Template:Palestinian ethnicity
Palestinian people, Palestinians, or Palestinian Arabs are terms used today to refer mainly to Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine. Palestinians are predominantly SunniMuslims, though there is a significant Christian minority, among others.
The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO's Palestine National Council in July 1968, states that "The Palestinians are 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."[2] It also states that "The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion are considered Palestinians,"[2]" and that the "homeland of Arab Palestinian people" is Palestine, an "indivisible territorial unit" having "the boundaries it had during the British Mandate".[2]
The most recent draft of the Palestinian constitution expands the right of Palestinian citizenship to include all those resident in Palestine before 15 May1948 and their descendants, specifying that, "This right is transmitted from fathers and mothers to their children ... and endures unless it is given up voluntarily."[3]
A map of Palestine as described by the medieval Arab geographers, with the junds of Jordan and Filistin highlighted in grey
Filastin (فلسطين), (Arabic for Palestine), has been used to refer to the region since the earliest medieval Arab geographers adopted the Greek name[4]Palaestina (Παλαιστινη), in turn derived from the Philistines(Plishtim) mentioned in the Bible. Filastini (فلسطيني), also derived from the LatinizedGreek term Palaestina (Παλαιστίνη), appears to have been used as an Arabicadjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century CE.[5]
During the British Mandate of Palestine, the term "Palestinian" referred to all people residing there, regardless of religion, and those granted citizenship by the Mandatory authorities were granted "Palestinian citizenship".[6]
In his 1997 book, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, historian Rashid Khalidi notes that the archaeological strata that denote the history of Palestine - encompassing the Biblical, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Fatimid, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods - form part of the identity of the modern-day Palestinian people, as they have come to understand it over the last century.[8] Khalidi stresses that Palestinian identity has never been an exclusive one, with "Arabism, religion, and local loyalties" continuing to play an important role.[9]
Walid Khalidi echoes this view stating that Palestinians in Ottoman times were "[a]cutely aware of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history..." and that "[a]lthough proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry, the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial, including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them.[10]
Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, explains how identity is "a discursive narrative that validates the present by selecting events, characters, and moments in time as formative beginnings."[11] Qleibo critiques Muslim historiography for assigning the beginning of Palestinian cultural identity to the advent of Islam in the seventh century AD.[11] In describing the effect of such a historiography, he writes: "Pagan origins are disavowed. As such the peoples that populated Palestine throughout history have discursively rescinded their own history and religion as they adopted the religion, language, and culture of Islam."[11]
According to Salim Tamari, 'nativist' ethnographies produced by Tawfiq Canaan and other Palestinian writers and published in The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (1920-1948), were driven by the concern that the "native culture of Palestine", and in particular peasant society, was being undermined by the forces of modernity.[12] Tamari continues: "Implicit in their scholarship (and made explicit by Canaan himself) was another theme, namely 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)."[12]
The post-1948 folklorist revival among Palestinian intellectuals such as Nimr Sirhan, Musa Allush, Salim Mubayyid, and the Palestinian Folklore Society of the 1970s, highlighted pre-Islamic (and pre-Hebraic) cultural roots, re-constructing Palestinian identity with a focus on Canaanite and Jebusite cultures.[12] These efforts seems to have borne fruit as evidenced in the organization of celebrations like the Qabatiya Canaanite festival and the annual Music Festival of Yabus by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.[12] Nonetheless, some Palestinians, like Zakariyya Muhammad, have criticized the "Canaanite ideology" as an "intellectual fad, divorced from the concerns of ordinary people."[12]
Emergent nationalism(s)
The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement. Rashid Khalidi argues that the modern national identity of Palestinians has its roots in nationalist discourses that emerged among the peoples of the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century, and which sharpened following the demarcation of modern nation-state boundaries in the Middle East after World War I.[9] Khalidi also states that although the challenge posed by Zionism played a role in shaping this identity, that "it is a serious mistake to suggest that Palestinian identity emerged mainly as a response to Zionism."[9]
In contrast, historian James L. Gelvin argues that Palestinian nationalism was a direct reaction to Zionism. In his book The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War he states that “Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement.”[13] Gelvin argues that this fact does not make the Palestinian identity any less legitimate:
The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other." Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose.[13]
Whatever the causal mechanism, by the early 20th century strong opposition to Zionism and evidence of a burgeoning nationalistic Palestinian identity is found in the content of Arabic-language newspapers in Palestine, such as Al-Karmil (est. 1908) and Filasteen (est. 1911).[14]Filasteen, published in Jaffa by Issa and Yusef al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians",[15] first focusing its critique of Zionism around the failure of the Ottoman administration to control Jewish immigration and the large influx of foreigners, later exploring the impact of Zionist land-purchases on Palestinian peasants (fellaheen), expressing growing concern over land dispossession and its implications for the society at large.[14]
The historical record also reveals an interplay between "Arab" and "Palestinian" identities and nationalisms. The idea of a unique Palestinian state separated out from its Arab neighbors was at first rejected by some Palestinian representatives. The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (in Jerusalem, February 1919), which met for the purpose of selecting a Palestinian Arab representative for the Paris Peace Conference, adopted the following resolution: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds."[16] After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, however, the notion took on greater appeal. In 1920, for instance, the formerly pan-Syrianist mayor of Jerusalem, Musa Qasim Pasha al-Husayni, said "Now, after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine".[citation needed]
In 1922, the British authorities over Mandate Palestine proposed a draft constitution which would have granted the Palestinian Arabs representation in a Legislative Council. The Palestine Arab delegation rejected the proposal as "wholly unsatisfactory," noting that "the People of Palestine" could not accept the inclusion of the Balfour Declaration in the constitution's preamble, as the basis for discussions, and further taking issue with the designation of Palestine as a British "colony of the lowest order."[17] The Arabs tried to get the British to offer an Arab legal establishment again roughly ten years later, but to no avail.[18]
Conflict between Palestinian nationalists and various types of pan-Arabists continued during the British Mandate, but the latter became increasingly marginalised. Two prominent leaders of the Palestinian nationalists were Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.[19] Followers of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, who was killed by the British in 1935, initiated the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine which began with a general strike and attacks on Jewish and British installations in Nablus.[19] The call for a general strike, non-payment of taxes, and the closure of municipal governments was met and by the end of 1936, the movement had become a national revolt, often credited as marking the birth of the "Arab Palestinian identity".[19]
The "lost years" (1948 - 1967)
After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the accompanying Palestinian exodus, known to Palestinians as Al Nakba (the "catastrope"), there was a hiatus in Palestinian political activity which Khalidi partially attributes to "the fact that Palestinian society had been devastated between November 1947 and mid-May 1948 as a result of a series of overwhelming military defeats of the disorganized Palestinians by the armed forces of the Zionist movement."[20] Those parts of British Mandate Palestine which did not become part of the newly declared Israeli state were occupied by Egypt and Jordan. During what Khalidi terms the "lost years" that followed, Palestinians lacked a center of gravity, divided as they were between these countries and others such as Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere.[21]
In the 1950s, a new generation of Palestinian nationalist groups and movements began to organize clandestinely, stepping out onto the public stage in the 1960s.[22] The traditional Palestinian elite who had dominated negotiations with the British and the Zionists in the Mandate, and who were largely held responsible for the loss of Palestine, were replaced by these new movements whose recruits generally came from poor to middle class backgrounds and were often students or recent graduates of universities in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus.[22] The potency of the pan-Arabist ideology put forward by Gamel Abdel Nasser - popular among Palestinian for whom Arabism was already an important component of their identity[23] - tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab nation-states it subsumed.[24]
Recent developments in Palestinian identity (1967 - present)
Since 1967, pan-Arabism has diminished as an aspect of Palestinian identity. The Israeli capture of the Gaza Strip and West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War prompted fractured Palestinian political and militant groups to give up any remaining hope they had placed in pan-Arabism. Instead, they rallied around the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (which was founded in 1964 by the Arab League) and its nationalistic orientation.[25] Mainstream secular Palestinian nationalism was grouped together under the umbrella of the PLO whose constituent organizations include Fateh and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among others. [26] These groups have also given voice to a tradition that emerged in 1960s that argues that Palestinian nationalism has deep historical roots, with extreme advocates reading a Palestinian nationalist consciousness and identity back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, when such consciousness of their identity as Palestinians is in fact relatively modern.[27]
The PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Arab states in 1974 and was granted observer status as a national liberation movement by the United Nations that same year.[1][28] Israel rejected the resolution, calling it "shameful".[29] In a speech to the Knesset, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Allon outlined the government's view that : "No one can expect us to recognize the terrorist organization called the PLO as representing the Palestinians - because it does not. No one can expect us to negotiate with the heads of terror-gangs, who through their ideology and actions, endeavour to liquidate the State of Israel."[29]
The identity of Palestinians has been a point of contestation with Israel. From 1948 through until the 1980’s, according to Eli Podeh, professor at Hebrew University, the textbooks used in Israeli schools tried to disavow a unique Palestinian identity, referring to "the Arabs of the land of Israel" instead of "Palestinians." Israeli textbooks now widely use the term 'Palestinians.' Podeh believes that Palestinian textbooks of today resemble those from the early years of the Israeli state.[30]
Various declarations, such as the PLO's 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine, have further served to reinforce the Palestinian national identity. Today, most Palestinian organizations conceive of their struggle as either Palestinian-nationalist or Islamic in nature, and these themes predominate even more today. Within Israel itself, there are political movements, such as Abnaa el-Balad that assert their Palestinian identity, to the exclusion of their Israeli one.
Demographics
Palestinians living outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip
In the absence of a comprehensive census including all Palestinian diaspora populations, and those that have remained within what was British Mandate Palestine, exact population figures are difficult to determine.
In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group.[38] In their report,[39] they claimed that several errors in the PCBS methodology and assumptions artificially inflated the numbers by a total of 1.3 million. The PCBS numbers were cross-checked against a variety of other sources (e.g., asserted birth rates based on fertility rate assumptions for a given year were checked against Palestinian Ministry of Health figures as well as Ministry of Education school enrollment figures six years later; immigration numbers were checked against numbers collected at border crossings, etc.). The errors claimed in their analysis included: birth rate errors (308,000), immigration & emigration errors (310,000), failure to account for migration to Israel (105,000), double-counting Jerusalem Arabs (210,000), counting former residents now living abroad (325,000) and other discrepancies (82,000). The results of their research was also presented before the United States House of Representatives on March 8, 2006. [40]
The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[41] DellaPergola accused the authors of misunderstanding basic principles of demography on account of their lack of expertise in the subject. He also accused them of selective use of data and multiple systematic errors in their analysis. For example, DellaPergola claimed that the authors assumed the Palestinian Electoral registry to be complete even though registration is voluntary and good evidence exists of incomplete registration, and similarly that they used an unrealistically low Total Fertility Ratio (a statistical abstraction of births per woman) incorrectly derived from data and then used to reanalyse that data in a "typical circular mistake".
DellaPergola himself estimated the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza at the end of 2005 as 3.33 million, or 3.57 million if East Jerusalem is included. These figures are only slightly lower than the official Palestinian figures.[41]
In Jordan today, there is no official census data that outlines how many of the inhabitants of Jordan are Palestinians, but estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics cite a population range of 50% to 55%. [42][43]
Many Arab Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.[44][45]
In total, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas. Arab Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre-dated the Arab-Israeli conflict, but continued to grow thereafter.[46] Many emigrants were from the Bethlehem area. Those emigrating to Latin America were mainly Christian. Half of those of Palestinian origin in Latin America live in Chile. El Salvador[47] and Honduras[48] also have substantial Arab Palestinian populations. These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry (in El Salvador Antonio Saca, currently serving; in HondurasCarlos Roberto Flores Facusse). Belize, which has a smaller Palestinian population, has a Palestinian minister — Said Musa.[49]Schafik Jorge Handal, Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.[4]
There are 4,255,120 Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This number includes the descendants of refugees from the 1948 war, but excludes those who have emigrated to areas outside of UNRWA's remit.[34] Therefore, based on these figures, almost half of all Palestinians are registered refugees. Included among them are 993,818 Palestinian refugees of towns and villages inside present-day Israel who currently live in the Gaza Strip and 705,207 Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank.[50] UNRWA figures do not include some 274,000 people, or 1 in 4 of all Arab citizens of Israel, who are internally displaced Palestinian refugees.[51][52]
Religion
Background
Until the end of the nineteenth century, most villages in the countryside did not have local mosques. Cross-cultural syncretism between Biblical and Islamic symbols and figures in religious practice was common.[11] Instead, villagers would pay tribute to local patron saints at a maqam - a domed single room often placed in the shadow of an ancient carob or oak tree.[11] Saints, taboo by the standards of orthodox Islam, mediated between man and Allah, and shrines to saints and holy men dotted the Palestinian landscape.[11] Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, states that this built evidence constitutes "an architectural testimony to Christian/Moslem Palestinian religious sensibility and its roots in ancient Semitic religions."[11]
Religion as constitutive of individual identity was relegated a minor role within Palestinian tribal social structure until the latter half of the 19th century.[11] Jean Moretain, a priest writing in 1848, wrote that a Christian in Palestine was "distinguished only by the fact that he belonged to a particular clan. If a certain tribe was Christian, then an individual would be Christian, but without knowledge of what distinguished his faith from that of a Muslim."[11]
The concessions granted to France and other Western powers by the Ottoman Sultanate in the aftermath of the Crimean War had a significant impact on contemporary Palestinian religious cultural identity.[11] Religion was transformed into an element "constituting the individual/collective identity in conformity with orthodox precepts", and formed a major building block in the political development of Palestinian nationalism.[11]
The British census of 1922 registered 752,048 inhabitants in Palestine, consisting of 589,177 Palestinian Muslims, 83,790 Palestinian Jews, 71,464 Palestinian Christians (including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and others) and 7,617 persons belonging to other groups. The corresponding percentage breakdown is 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish, and 9% Christian. Palestinian Bedouin were not counted in the census, but a 1930 British study estimated their number at 70,860.[53]
All of the Druze living in what was then British Mandate Palestine became Israeli citizens, though some individuals self-identify "Palestinian Druze".[56] According to Salih al-Shaykh, most Druze do not consider themselves to be Palestinian: "their Arab identity emanates in the main from the common language and their socio-cultural background, but is detached from any national political conception. It is not directed at Arab countries or Arab nationality or the Palestinian people, and does not express sharing any fate with them. From this point of view, their identity is Israel, and this identity is stronger than their Arab identity".[57]
There are also about 350 Samaritans who are Palestinian citizens and live in the West Bank.[58]
Jews that identify as Palestinian Jews are rare, but include Israeli Jews who are part of the Neturei Karta group,[59] and Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen and self-described Palestinian Jew who serves as an observer member in the Palestine National Council.[60]
Palestinian Arabic is a subgroup of the broader Levantine Arabic dialect spoken by Palestinians. It has three primary sub-variations with the pronunciation of the qāf serving as a shibboleth to distinguish between the three main Palestinian dialects: In most cities, it is a glottal stop; in smaller villages and the countryside, it is a pharyngealizedk; and in the far south, it is a g, as among Bedouin speakers. In a number of villages in the Galilee (e.g. Maghār), and particularly, though not exclusively among the Druze, the qāf is actually pronounced qāf as in Classical Arabic.
Barbara McKean Parmenter has noted that the Arabs of Palestine have been credited with the preservation of the indigenous Semitic place names for many sites mentioned in the Bible which were documented by the American archaeologist Edward Robinson in the early 20th century.[61]
The long history of the Arabic language and its rich written and oral tradition form part of the Palestinian literary tradition as it has developed over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries.[citation needed]
Poetry
Poetry, using classical pre-Islamic forms, remains an extremely popular art form, often attracting Palestinian audiences in the thousands. Until 20 years ago, local folk bards reciting traditional verses were a feature of every Palestinian town.[62]
The work of these poets was largely unknown to the wider Arab world for years because of the lack of diplomatic relations between Israel and Arab governments. The situation changed after Ghassan Kanafani, another Palestinian writer in exile in Lebanon published an anthology of their work in 1966.[62]
Palestinian poets often write about the common theme of a strong affection and sense of loss and longing for a lost homeland.[62]
Folk tales
Traditional storytelling among Palestinians is prefaced with an invitation to the listeners to give blessings to God and the Prophet Mohammed or the Virgin Mary as the case may be, and includes the traditional opening: "There was, or there was not, in the oldness of time ..."[62]
Formulaic elements of the stories share much in common with the wider Arab world, though the rhyming scheme is distinct. There are a cast of supernatural characters: djinns who can cross the Seven Seas in an instant, giants, and ghouls with eyes of ember and teeth of brass. Stories invariably have a happy ending, and the storyteller will usually finish off with a rhyme like: "The bird has taken flight, God bless you tonight," or "Tutu, tutu, finished is my haduttu (story)."[62]
Intellectuals
In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Palestinian intellectuals were integral parts of wider Arab intellectual circles, as represented by individuals such as May Ziade and Khalil Beidas.
Diaspora figures like Edward Said and Ghada Karmi, Arab citizens of Israel like Emile Habibi, refugee camp residents like Ibrahim Nasrallah have made contributions to a number of fields, exemplifying the diversity of experience and thought among Palestinians.
Palestinian music is well-known and respected throughout the Arab world. A new wave of performers emerged with distinctively Palestinian themes following the 1948 Palestinian exodus, relating to the dreams of statehood and the burgeoning nationalist sentiments. A traditional folk dance, the dabke, is still danced at Palestinian weddings.[citation needed]
File:Bethlehengirlsintraditionaldresspre1918.JPGGirls in Bethlehem costume pre-1918, Bonfils Portrait
Palestinian cuisine is divided into two groups: In the Galilee and northern West Bank the cuisine is similar to that of Lebanon and Syria while other parts of the West Bank, such as the Jerusalem, and the Hebron region, locals have a heavy cooking style of their own. Gaza is more likely to be piquant, incorporating fresh green or dried red hot peppers, reflecting the culinary influences of Egypt.
Mezze describes an assortment of dishes laid out on the table for a meal that takes place over several hours, a characteristic common to Mediterranean cultures. One of the primary mezze dishes is hummus. Hummus u ful is another type of hummus dish cooked in a similar way except it is mixed in with boiled and ground fava beans. Tabouleh is a favourite type of salad.
Other common mezze dishes include baba ghanoush, labaneh, and zate u zaatar which is the pita bread dipping of olive oil and ground thyme and sesame seeds. Kebbiyeh or kubbeh is another popular dish made of minced meat enclosed in a case of burghul (cracked wheat) and deep fried.
Famous entrées in Palestine are waraq al-'inib - boiled grape leaves wrapped around cooked rice and lamb pieces. One of the most distinctive Palestinian dishes, said to originate in the Northern West Bank, near Jenin and Tulkarem, is musakhan - roasted chicken smothered in fried onions, pine nuts, and sumac (a dark red, lemony flavored spice), and laid over taboon..
Lamb leg in a thick and cooked goat milk yogurt, laban, is also common as is imhamar, a dish of roasted chicken and potatoes in a thick sauce of diced chili peppers and onions.
Similar to the structure of Palestinian society, the Palestinian art field extends over four main geographic centers: 1) the West Bank and Gaza Strip 2) Israel 3) the Palestinian diaspora in the Arab world, and 4) the Palestinian diaspora in Europe and the United States.[63]
Contemporary Palestinian art finds its roots in folk art and traditional Christian and Islamic painting popular in Palestine over the ages. After the 1948 Palestinian exodus, nationalistic themes have predominated as Palestinian artists use diverse media to express and explore their connection to identity and land.[64]
Palestinian pottery shows a remarkable continuity throughout the ages. Modern Palestinian pots, bowls, jugs and cups, particularly those produced prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948, are similar in shape, fabric and decoration to their ancient equivalents.[65] Cooking pots, jugs, mugs and plates that are still hand-made and fired in open, charcoal-fuelled kilns as in ancient times in historic villages like al-Jib (Gibeon), Beitin (Bethel) and Senjel.[66]
Until the 1940s, a woman's economic status, whether married or single, and the town or area they were from could be deciphered by most Palestinian women by the type of cloth, colors, cut, and embroidery motifs, or lack thereof, used for the dress.[67]
Though such local and regional variations largely disappeared after the 1948 Palestinian exodus, Palestinian embroidery and costume continue to be produced in new forms and worn alongside Islamic and Western fashions.[citation needed]
Palestinian cinema is relatively young in comparison to Arab cinema as a whole, many Palestinian movies are made with European and Israeli funding and support.[5] Palestinian movies are not exclusively produced in Arabic and some are made in English, French and Hebrew.[6]
It is believed that there have been over 800 films produced about Palestinians, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and other related topics.[7]
The Palestinian "Ayoub" family of Ghassanids ancestry from Ramallah AKA 1905
Palestinians, like most other Arabic-speakers, combine ancestries from those who have come to settle the region throughout history, a matter on which genetic evidence (see below) has begun to shed some light.[68] Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist writes:
"Throughout history a great diversity of peoples has moved into Palestine as their homeland: Jebusites, Canaanites, Philistines from Crete, Anatolian and Lydian Greeks, Hebrews, Amorites, Edomites, Nabateans, Arameans, Romans, Arabs, and European crusaders, to name a few. Each of them appropriated different regions that overlapped in time and competed for sovereignty and land. Others, such as Ancient Egyptians, Hittites, Persians, Babylonians, and Mongols, were historical 'events' whose successive occupations were as ravaging as the effects of major earthquakes ... Like shooting stars, the various cultures shine for a brief moment before they fade out of official historical and cultural records of Palestine. The people, however, survive. In their customs and manners, fossils of these ancient civilizations survived until modernity - albeit modernity camouflaged under the veneer of Islam and Arabic culture."
"Clearly, in Palestine as elsewhere in the Middle East, the modern inhabitants include among their ancestors those who lived in the country in antiquity. Equally obviously, the demographic mix was greatly modified over the centuries by migration, deportation, immigration, and settlement. This was particularly true in Palestine..."[69]
Semitic tribes from the Arabian peninsula migrated into Palestine as early as the 3rd millennium BCE,[70][71] and among the later migrations were the Arabs, such that the region was Arabized centuries before the Islamic era began.[72]Steve Tamari. "Who are the Arabs?"(PDF). Retrieved 2007=08=18. ((cite web)): Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)</ref> The migration of Arabs from Arabic and inland Syria and conversions to by some of the local population to Islam during the Umayyad era, accelerated the Arabization process.[citation needed]Aramaic and Greek were replaced by Arabic as the area's dominant language.[73] Among the cultural survivals from pre-Islamic times are the significant Palestinian Christian community, and smaller Jewish and Samaritan ones, as well as an Aramaic and possibly Hebrew sub-stratum in the local Palestinian Arabic dialect.[74]
The Bedouins of Palestine are said to be more securely known to be Arab ancestrally as well as by culture; their distinctively conservative dialects and pronunciation of qaaf as gaaf group them with other Bedouin across the Arab world and confirm their separate history. Arabic onomastic elements began to appear in Edomite inscriptions starting in the 6th century BC, and are nearly universal in the inscriptions of the Nabataeans, who arrived in today’s Jordan in the 4th-3rd centuries BC.[75] It has thus been suggested that the present day Bedouins of the region may have their origins as early as this period. A few Bedouin are found as far north as Galilee; however, these seem to be much later arrivals, rather than descendants of the Arabs that Sargon II settled in Samaria in 720 BC.
Canaanite claims
The claim that Palestinians are direct descendants of the region's earliest inhabitants, the Canaanites, has been put forward by some authors. Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright, author-journalists, write that:
"Between 3000 and 1100 B.C., Canaanite civilization covered what is today Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon and much of Syria and Jordan ... Those who remained in the Jerusalem hills after the Romans expelled the Jews [in the second century A.D.] were a potpourri: farmers and vineyard growers, pagans and converts to Christianity, descendants of the Arabs, Persians, Samaritans, Greeks and old Canaanite tribes."[76]
Kathleen Christison notes in her review of Kunstel and Albright's work that they are "those rare historians who give credence to the Palestinians' claim that their 'origins and early attachment to the land' derive from the Canaanites five millenia ago, and that they are an amalgamation of every people who has ever lived in Palestine."[77]
Adel Yahya, a Palestinian archaeologist, also claims that modern-day Palestinians are the direct descendants of the Philistines and that they might be descendants of the ancient Canaanites.[78] Sandra Scham, an American archaeologist at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Jerusalem and author of "Archaeology of the Disenfranchised" dismissed such conclusions as falling into the realm of 'popular imagination and folklore.'[78]
In an article in the journal Science, it was reported that "most Palestinian archaeologists were quick to distance themselves from these ideas," and the reasons cited by those interviewed centered around the view that the issue of who was in Palestine first constituted an ideological issue that lay outside of the realm of archaeological study.[79] Bernard Lewis writes that, "The rewriting of the past is usually undertaken to achieve specific political aims... in bypassing the biblical Israelites and claiming kinship with the Canaanites, the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Palestine, it is possible to assert a historical claim antedating the biblical promise and possession put forward by the Jews."[80]
Zakarriya Mohammed also assigns the search for Canaanite roots to a desire to predate Jewish national claims. Describing "Canaanism" as a "losing ideology when used to manage our conflict with the Zionist movement," he writes that, "'Canaanism' concedes a priori the central thesis of Zionism. Namely that we have been engaged in a perennial conflict with Zionism - and hence with the Jewish presence in Palestine - since the Kingdom of Solomon and before ... thus in one stroke Canaanism cancels the assumption that Zionism is a European movement, propelled by modern European contingencies..."[12]
DNA clues
Results of a DNA study by geneticist Ariella Oppenheim matched historical accounts that "some MoslemArabs are descended from Christians and Jews who lived in the southern Levant, a region that includes Israel and the Sinai. They were descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times."[81]
In genetic genealogy studies, Palestinian Arabs were found to have the second-highest rate of Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) among Arab groups, behind Bedouins, at 38.4%.[82] The haplogroup, associated with marker M267, originates in the Levant and was first disseminated in Ethiopia and Europe in Neolithic times; a second diffusion of the marker took place in the 7th century CE by Arabs who brought it to North Africa.[83](See also J1 Haplogroup frequencies:[8]) The haplogroup subclade is most common in the southern Levant, as well as Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Arabia, while it sharply drops at the border of non-Arab areas like Turkey and Iran. While it is also found in Jewish populations, the related haplogroup J2 (M172) is more than twice as common in Jews.[83][84][85][86][87][88] Th frequency of both J1-M267 and J2-M172 decrease with distance from the Levant in all directions, reinforcing this region as the most probable origin of its dispersions (Semino et al. 1996; Rosser et al. 2000; Quintana-Murci et al. 2001).[89]
According to a study in the European Journal of Human Genetics, "Arab and other Semitic populations usually possess an excess of J1 Y chromosomes compared to other populations harboring Y-haplogroup J".[90]
According to Semino et al. (2004), J-M267 (ie. J1) shows its highest frequencies in the Middle East. It is also found Northeast Africa and Europe, having spread in late Neolithic times; and during a second-wave in the southern part of the Middle East and in Northwest Africa.[83]
Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) includes the modal haplotype of the Galilee Arabs (Nebel et al. 2000) and of Moroccan Arabs (Bosch et al. 2001). According to a 2002 study by Nebel et al., on Genetic evidence for the expansion of Arabian tribes, the highest frequency of Eu10 (i.e. J1) (30%–62.5%) has been observed so far in various Moslem Arab populations in the Middle East. (Semino et al. 2000; Nebel et al. 2001).[91]
The most frequent Eu10 microsatellite haplotype in NW Africans is identical to a modal haplotype of Moslem Arabs who live in a small area in the north of Israel, the Galilee. (Nebel et al. 2000) termed the modal haplotype of the Galilee (MH Galilee). Interestingly, this modal haplotype is also the most frequent haplotype in the population from the town of Sena, in Yemen (Thomas et al. 2000). Its single-step neighbor is the most common haplotype of the Yemeni Hadramaut sample (Thomas et al. 2000). The presence of this particular modal haplotype at a significant frequency in three separate geographic locales makes independent genetic-drift events unlikely. The term “Arab,” as well as the presence of Arabs in the Syrian desert and the Fertile Crescent, is first seen in the Assyrian sources from the 9th century bce (Eph'al 1984).[92]
In recent years, many genetic surveys have suggested that, at least paternally, most of the various Jewish ethnic divisions and the Palestinians — and in some cases other Levantines — are genetically closer to each other than the Palestinians to the original Arabs of Arabia or [European] Jews to non-Jewish Europeans.[93][94][95][96] Nebel et al. (2001) report that their "recent study of high-resolution microsatellite haplotypes demonstrated that a substantial portion of Y chromosomes of Jews (70%) and of Palestinian Muslim Arabs (82%) belonged to the same chromosome pool (Nebel et al. 2000)."[9][97]
One study on congenital deafness identified an allele only found in Palestinian and Ashkenazi communities, suggesting a common origin.[98] An investigation[99] of a Y-chromosome polymorphism found Lebanese, Palestinian, and Sephardic populations to be particularly closely related; a third study [10], looking at Human leukocyte antigen differences among a broad range of populations, found Palestinians to be particularly closely related to Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Jews, as well as Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean populations.
One point in which Palestinians and Ashkenazi Jews and most Near Eastern Jewish communities appear to contrast is in the proportion of sub-Saharan African gene types which have entered their gene pools. One study found that Palestinians and some other Arabic-speaking populations — Jordanians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Bedouins — have what appears to be substantial gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa, amounting to 10-15% of lineages within the past three millennia.[100] In a context of contrast with other Arab populations not mentioned, the African gene types are rarely shared, except among Yemenites, where the average is actually higher at 35%.[100]Yemenite Jews, being a mixture of local Yemenite and Israelite ancestries[101], are also included in the findings for Yemenites, though they average a quarter of the frequency of the non-Jewish Yemenite sample.[100] Other Middle Eastern populations, particularly non-Arabic speakers — Turks, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris, and Georgians — have few or no such lineages.[100] The findings suggest that gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa has been specifically into Arabic-speaking populations (including at least one Arabic-speaking Jewish population, as indicated in Yemenite Jews), possibly due to the Arab slave trade. Other Near Eastern Jewish groups (whose Arabic-speaking heritage was not indicated by the study) almost entirely lack haplogroups L1–L3A, as is the case with Ashkenazi Jews. The sub-Saharan African genetic component of Ethiopian Jews and other African Jewish groups were not contrasted in the study, however, independent studies have shown those Jewish groups to be principally indigenous African in origin.
^Michael Lecker. "On the burial of martyrs". Tokyo University.For example, `Abdallah b. Muhayriz al-Jumahi al-Filastini was the name of an ascetic who lived in Jerusalem and died in the early 700s.
^Palestinian Identity:The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. Columbia University Press. 1997. p. 149. ISBN0231105142.Khalidi writes : "As with other national movements, extreme advocates of this view go further than this, and anachronistically read back into the history of Palestine over the past few centuries, and even millennia, a nationalist consciousness and identity that are in fact relatively modern."
^ abcdeDrummond, Dorothy Weitz (2004). Holy Land, Whose Land?: Modern Dilemma, Ancient Roots. Fairhurst Press. ISBN 0974823325 Cite error: The named reference "drummond" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
^[http://www.pademographics.com/ American-Israel Demographic
Research Group (AIDRG)], is led by Bennett Zimmerman, Yoram Ettinger, Roberta Seid, and Michael L. Wise
^Yoav Stern & Jack Khoury (2 May 2007). "Balad's MK-to-be: 'Anti-Israelization' Conscientious Objector". Haaretz. Retrieved 07.29.2007. ((cite web)): Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)For example, Said Nafa, a self-identified "Palestinian Druze" serves as the head of the Balad party's national council and founded the "Pact of Free Druze" in 2001, an organization that aims "to stop the conscription of the Druze and claims the community is an inalienable part of the Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian nation at large."
^Nissim Dana, The Druze in the Middle East: Their Faith, Leadership, Identity and Status, Sussex Academic Press, 2003, p. 201.
^Nebel; et al. (2000). "High-resolution Y chromosome haplotypes of Israeli and Palestinian Arabs reveal geographic substructure and substantial overlap with haplotypes of Jews". 107. Human Genetics: 630–641. ((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)"According to historical records part, or perhaps the majority, of the Moslem Arabs in this country descended from local inhabitants, mainly Christians and Jews, who had converted after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century AD (Shaban 1971; Mc Graw Donner 1981). These local inhabitants, in turn, were descendants of the core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times (Gil 1992)... Thus, our findings are in good agreement with the historical record..."
^Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, ISBN 0393318397, p. 49/
^Bernard Lewis (2002). The Arabs in History. Oxford University Press, USA, 6th ed. p. 17.
^Raja G. Mattar (August 2005). "Arab Christians are Arabs". PASSIA. ((cite web)): |access-date= requires |url= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)"What used to be known as Bilad Al Sham (Greater Syria, if you will) was Arabized long before Islam. To quote Salibi again (ch. 5): "Since pre-Islamic times, Mount Lebanon appears to have been densely populated by Arab tribes.." In ch. 7: "To maintain that the Syrians came to be [A]rabized after the conquest of their country by the Muslim Arabs was simply not correct, because Syria was already largely inhabited by Arabs - in fact, Christian Arabs - long before Islam."
^Griffith, Sidney H. (1997). "From Aramaic to Arabic: The Languages of the Monasteries of Palestine in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods". Dumbarton Oaks Papers. 51: 13.
^Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright (1990). Their Promised Land: Arab and Jew in History's Cauldron-One Valley in the Jerusalem Hills. Crown. ISBN0517572311.
^Christison, Kathleen. Review of Marcia Kunstel and Joseph Albright's Their Promised Land: Arab and Jew in History's Cauldron-One Valley in the Jerusalem Hills. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 21, No. 4. (Summer, 1992), pp. 98-100.
^ abNetty C. Gross (11 September 2000). "Demolishing David". The Jerusalem Report: 40. ((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
^Michael Balter, "Palestinians Inherit Riches, but Struggle to Make a Mark" Science, New Series, Vol. 287, No. 5450. (Jan. 7, 2000), pp. 33-34. "'We don't want to repeat the mistakes the Israelis made,' says Moain Sadek, head of the Department of Antiquities's operations in the Gaza Strip. Taha agrees: 'All these controversies about historical rights, who came first and who came second, this is all rooted in ideology. It has nothing to do with archaeology.'"
^Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry Into Conflict and Prejudice, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, ISBN 0393318397, p. 49/
^Rita Gonçalves; et al. (July 2005). [www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1529-8817.2005.00161.x "Y-chromosome Lineages from Portugal, Madeira and Açores Record Elements of Sephardim and Berber Ancestry"]. 69, Issue 4. Annals of Human Genetics: 443. ((cite journal)): Check |url= value (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Explicit use of et al. in: |author= (help)
^E. Levy- Coffman (2005). "A Mosaic of People". Journal of Genetic Genealogy: 12-33. ((cite journal)): Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
^Almut Nebel et Al., Genetic Evidence for the Expansion of Arabian Tribes into the Southern Levant and North Africa, Am J Hum Genet. 2002 June; 70(6): 1594–1596[2]
^Eph`al I (1984) The Ancient Arabs. The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
