The term Palestinian is difficult to define. Several definitions have been suggested.
- any resident of Palestine (the region)
- a citizen of Palestine (the nation)
- a member of a Arab ethnic group having a distinctive language and traditions
Usage of the term Palestinian generally depends on one's views of Palestine, the Palestinian homeland, the Arab-Israeli conflict and related issues.
Wikipedia remains neutral on this controversy, adhering to the NPOV policy of saying only that group X says Y about Z.
Palestinians are an Arab people, whose traditions, history and ethnicity are centered on land formerly in the British Mandate of Palestine: the State of Israel, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians are mostly Muslim, but there are many Christians as well. A very small number of Palestinians are humanists, atheists or agnostics. Over the past few years, many Palestinian Christians have moved to Europe and North America, citing the rise of Islamic parties and accompanying intolerance and discrimination in the major cities of the West Bank (see: Palestine/Christian), including by the Palestinian Authority itself.
Positions of both sides regarding the state of Israel
The wave of Palestinian refugees created after the creation of the State of Israel was caused in part by surrounding Arab nations, and in part by the creation of the state of Israel. Most of these refugees have never been allowed to return to their homes; many of their homes and properties have been expropriated by the State of Israel. Israelis point out, however, that hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab nations became refugees during this war; they too have never received compensation.
During several months preceeding the declaration of Israel on May 14, 1948, Israeli forces destroyed dozens of Arab villages, mainly in the Jerusalem corridor, and expelled their citizens. In many cases, the inhabitants of these very villages participated in looting raids on Jewish traffic on the nearby Tel-Aviv-Jerusalem road; however Palestinians point out to at least one case when forces of two right-wing Jewish undergrounds (not under direct command of the Jewish leadership) committed attrocities, in an event known as the Deir Yassin incident.
Arabs often raise the claim that at midnight on May 14, when the British mandate was bein retracted, the creation of the Jewish state was accompanied by the take-over by Jewish forces of certain areas evacuated by the British in Jerusalem (intended for international administration), as well as several chunks of territory designated for the proposed Arab state. However, as Israelis point out, the Arab leadership specifically declared that it would not create a Palestinian state, thus voiding the applicability of the U.N. partition proposals, but rather ask the powerful Jordanian Arab Legion and the Egyptian regular army to divide all of Palestine between Arabs. Two weeks after, the fears of the Jewish leadership realized, as on May 28, all of East Jerusalem (including the Jewish holy sites, which the Jews were forbidden to access for the following 19 years) fell to the Arab Legion.
On the day Israel proclaimed its independence there were already 300,000 Palestinian refugees. Many of them fled in terror from war. Whether they were misled to leave, with the expectation of return, or with the expectation of victory, these people have never been allowed to return.
The Palestinians oppose the claim that if they had accepted partition, they wouldn't have lost even more of their territory in the war by quoting Eamon De Valera, the president of Ireland, who declared it was impossible. To one visitor who had solicited his support for partition he replied: "I read the Old Testament many years ago. I am afraid I have forgotten many things I read; but one passage I recall clearly. It is the story of Solomon's judgement of the two women who desired the same baby. I remember how when Solomon ruled that the baby be divided the real mother screamed, "No! No! Give the baby to the other woman!" That is my answer to partition. The rightful owners of a country will never agree to partition."
However, as Israelis claim, the Arab leadership's full ignoring of the existence of 600,000 Jews aspiring for statehood as much as they do, and the total refusal to share the land in any form eventually lay the ground for their own disaster, which they might have as well averted by accepting a mutually profitable peace.
See also British Mandate of Palestine
Arab historical statements on the creation of Palestinian refugees
At the time of the refugee crisis, for some 20 to 30 years afterwards, many Arab authorities heald that the refugee crisis was the result of Arab tactical decisions during the conflict. Some Palestinians today appear to deny the very existence of these quotes, or hold that these Arabs were somehow secretly Zionists.
"The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies." (editorial in Jordanian newspaper "Falastin", February 19 1949, Amman, Jordan)
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem." (radio broadcast by the Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station on April 3 1949 (Cyprus)
"The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea." (Kenneth Bilby, American journalist, covering the area before and during the war, in his book "New Star in the Near East", pp. 30-31, New York 1950)
"We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, as quoted by Nimr el Hawari (the former Commander of the stine Arab Youth Organization) in his book 'Sir Am Nakbah' ("The Secret Behind the Disaster"), 1952 (Nazareth)
"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake posession of their country." Edward Atiyah (Secretary of the Arab League Office in London), as quoted in 'The Arabs', p. 183 (London 1955)
"I do not want to impugn anybody but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem." Emil Ghoury (Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee), as quoted in the Daily Telegraph, September 6 1948(Beirut)
"The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down." (Habib Issa, in the daily US-published Lebanese newspaper Al Hoda, June 8 1951, New York)