Palestinians are an ethnic and national group native to the historic region of Palestine that now consists of Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Today, there are about 13 1/2 million Palestinians. About 60 percent now live outside what was Palestine—in nearby Arab countries and elsewhere. Most of these Palestinians are refugees or the descendants of the more than 700,000 refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel when it was created in 1948. Some are people who were forced to leave the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which were occupied by Israel in 1967. Today, though some Palestinians still live in refugee camps, most have integrated socially and economically within the host countries.
Modern Palestinians claim to be descendants of the Philistines, an ancient people who settled the region near the end of the 1200’s B.C., and other groups who arrived later. Arab culture became a dominant influence beginning about A.D. 638, when Muslim Arabs conquered much of the region. Palestinians today speak Arabic with regional accents that distinguish them from other Arab groups. Nearly all Palestinians are Muslims, with a large Christian minority.
The Palestinian people began to develop a modern national identity around 1900. Palestinian national identity has a number of sources. It comes in part from the religious attachment of Muslims and Christians to Palestine as a holy land. Palestinian nationalism and the desire for self-determination also developed as a response to Zionism, a movement that began in the 1800’s and called for a Jewish national state in Palestine. In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state and to place Jerusalem under international control. The Jews in Palestine accepted this plan, but the Arabs rejected it. Israel came into existence in 1948. War immediately broke out between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries. By 1949, Israel had defeated the Arabs and gained control of about half the land planned for the new Arab state. Egypt and Jordan held the rest of Palestine. These areas came under Israeli control in 1967.
Today, Palestinians hold a variety of professional positions and are an important part of the economies of several Middle Eastern countries. About 2 million Palestinians are citizens of Jordan, while many others carry passports from the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority is the political body that administers Palestinian-controlled portions of the West Bank. About 1 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel, where they have been subject to legal restrictions and often face discrimination. Many Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt remain stateless refugees with no citizenship.
