Arabs constituted a majority in Palestine from
the seventh century c.e., and, with the excep-
tion of the Crusader era (11th–13th centuries),
the people of Palestine, known as Palestinians,
were ruled by leaders who confessed Islam until
- Under the Ottoman Empire Palestine was
governed as a part of the Greater Syria province,
which included the current nations of syria, Jor-
dan, lebanon, israel, and the Occupied Territo-
ries (Gaza and the West Bank).
Like their European neighbors and Middle
Eastern contemporaries, the people of Palestine
began to engage with serious issues of modern
nationalism in the 19th century, a process that
developed rapidly with the emergence of Zion-
ism in the 20th century. As in nations such as
Iraq and Egypt, Palestinians were proud of their
Arab heritage, and many embraced ideas of pan-
Arabism. However, their specific residence in
Palestine marked them as distinct from Arabs in
other countries, and the trauma of wide-scale dis-
placement in the wake of the creation of the state
of Israel in 1948 gave Palestinians a particularly
heightened need for a clearly articulated national
identity.
In the 20th century Palestinians have endured
tremendous upheavals and conflicts. Under the
British who occupied Palestine under a League
of Nations mandate (1917–48), Palestinian Arabs
formed a strong national identity in response to
the growing Zionist movement, but found them-
selves increasingly cast out of the nascent state
apparatus of the proposed Jewish state. When that
goal was realized with the creation of Israel, hun-
dreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed, and
Palestinians were faced with a massive diaspora
of reFUgees counting in the millions. The Israeli-
Arab war of 1967 resulted in Israel’s occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza, expanding the popula-
tion of displaced Palestinians and strengthening
the nationalism of Palestinians demanding a state
of their own.
Although the creation of a Palestinian nation-
state has yet to be achieved, Palestinians constitute
a nation with a specific national identity. This iden-
tity has been heightened by the loss of Palestine to
an Israeli state, which asserts nationalism opposed
to an Arab presence in its borders. Two intifadas,
or uprisings, against Israeli occupation have been
mounted (1987–93, 2000–present), but Palestin-
ians still struggle for national recognition. Although
Palestinians have expressed their national identity
in terms of secular politics by agencies such as the
palestine liberation organization (PLO), as well
as by the religiously grounded ideologies of the
Islamic Resistance Movement (hamas), an unques-
tionable tenant of both has been the belief in a
unique Palestinian nationalism distinct from larger
pan-Arabist ideologies.
In the absence of an official census, it is esti-
mated there are about 10.5 million Palestinians
in the world today (2006 estimate), about half
of whom live in neighboring Middle Eastern
countries, the Americas, and elsewhere—many
as refugees. About 3.6 million reside in the occu-
pied West Bank and Gaza territories and another
1.3 million are Israeli citizens (2004 estimate).
The Palestinian territories are governed by the
Palestinian National Authority, a branch of the
PLO established after the oslo accords in 1994.
Its first head of state was yasir araFat (d. 2004),
and it is now led by Mahmoud Abbas (b. 1935).
Its legislative branch is the Palestinian Legislative
Council, an elective body with 132 seats.
See also arab-israeli conFlicts; colonialism;
dome oF the rock; hUsayni, amin; JerUsalem;
ottoman dynasty.
Nancy StockdaleFurther reading: Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Walter
Laqueur and Barry Rubin, The Israel-Arab Reader: A
Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict. 6th ed.
(New York: Penguin Books, 2001); Edward W. Said, The
Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage, 1992); Tom
Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the
British Mandate (New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry
Holt, 2000).Palestine 543 J