Palestinian people
The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs (الفلسطينيون), are an Arabic-speaking people from Palestine. The total Palestinian population, including descendants, is estimated at approximately 10 million, roughly half continuing to live in the region of historic Palestine, an area encompassing Israel proper, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip and Jordan. In this combined area, as of 2009, they make up a 51% of all inhabitants,[1] some of whom are internally displaced persons. The remainder, just over half of all Palestinians, are what is known as the Palestinian diaspora, most of whom are stateless Palestinian refugees with no citizenship in any country.[2] Of the diaspora, over two and a half million live in neighboring Jordan,[3] one million is shared between Syria and Lebanon, a quarter million in Saudi Arabia, and half a million in Chile. The diaspora in Chile is the largest concentration outside the Arab world.[4]
Religion
By religious affiliation, most Palestinians are Muslim, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam, and there is a significant minority of various Christian denominations, as well as smaller religious communities. As the commonly applied term "Palestinian Arab" implies, the current language of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. For those who are citizens of Israel, known also as Arab Israelis, many are now also bilingual in Modern Hebrew. Recent genetic research has demonstrated that ancient Levantines live mostly with modern-day Palestinians and the Bedouins who live in the same region.[5] Similarly, it shows that Palestinians as an ethnic group represent modern "descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times,"[6][7] since before the Arabian Muslim conquest that resulted in their acculturation and established Arabic as the language, which eventually became the primary language of the locals, most of whom would over time also convert to Islam from various prior faiths.
Name
The first widespread use of "Palestinian" to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by the local Arabic-speaking population of Palestine began before World War I,[8] and the first demand for national independence was issued by the Syrian-Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921.[9] After the creation 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 nation-state.[8] The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) represents the Palestinian people before the international community.[10] The Palestinian National Authority, officially established as a result of the Oslo Accords, is an interim administrative body responsible for governance in Palestinian population centre in the West Bank while the Gaza Strip is governed by Hamas.
Notable
Some well known Palestinians are:
- Yasser Arafat, Leader of PLO
- George Habash, Founder of Populer Front for the Liberation of Palestine
- Mahmoud Abbas, President of State of Palestine (West Bank)
- Ghassan Kanafani, Writer
- Mahmoud Darwish, Poet and Writer[11]
- Edward Said, philosopher and literary theorist
- Ibrahim Al Nabulsi, Commander of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades
