A genetic study has suggested that a majority of
the Muslims of
Palestine, inclusive of Arab citizens of Israel, could be descendants of Christians, Jews and other earlier
inhabitants of the southern Levant whose core may reach back to prehistoric
times. A study of high-resolution haplotypes demonstrated that a
substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Israeli Jews
(70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome
pool. 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, few identify as "Palestinian" today. Acculturation,
independent from conversion to Islam, resulted in Palestinians being linguistically and
culturally Arab. The vernacular
of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. Many Arab
citizens of Israel, including Palestinians, are bilingual
and fluent in Hebrew.
The history of a distinct Palestinian national identity is a disputed
issue amongst scholars. Legal historian Assaf Likhovski states that the prevailing view is that
Palestinian identity originated in the early decades of the 20th century. "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. The first demand for national independence of the Levant was issued
by the Syrian–Palestinian Congress on 21
September 1921. 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 also the sense of a shared past and future in
the form of a Palestinian state. 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.
Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian
people before the international community. 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. Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International
Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian PeopleThe Greek
toponym Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη), with which the Arabic
Filastin is cognate, first occurs in the work of the 5th century BCE Greek historian Herodotus,
where it denotes generally the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt.
Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as
when he speaks of the 'Syrians of Palestine' or 'Palestinian-Syrians', an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians. Herodotus makes no distinction between the Jews and other inhabitants of
Palestine. The Greek word bears comparison to a congeries of ancient ethnonyms and toponyms. In Ancient Egyptian Peleset/Purusati has
been conjectured to refer to the "Sea
Peoples". Among Semitic languages, Assyrian
Palastu generally refers to an undefined area. Biblical
Hebrew's cognate word Plištim, is usually translated Philistines.
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. 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. The Arabic language newspaper Filasteen (est. 1911), published in Jaffa by Issa and
Yusef al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians".
The first Zionist bank, the Jewish Colonial
Trust, was founded at the Second Zionist Congress and incorporated in London in
1899. The JCT was intended to be the financial instrument of the Zionist
Organization, and was to obtain capital and credit to help attain a charter for
Palestine. On 27 February 1902, a subsidiary of this Trust called the
"Anglo-Palestine Company" (APC) was established in London with the
assistance of Zalman David Levontin. This Company was to become the future Bank Leumi. 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". 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.'
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. 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.
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." Note that "Arab nationals" is not religious-specific, and it implicitly includes not only the
Arabic-speaking Muslims of Palestine, but also the Arabic-speaking
Christians of Palestine and other religious communities of Palestine who
were at that time Arabic-speakers, such as the Samaritans
and Druze. Thus,
the Jews of Palestine were/are also included, although
limited only 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."