Overview
Understanding Who Are the People of Palestine?
history
Identity Is Historical and Personal
Rashid Khalidi's Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997) emphasizes overlapping local, Arab, Syrian, Ottoman, and Palestinian loyalties. Beshara Doumani's Rediscovering Palestine (1995) shows how families, merchants, peasants, and local institutions shaped public life in Ottoman Palestine. James L. Gelvin's The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History with Documents places these developments within the wider history of the conflict. Their emphases differ, but together they show why Palestinian identity should be understood as historically formed rather than as something that suddenly appeared in 1948.
Local, Arab, religious, and Palestinian identities often overlapped. A person could be attached to a village, Jerusalem, a wider Arab project, a religious community, and a developing Palestinian national movement at the same time. This history does not erase older Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Samaritan, Armenian, Bedouin, and other connections to the land, nor does it make present-day Palestinians a single political bloc.
Careful study should make room for these layers rather than using history as a weapon. A historical account can describe institutions, documents, and demographic change; it should not turn whole communities into stereotypes or make present-day individuals answer for every event in the past.
history
A concise modern history
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was established in 1964, with the first Palestine National Council meeting in Jerusalem under Arab League auspices. It became an umbrella organization for major Palestinian political and armed factions and, after 1967, increasingly represented Palestinians in international diplomacy. The June 1967 war brought the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip under Israeli military occupation, creating another decisive layer of Palestinian political and social life.
The First Intifada began in December 1987 as a mass uprising against the occupation, involving strikes, demonstrations, civil disobedience, and armed violence. It helped bring the Palestinian question to the center of international diplomacy and was followed by the 1993 Oslo process, in which Israel and the PLO mutually recognized one another. The Second Intifada began in 2000 after the collapse of the peace process and escalating confrontations; it brought severe Palestinian and Israeli civilian suffering and ended after several years of conflict. These milestones do not explain every later development, but they provide a necessary frame for understanding Palestinian identity, displacement, political organization, and the continuing relevance of the cause to Muslims and to others concerned with justice.
notes
Start With Human Dignity
An introductory account should be compared with scholarly histories, primary documents, and dated reporting. Dates, authorship, and context matter, especially when a claim is used to judge an entire people.
summary
Key Takeaways: Who Are the People of Palestine?
Palestinians are a people with diverse religious, family, regional, and cultural histories connected to Palestine. Their modern identity developed through local life, Ottoman and Mandate-era institutions, displacement, political organization, and attachment to the land.
Sources
Sources and further reading
Primary texts and works cited in this article.
The Quran — Tanzil Uthmani text with Saheeh International translation
quran
Source linkUthmani-script Arabic text from Tanzil with the Saheeh International English translation.
The Holy Bible, World English Bible (public domain)
bible
Source linkPublic-domain English translation from the World English Bible.
Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
book | Rashid Khalidi | Columbia University Press | 1997
Source linkA major scholarly study of the development of Palestinian national consciousness; read alongside other historians for differing emphases.
The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries
book | Rosemary Sayigh | Zed Books | 1979
An influential social history that foregrounds Palestinian voices and displacement; its perspective should be identified when used.
Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900
book | Beshara B. Doumani | University of California Press | 1995
A social and economic history of Ottoman Palestine that helps ground national-identity discussions in local institutions, families, and regional life.
The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A History with Documents
book | James L. Gelvin | Cambridge University Press | 2021
An accessible survey that places Palestinian identity, the Mandate, 1948, 1967, the PLO, and the Intifadas within the wider conflict.
Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993
book | Yezid Sayigh | Oxford University Press | 1997
A detailed history of Palestinian political organization, including the PLO and the movement's changing strategies.