Who are the Palestinians?

They are an ancient people who see themselves as refugees in their own land, which lies between the eastern Mediterranean Sea and the river Jordan. The vast majority of Palestinians are Muslims, but their nationalism is not just about a religious identity.

Palestinian women taking part in a traditional dance in Bethlehem, in 1936. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

5 min readNew DelhiOct 22, 2023 08:58 AM IST First published on: Oct 19, 2023 at 01:59 PM IST

A feature of the constant media coverage of the latest bloody chapter of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been the oversimplification of the Palestinian identity. In general, including in India, the emphasis has been on the Palestinians being Muslims who are pitted against the Jewish Israelis.

This does a disservice to the rich and complex history of the Palestinians and reduces the decades-old conflict to a purely religious battle. To provide a fuller understanding and more accurate picture, we explain: Just who are the Palestinians?

When was the word ‘Palestine’ first used, and what did it denote?

The term Palestine was first used by the Ancient Greek historian and geographer Herodotus in the fifth century BCE to describe the coastal land between Phoenicia (primarily modern Lebanon) and Egypt. It was derived from ‘Philistia’, the name that Greek writers gave to the region of the southwestern Levant, principally around the cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath (all in present-day Israel or Palestine). The Levant is the historical-geographical term for the region around the eastern Mediterranean Sea, which represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia.

From the very beginning, Palestine was primarily used as a place name — and then, as a name for the people living in the region, regardless of ethnicity or religion. Thus, Roman records do not distinguish between Christians and Jews when using the term.

After the Arab conquest of the Levant in the 7th century CE, the term Palestine largely stopped being used in an official capacity. This continued until the 20th century. However, it remained common in local usage, and was borrowed into Arabic as “Filasteen”. Indeed, Palestine in Hindi is “Filisteen”.

As the region underwent Islamisation, and saw the spread of Arabic cultural influence, a number of overlapping identities emerged. In his book ‘Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness’ (1997), the historian Rashid Khalidi wrote: “Identity for the Palestinians is and has always been intermingled with a sense of identity on so many other levels, whether Islamic or Christian, Ottoman or Arab, local or universal, or family and tribal.”

The original division of territories in the Middle East between the British and the French as per the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916). The lines drawn here, with some changes, remain borders of modern nation states. You can see the signatures of the Sykes and Picot at the bottom. (Wikimedia Commons)

After the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, the territories of the Ottoman sultan, which included Palestine (apart from modern-day Turkey, Syria and parts of the Arabian peninsula and North Africa), were divided among the British and the French. The British Mandate of Palestine defined the geographical extent of Palestine. It is this Mandate that would eventually be partitioned into the states of Israel and Palestine in 1947.

Explained | How Jews first migrated to Palestine, and how Israel was born

In the Palestinian imagination, Palestine is the land that lies between the sea (the eastern Mediterranean) and the river (the historically significant Jordan, which flows north to south from the Golan Heights through the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea).

So who are the Palestinians today?

Today, the term Palestinians refers to those living in the State of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), and to the refugees from the territorial boundaries of the erstwhile British Mandate who have settled elsewhere. Some people who currently live in Israeli territories may also identify themselves as Palestinians.

Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation organisation with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. (Express archive photo)

The Palestinian National Charter of 1968, the ideological document that forms the basis of modern Palestinian nationalism, emphasised the Palestinians’ Arab identity. Article 5 of the charter says: “The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father — whether inside Palestine or outside it — is also a Palestinian.”

While most — though not all — Arabs in the region are Muslims, the Charter does not define Palestine in religious terms. Article 6 says: “The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.” However, very few native Jews after 1948 chose to maintain their Palestinian identity over the new Israeli one.

The majority of Palestinians today are Sunni Muslims. According to data published by the Central Intelligence Agency, 80-85 per cent of the population in the West Bank and 99 per cent of the population in the Gaza Strip is Muslim (it does not specify denomination).

Jews are the largest religious minority in Palestinian areas, and comprise mostly Zionist settlers living in occupied territories in the West Bank, who make up 12-14 per cent of the population. Palestinian Christians are 2.5 per cent of the population, according to the CIA, even though some other estimates put their number at as high as 6 per cent of the population. Both the West Bank and Gaza are home to thriving Christian communities that have survived for many millennia in the region.