution, which would ultimately be ratified should the Palestinian Authority be replaced by an independent state: "Palestinian citizenship shall be organized by law without prejudicing the right of anyone who acquired it before 15 May 1948 in accordance with the law or the right of the Palestinian who was resident in Palestine before that date. This right is transmitted from fathers and mothers to their children. The right endures unless it is given up voluntarily." [1]
Palestinian demographics
While the largest single population of Palestinians is found in the lands which constituted British Mandate of Palestine, over half of Palestinians live elsewhere as refugees and emigrants. In the absence of actual censuses, counting large populations is very difficult. However, the world-wide distribution of Palestinians in 2001, according to estimates collated by the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, were as follows.
| Country or region |
Population |
Note |
| West Bank and Gaza Strip |
3,700,000 |
|
| Israel |
1,213,000 |
The Palestinian population in East Jerusalem, numbering around 200,000, may have been counted as part of "West Bank and Gaza Strip" as well as "Israel", thus creating a duplication. |
| Jordan |
2,598,000 |
|
| Lebanon |
388,000 |
|
| Syria |
395,000 |
|
| Saudi Arabia |
287,000 |
|
| Gulf states |
152,000 |
|
| Egypt |
58,000 |
|
| Other Arab states |
113,000 |
|
| The Americas |
216,000 |
|
| Other countries |
275,000 |
|
| TOTAL |
9,395,000 |
|
In Jordan today, there is no official census data about how many of the inhabitants of Jordan are Palestinians; estimates range from 50% to 80%. Some political researchers attribute this to the Jordanian policy of not further widening the gap between the two main population groups in Jordan: its original Bedouin population that holds most of the administrative posts and the Palestinians who are predominant in the economy.
The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics announced on October 20, 2004 that the number of Palestinians worldwide at the end of 2003 is 9.6 million, an increase of 800,000 since 2001. [2]
Some researchers doubt the PCBS numbers: [3], [4].
Refugees
See Palestinian refugees for more detail.
4,255,120 Palestinians are registered as refugees with UNRWA; this number includes the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, but excludes those who have emigrated to areas outside of the UNRWA's remit [5]. Thus, if the estimates above are correct, almost half of all Palestinians are registered refugees.
Religions
The British census of 1922 counted 752,048 in the British Mandate of Palestine, comprising 589,177 Muslims, 83,790 Jews, 71,464 Christians (including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and others) and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups (corresponding to 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish, and 9% Christian) (1922 census report). Bedouin were not counted, but a British study estimated their number at 70,860 in 1930 [6].
Currently, no reliable data are available for the worldwide Palestinian population; Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University estimates it as 6% Christian[7]. However, within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, the Palestinian population is 97% Muslim and 3% Christian; there are also about 300 Samaritans and a few thousand Jews from the Neturei Karta group who consider themselves Palestinian. Within Israel, 68% of the non-Jewish population is Muslim, 9% Christian, 7% Druze, and 15% "other".
The ancestry of the Palestinians
Palestinians claim to have a mixed ancestry. Arabs, Crusaders, Romans, Jews, and other people have all settled in the region and intermarried [8][9]. Many of their descendants converted to Christianity and later to Islam, and spoke different languages depending on the lingua franca of the time. For the most part, the Arabization of the Palestinians began in Umayyad times. Increasing conversions to Islam among the local population, together with the immigration of Arabs from Arabia and inland Syria, led to the replacement of Aramaic by Arabic as the area's dominant language. Among the cultural survivals from pre-Arab times are the significant Palestinian Christian community (and smaller Jewish and Samaritan ones) as well as Aramaic loanwords in the local dialect. Palestinians, like most other Arabic speakers, thus combine pre-Arab and Arab ancestry; the precise mixture is a matter of debate, on which genetic evidence (see below) has begun to shed some light, apparently confirming Ibn Khaldun's widely accepted argument that most Arabic speakers descend mainly from acculturated non-Arabs.
The Palestinian Bedouin, however, are much more securely known to be Arab by ancestry 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. 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 there in the 4th-3rd centuries BC[10]. 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.
As genetic techniques have advanced, it has become possible to look directly into the question of the ancestry of the Palestinians. In recent years, many genetic surveys have suggested that — at least paternally — the various Jewish ethnic divisions and Palestinians, (and in some cases other Levantines) are genetically closer to each other than either is to the Arabs (of Arabia) or non-Jewish Europeans. [11] [12] [13] [14]([15] contains more links to genetic studies of Jewish and Middle Eastern populations). These studies look at the prevalence of specific inherited genetic differences (polymorphism) among populations, which then allow the relatedness of these populations to be determined, and their ancestry to be traced back (see population genetics). These differences can be the cause of genetic disease or be completely neutral (see Single nucleotide polymorphism) ; they can be inherited maternally (mitochondrial DNA), paternally (Y chromosome), or as a mixture from both parents ; the results obtained may vary from polymorphism to polymorphism. One study [16]on congenital deafness identified an allele only found in Palestinian and Ashkenazi communities, suggesting a common origin ; an investigation [17] of a Y-chromosome polymorphism found Lebanese, Palestinian, and Sephardic populations to be particularly closely related ; a third study [18], looking at Human leukocyte antigen differences among a broad range of populations, found Palestinians to be particularly closely related to Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews, as well as Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean populations. (The latter study by Antonio Arnaiz-Villena has been the subject of intense controversy, it was retracted by the journal and removed from its website, leading to further controversy; the main accusations made were that the authors used their scientific findings to justify making one-sided political proclamations in the paper; that the retraction followed lobbyist pressure because the results contradicted certain political beliefs; some suggested that the broad scientific interpretation was based on too narrow data [19], whereas others support the scientific content as valid - for more information on the controversy : [20], [21], [22], [23].) If this close relatedness is true, it would confirm both Jews' and Palestinians' historical claims, suggesting a common Northwest Semitic ancestry. However, the results are complex, much work remains to be carried out, and partial results can be interpreted to suit diverse political agendas.
One point in which the two populations appear to contrast is in the proportion of sub-Saharan African genes which have entered their gene pools. One study found that Middle Eastern Arabs (specifically Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Bedouin), unlike other Middle Eastern populations (specifically Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris, Georgians, and Near Eastern Jews), had what appears to be a substantial gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa (amounting to 10-15% of lineages) within the past three millennia, possibly due to the slave trade[24].
The origins of Palestinian identity
A map of Palestine as described by the medieval Arab geographers, with the
junds of Jordan and Filistin highlighted in grey
Palestine (Filasteen فلسطين) has been the Arabic name of the region since the earliest medieval Arab geographers (adopted from the then-current Greek term Παλαιστινη (in Latinised form: Palaestina), first used by Herodotus, itself derived ultimately from the name of the Philistines), and "Palestinian" (Filasteeni فلسطسيني) was always a common nisba adopted by natives of the region, starting as early as the first century after the Hijra (eg `Abdallah b. Muhayriz al-Jumahi al-Filastini[25], an ascetic who died in the early 700's.) However, the Palestinians, like most Arab nationalities, have come to view themselves as primarily Palestinians (rather than as primarily Arabs, or Syrians, or citizens of a particular town) mostly in the past century. Whereas European colonialism and to a lesser extent Turkish nationalism in the Ottoman Empire was the main spur in forming national identities and borders elsewhere, the main force in reaction to which Palestinian nationalism developed was Zionism. One of the earliest Palestinian newspapers, Filastin founded in Jaffa in 1911 by Issa al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians"[26].
Even before the end of Ottoman administration, Palestine, rather than the Ottoman Empire, was considered by some Palestinians to be their country. On 25 July 1913, for instance, the Palestinian newspaper al-Karmel wrote: "This team possessed tremendous power; not to ignore that Palestine, their country, was part of the Ottoman Empire."[27] The idea of a specifically Palestinian state, however, was at first rejected by most Palestinians; 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." (Yehoshua Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929-1939, vol. 2, London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1977, pp. 81-82.) However, particularly after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, the notion took on greater appeal; in 1920, for instance, 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". Similarly, the Second Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (December 1920), passed a resolution calling for an independent Palestine; they then wrote a long letter to the League of Nations about "Palestine, land of Miracles and the supernatural, and the cradle of religions", demanding, amongst other things, that a "National Government be created which shall be responsible to a Parliament elected by the Palestinian People, who existed in Palestine before the war."
Conflict between Palestinian nationalists and various types of pan-Arabists continued during the British Mandate, but the latter became increasingly marginalised. By 1937, only one of the many Arab political parties in Palestine (the Istiqlal party) promoted political absorption into a greater Arab nation as its main agenda.
Originally the normal headgear of Palestinian peasants, the keffiyeh, worn here by Yasser Arafat, first came to symbolize Palestinian nationalism during the British Mandate period.
The idea of an independent nationality for Palestinian Arabs was greatly boosted by the 1967 Six Day War; instead of being ruled by different Arab states encouraging them to think of themselves as Jordanians or Egyptians, they were now ruled by a state with no desire to make them think of themselves as Israelis, and an active interest in discouraging them from regarding themselves as Egyptians, Jordanians or Syrians. Moreover, the natives of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip now shared many interests and problems in common with each other that they did not share with the neighboring countries.
Because of the gradualness of the creation of an Palestinian national identity (as opposed to a regional one) - and, many allege, for reasons of political convenience - many Israelis did not accept the existence of an independent Palestinian people, as in Golda Meir's statement: "There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist." (Sunday Times, 15 June 1969) (see History of Palestine). Today the existence of a unique Palestinian nationality/identity is generally recognized even by most Israelis ([28]).
During the few decades after the State of Israel came into existence, Palestinian expressions of pan-Arabism could be heard from time to time but usually under outside influence. This was especially true in Syria under the influence of the Baath party. For example, Zuhayr Muhsin, the leader of the Syrian-funded as-Sa'iqa Palestinian faction and its representative on the PLO Executive Committee, told a Dutch newspaper in 1977 that "There is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. It is for political reasons only that we carefully emphasize our Palestinian identity." Such opinions also existed in Jordan, where government policy was to de-emphasize the difference between Palestinians and Jordanians for domestic reasons. However, most in the Palestinian organizations saw the struggle as either Palestinian-nationist or Islamic in nature and these themes predominate even more today.
Palestinians' political representatives
Coat of arms of the PNA
The Arab summit meeting in Rabat, Morocco in October 1974 stated that the PLO is the "sole legitimate representation of the Palestinian people". However, Israel, and to a lesser extent the United States and parts of Europe, preferred to deal with what it regarded as more moderate Palestinian groups for a long period of time[citation needed].
The Palestinian National Authority governs large sections of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It considers itself, and has often been considered by Israel, to be the primary political representative of the Palestinian people[citation needed]. In recent years, its authority has in practice been challenged by groups such as Hamas; however, most such groups continue to recognize its legitimacy in principle.
Following the November 2004 death of long-time Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas was elected as Palestinian Authority Chairman.
In January of 2006, the political party Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament in free elections.
See also
