page_title: Palestinians
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Palestinians / Origins
caption_attribution_description: I, Charles Ayoub, own the image and release it to the Public Domain. It was also featured in the book 'Ramallah - Anicent and Modern' by Khalil Ayub Abu Rayya. The picture was taken in 1905 of a family from Ramallah, Palestine. From left to right - Abraham Ayoub, Michael Ayoub, Peter Ayoub, Tifaha Ayoub, Louis Ayoub. en:Category:Palestinian history en:Category:Cities in the West Bank
context_page_description: The Palestinian people, also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs, are an ethnonational group comprising the modern descendants of the peoples who have lived in Palestine continuously over the centuries and who today are largely culturally and linguistically Arab; including those ethnic Jews and Samaritans who fit this definition.
  Despite various wars and exoduses, roughly one half of the world's Palestinian population continues to reside in historic Palestine, the area encompassing the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Israel. In this combined area, as of 2005, Palestinians constituted 49% of all inhabitants, encompassing the entire population of the Gaza Strip, the majority of the population of the West Bank and 20.95% of the population of Israel proper as Arab citizens of Israel. Many are Palestinian refugees or internally displaced Palestinians, including more than a million in the Gaza Strip, about 750,000 in the West Bank and about 250,000 in Israel proper. Of the Palestinian population who live abroad, known as the Palestinian diaspora, more than half are stateless, lacking citizenship in any country.
context_section_description: The origins of Palestinians are complex and diverse. The region was not originally Arab – its Arabization was a consequence of the inclusion of Palestine within the rapidly expanding Arab Empire conquered by Arabian tribes and their local allies in the first millennium, most significantly during the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. Palestine, then part of the Byzantine Diocese of the East, a Hellenized region with a large Christian population, came under the political and cultural influence of Arabic-speaking Muslim dynasties, including the Kurdish Ayyubids. From the conquest down to the 11th century, half of the world's Christians lived under the new Muslim order and there was no attempt for that period to convert them. Over time, nonetheless, much of the existing population of Palestine was Arabized and gradually converted to Islam. Arab populations had existed in Palestine prior to the conquest, and some of these local Arab tribes and Bedouin fought as allies of Byzantium in resisting the invasion, which the archaeological evidence indicates was a 'peaceful conquest', and the newcomers were allowed to settle in the old urban areas. Theories of population decline compensated by the importation of foreign populations are not confirmed by the archaeological record Like other "Arabized" Arab nations the Arab identity of Palestinians, largely based on linguistic and cultural affiliation, is independent of the existence of any actual Arabian origins. The Palestinian population has grown dramatically. For several centuries during the Ottoman period the population in Palestine declined and fluctuated between 150,000 and 250,000 inhabitants, and it was only in the 19th century that a rapid population growth began to occur.
caption: A Palestinian Christian family in Ramallah, Ottoman Palestine, 1905.
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