Palestinians (Arabic: الفلسطينيون, al-Filasṭīniyyūn; Hebrew: פָלַסְטִינִים, Fālasṭīnīm) or Palestinian people (الشعب الفلسطيني, ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs (العرب الفلسطينيون, al-ʿArab al-Filasṭīniyyūn), are an ethnonational group[30][31][32][33][34][35][36] descending from peoples who have inhabited the region of Palestine over the millennia, and who are today culturally and linguistically Arab.[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]
Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, now encompassing Israel and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.[46] In Israel proper, Palestinians constitute almost 21 percent of the population as part of its Arab citizens.[47] Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians, including more than a million in the Gaza Strip,[48] around 750,000 in the West Bank,[49] and around 250,000 in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora, more than half are stateless, lacking legal citizenship in any country.[50] 2.1 million of the diaspora population are registered as refugees in neighboring Jordan, most of whom hold Jordanian citizenship;[51][52] over 1 million live between Syria and Lebanon, and about 750,000 live in Saudi Arabia, with Chile holding the largest Palestinian diaspora concentration (around half a million) outside of the Arab world.
In 1919, Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Christians constituted 90 percent of the population of Palestine, just before the third wave of Jewish immigration and the setting up of British Mandatory Palestine after World War I.[53][54] Opposition to Jewish immigration spurred the consolidation of a unified national identity, though Palestinian society was still fragmented by regional, class, religious, and family differences.[55][56] The history of the Palestinian national identity is a disputed issue amongst scholars.[57][58] For some, the term "Palestinian" is used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by Palestinian Arabs from the late 19th century and in the pre-World War I period, while others assert the Palestinian identity encompasses the heritage of all eras from biblical times up to the Ottoman period.[43][44][59] After the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the 1948 Palestinian expulsion, and more so after the 1967 Palestinian exodus, the term "Palestinian" evolved into a sense of a shared future in the form of aspirations for a Palestinian state.[43]
Founded in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization is an umbrella organization for groups that represent the Palestinian people before international states.[60] The Palestinian National Authority, officially established in 1994 as a result of the Oslo Accords, is an interim administrative body nominally responsible for governance in Palestinian population centres in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.[61] Since 1978, the United Nations has observed an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. According to British historian Perry Anderson, it is estimated that half of the population in the Palestinian territories are refugees, and that they have collectively suffered approximately US$300 billion in property losses due to Israeli confiscations, at 2008–2009 prices.[62]
The Greek toponym Palaistínē (Παλαιστίνη), which is the origin of the Arabic Filasṭīn (فلسطين), first occurs in the work of the 5th century BCE Greek historian Herodotus, where it denotes generally[63] the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt.[64][65] Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the "Syrians of Palestine" or "Palestinian-Syrians",[66] an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians.[67][68] Herodotus makes no distinction between the inhabitants of Palestine.[69]