Prior to the rise of nationalism during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the term Palestinian referred to any person born in or living in the region of Palestine, regardless of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious affiliations. During the British Mandate for Palestine, the term "Palestinian" referred to any person legally considered to be a citizen of Mandatory Palestine as defined in the 1925 Citizenship Order.
The population of Palestine have long used the term "Palestinian" as one of their endonyms of self-identification. Eusebius in the fourth century and Al-Maqdisi in the 10th century used it as a geographical identity marker, while it was used later in a more explicitly nationalist sense, as by Khalil Beidas in the 19th century.In the preface to his translation of Akim Olesnitsky's A Description of the Holy Land, 1898, A Description of the Holy Land. Like all national identities, the Palestinian national identity is modern, with most scholars tracing its emergence to the early 20th century. Some argue that a nascent Palestinian nationalism was sparked by the 19th century revolts and the general nationalist awakenings throughout the empire, while others argue that it emerged as a reaction to Zionism.
After the establishment of the State of Israel during the 1948 Palestine war, the Jews of Mandatory Palestine became known as "Israeli Jews", having developed a national Jewish identity centered on a Jewish National Homeland in Palestine, derived from a political and ideological movement known as Zionism. By the mid-1950s, the term "Palestinian" had shifted to be a demonym that exclusively refers to the Arabs of former Mandatory Palestine, including their descendants, who had developed a distinctly Palestinian Arab national identity.
In contemporary times, the term "Palestinian" is the national demonym of the Palestinian people.
Types and definitions
Geographical ethnonym "Palestinian" may be used as an adjective to describe persons or objects which are related to Palestine. This was employed by historical authors such as Zosimus while describing the troops amassed by the Roman Emperor Aurelian to confront Palmyrene troops in the Crisis of the Third Century."Finding the Palmyrene army drawn up before Emisa, amounting to seventy thousand men, consisting of Palmyrenes and their allies, he opposed to them the Dalmatian cavalry, the Moesians and Pannonians, and the Celtic legions of Noricum and Rhaetia, and besides these the choicest of the imperial regiment selected man by man, the Mauritanian horse, the Tyaneans, the Mesopotamians, the Syrians, the Phoenicians, and the Palestinians, all men of acknowledged valour; the Palestinians besides other arms wielding clubs and staves. in Zosimus, New History. London: Green and Chaplin (1814). Book 1.
Many centuries earlier, in the 5th century BC, Herodotus employed the term as part of an ethnonym, speaking of the "Syrians of Palestine" or "Palestinian-Syrians", an ethnically amorphous group he distinguished from the Phoenicians.
Between the tenth and eighteenth centuries CE, several scholars living in the region of Palestine, like the Jerusalemites Shams ad-Din al-Maqdisi and Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi, and natives of Ramla Khayr al-Din al-Ramli and the Palestinian Christian priest Yusuf Jahshan used Palestinian as a term of self-identification, or described Palestine as "our country" (biladuna), indicating consciousness of belonging to a distinctive territorial-based entity, though more in social terms than political. The Muslim scholars partly drew that multifaceted identity from the cultural and religious legacy of Jund Filastin, the region's medieval Arab-Islamic administrative province.
Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima was using similar terminology in his fourth century CE work the Martyrs of Palestine, which documents those martyred for being Christian under Roman rule in his time, connecting them to earlier Christians of Palestine, like Saint Paul and Saint Peter. He ends the work by expressing his hope that he can represent "our land" to Christians elsewhere in the world and through this work make "the whole people of Palestine" (Syriac: ˁammā kullēh d-Pallistīnā) proud.
A couple of decades after the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1099, Fulcher of Chartres wrote that the Crusaders had been transformed from "Westerners" into "Easterners", and that "He who was a Roman or a Frank has been transformed on this earth into a Galilean or a Palestinian." After Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187, some of fhe Crusaders who owned land and had integrated into the local population stayed, embraced Islam, and were Arabized, and their descendants today in places like the Hebron region identify as Palestinian, Arab and Muslim.
Legally During the British Mandate over Palestine, a "Palestinian" could mean any person who was born in or hailed from the region of Palestine or was a citizen of the Mandatory Palestine, the terms of acquisition of which were laid out in the Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925. The term covered all the inhabitants of the region, including people from Muslim, Christian and Jewish backgrounds, and all ethnicities, including Arabs, the Dom people, Samaritans, Druze, Bedouins and the traditional Jewish communities of Palestine, or Old Yishuv, whose ancestors were already living there prior to the onset of Zionist immigration.
"Arab" and "Palestinian Arab" were used following the immigration of non-Arabic speakers to distinguish between the natives and newcomers who were also granted Palestinian citizenship by the British Mandatory government.
In the aftermath of the 1948 Palestine war and the establishment of the State of Israel, a "Palestinian" tends to refer to individuals from non-Jewish communities born in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and citizens of the State of Palestine, including the populations of Palestinian refugees living in the wide Middle East and other Palestinian diaspora populations worldwide.Definition of Palestinian (Jewish Virtual Library)
"Although anyone with roots in the land that is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is technically a Palestinian, the term is now more commonly used to refer to non-Jew Arabs with such roots ... Most of the world's Palestinian population is concentrated in Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan, although many Palestinians live in Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries."
Prior to the establishment of the State of Palestine then an interim government during the Oslo Accords in 1993: the remaining parts of Arab Palestine were annexed by Jordan and occupied by Egypt. The people of the West Bank became citizens of the Kingdom of Jordan until its disengagement in 1988, as part of the annexation of the occupied parts which were later renamed as "West Bank of the Jordan River", while the inhabitants of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip were considered to be citizens of the internationally unrecognized client All-Palestine Protectorate. The residents of the Gaza Strip became stateless after the dissolution of the All-Palestine government.
In Israel, former Palestinian Jews that acquired Israeli citizenship became Israeli Jews. Non-Jewish Palestinians that acquired Israeli citizenship are officially referred to by Israel's government as "Israeli Arabs" or "Arab Israelis", though the development of Palestinian nationalism in the 20th and 21st centuries saw a marked evolution in self-identification with Palestinian identity, sometimes alongside Arab and Israeli signifiers.. "The issue of terminology relating to this subject is sensitive and at least partially a reflection of political preferences. Most Israeli official documents refer to the Israeli Arab community as "minorities". The Israeli National Security Council (NSC) has used the term "Arab citizens of Israel". Virtually all political parties, movements and non-governmental organisations from within the Arab community use the word "Palestinian" somewhere in their description – at times failing to make any reference to Israel. For consistency of reference and without prejudice to the position of either side, ICG will use both Arab Israeli and terms the community commonly uses to describe itself, such as Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel." A number of Palestinian citizens of Israel have family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The 2018 Nation-state law defines nationality in Israel as the exclusive right of the Jewish people, meaning that non-Jews, while holding citizenship, are denied any right of national belonging or self-determination.
Palestinian refugees
UNRWA defines the Palestinian refugees as those whose normal place of residence between June 1946 and May 1948 was in the land that is now Israel, but they went outside during the 1948 war. UNRWA, however, provides aid to Palestinian refugees defined as such, as well as the descendants of those Palestinians. UNRWA does define "Palestinian refugees" to include descendants of "refugees".
Politically
The PLO's Palestinian National Covenant of 1964 defines a Palestinian as "the Arab citizens who were living permanently in Palestine until 1947, whether they were expelled from there or remained. Whoever is born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, within Palestine or outside it, is a Palestinian".
In Ethnography The word "Palestinian" in academia is occasionally used as a term rather than a demonym by ethnographers, linguists, theologians, and historians to denote a specific subculture in Palestine. In such context, it covers not only those who have a Palestinian Arab national identity or Jews of Palestine, but also those inhabitants of the Southern Levant as a whole, including ethnic and religious minorities such as the Druze, the Dom, the Circassians, and the Samaritans,Amid conflict, Samaritans keep unique identity by Dana Rosenblatt (CNN) and the Palestinian Bedouin.
Cultural heritage and identity A unique Palestinian cultural heritage, most closely associated with rural parts of Palestine, is an important part of Palestinian identity. This heritage includes vernacular architecture, archaeological and historical sites, handicrafts and local industries (like tatreez) Hebron glass, Nabulsi soap), folkore, traditional dances and songs.
Palestinian ethnographers at in the first half of the 20th century, like Tawfiq Canaan, Omar Saleh al-Barghouti, Stephan Hanna Stephan, Elias Haddad, and Khalil Totah, were deeply concerned with documenting and preserving rural cultural practices. They believed "that the peasants of Palestine represent – through their folk norms ... the living heritage of all the accumulated ancient cultures that had appeared in Palestine (principally the Canaanite, Philistine, Hebraic, Nabatean, Syrio-Aramaic and Arab)."
The Zionist denial of Palestinian identity and the rootedness of Palestinians in the land has led to increased efforts to preserve and revive this heritage.
Emergence of Palestinian nationality