Arab, Palestinian

The Palestinian Arabs of Israel descend from the roughly 156,000 Arabs who stayed inside the new state's borders in 1948, when most of their compatriots fled or were expelled, together with the Palestinians of East Jerusalem annexed after 1967. Now about 1.7 million, they are Israeli citizens or residents who speak Arabic at home and Hebrew at work, and they call themselves by many names: Arabs of 48, Palestinians of the interior, Israeli Arabs. Most are Sunni Muslims, but Nazareth, Haifa and the Galilee villages hold the largest Arab Christian community in the Holy Land, Melkite, Orthodox, Latin and Maronite. Their towns cluster in the Galilee hills and the Triangle along the old armistice line, where the clan (hamula) still decides local elections and Land Day on 30 March recalls the 1976 protests against land confiscation. They face a record wave of organised crime that killed 252 people in 2025.

Palestinian Arabs in Jordan are the refugees of 1948 and 1967 and their descendants, around three million people who make up the largest Palestinian community outside historic Palestine. Unlike in any other Arab host country, most hold full Jordanian citizenship, yet the line between them and East Bank Jordanians remains the main divide in national life: they lead commerce and the private sector while the army and state jobs stay largely East Bank. About one in six still lives in the ten refugee camps, where Baqa'a alone houses some 130,000 people and families keep the keys of houses lost in 1948. Some 160,000 people of Gazan origin remain without citizenship, living on temporary passports. Most are Sunni Muslims, with an urban Christian minority from Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah families.

The Palestinian Arabs of the West Bank, about three million people outside East Jerusalem, are the heart of the Palestinian nation living on its own land, in hill cities such as Hebron and Nablus, in some 400 villages and in refugee camps founded for those who fled in 1948. Most are Sunni Muslims; a Christian minority of about 30,000 to 35,000 lives in Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Ramallah and villages such as Taybeh and Zababdeh, where churches have stood since the first centuries. Life is shaped by the olive tree: the autumn harvest gathers whole families in the groves, and Nablus soap, Hebron glass and village embroidery carry the same rooted identity. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023 the West Bank has lived through its hardest years in decades, with about 120,000 jobs in Israel lost, record attacks by settlers on villages and harvests, and the emptying of the Jenin and Tulkarm camps by army operations.

Palestinians settled in Egypt before 2023, about 80,000 people, descend mostly from refugees of 1948 and 1967 and from Gazans who came to study and work while Egypt ran the Gaza Strip. Most have never been given Egyptian citizenship: they renew residence permits every few years, pay foreigners' school fees and may own only one home, so a Palestinian travel document marks them out among neighbours who share their faith and much of their dialect. Many families still keep the deeds and keys of homes lost in 1948, and farming villages of Sharqia such as Fadel Island have kept Palestinian clans together for three generations. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims; children of Egyptian mothers have been able to claim Egyptian nationality since 2011, and many still call themselves Palestinian.

Palestinians in Iraq are a stateless Sunni community, mostly descended from villagers of the Haifa district (Ijzim, Jaba' and Ein Ghazal) whom the Iraqi army brought to Baghdad in 1948, joined by later arrivals after 1967 and 1991. Once about 35,000 and treated almost as citizens, they were targeted by militias after 2003 and most fled, many to border camps and then to resettlement in Chile, Brazil and northern Europe. Those who remain live mainly in al-Baladiyat, a crumbling 1970s housing complex in eastern Baghdad where three generations share small flats and the Haifa sports club still hosts the community's gatherings. A 2017 law reclassified them as foreigners, stripping the free schooling, health care and public jobs they had held, and since 2024 they may not even own the taxis many relied on for a living.

Palestinians in Kuwait are the remnant of what was once the country's largest foreign community, about 400,000 people in 1990, who staffed its schools, ministries and companies and founded the Fatah movement there in 1959. After the Palestine Liberation Organization sided with Iraq during the 1990 occupation, Kuwait expelled or barred the return of almost all of them, and by late 1991 only about 20,000 remained. Today some 40,000 to 60,000 people of Palestinian origin live in Kuwait, most holding Jordanian passports and some Palestinian or Egyptian travel documents, after relations were mended with an apology in 2004, the reopening of the Palestinian embassy in 2013 and the rehiring of Palestinian teachers from 2016. Hawalli, the heart of the pre-1990 community, remains home to many Palestinian families. Most are Sunni Muslims, and Palestinian families make up most of Kuwait's few hundred Christian citizens.

Palestinians in Lebanon are the descendants of about 100,000 refugees who fled Galilee and the coast of northern Palestine in 1948, now in their fourth generation and numbering roughly 245,000 people who actually live in the country. Nearly half live in twelve crowded camps, where alleys of concrete houses built ever higher are named after the villages their grandparents left, and many families still keep the deeds and house keys from 1948. Almost all are Sunni Muslims speaking a Galilean Palestinian Arabic, with a small Christian community centred on the hilltop camp of Dbayeh north of Beirut. Lebanese law bars them from owning property and from dozens of professions, so most work as day labourers, and the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees runs their schools and clinics. Israeli strikes hit Ain al-Hilweh and Beddawi in March 2026 and emptied part of the Tyre camps that spring.

Palestinians in Libya are a community of a few thousand, families who came from the late 1960s as teachers, doctors, engineers and civil servants recruited by the Libyan state, joined later by workers from the refugee camps of Lebanon and Syria. Their time in Libya has been unsettled: in 1995 Qadhafi expelled thousands of them in protest at the Oslo Accords, leaving families stranded for months in a desert camp on the Egyptian border, and most of those who stayed left during and after the 2011 war. The largest group now lives in Benghazi, with others in Misrata, Sirte, Tobruk and the older families of Tripoli, where Levantine Arabic at home, dishes such as maqluba and musakhan, and the keys of family houses lost in 1948 keep a Palestinian identity alive. They are not Libyan citizens and live on residence permits, with pensions, student grants and access to schools and hospitals that both of Libya's rival governments granted them in 2023.

Palestinians were among the first foreigners to build modern Qatar: after 1948 refugees from the West Bank, Gaza and the camps of Lebanon and Syria came as teachers, clerks, engineers and administrators, and many families have now lived in Doha for three generations without citizenship. About 60,000 people of Palestinian origin live in Qatar, holding Jordanian or Palestinian passports, Egyptian travel documents or refugee papers, most of them Sunni Muslims with a small Greek Orthodox and Catholic minority. Qatar hosts the Hamas political office and has drawn Palestinians through a 2015-2017 programme of work visas for Gaza and West Bank teachers and, from December 2023, the evacuation of wounded Gazans and their families to Doha. The right of return remains at the heart of their identity, kept alive in embroidered dresses, dabke and family memories of lost villages.

Palestinians are one of the oldest foreign communities in Saudi Arabia, about 230,000 people, more than half of them in Jeddah. Refugees and graduates from the West Bank, Gaza and the camps of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria came from the 1950s as the kingdom's first teachers, engineers, doctors and civil servants, and many families are now in their third or fourth generation without citizenship, holding Palestinian or Jordanian passports or Egyptian travel documents. Monthly fees on expatriates' dependants from 2017 sent many families home, and the community is smaller than the half million of a decade ago. Most are Sunni Muslims, with a small Greek Orthodox and Catholic minority, and they keep their identity alive through embroidered dresses, maqluba and musakhan at family gatherings, and the keys and deeds of homes their grandparents left in 1948.

Palestinians in Syria descend mostly from the people of Safad, Tiberias, Haifa and the Galilee villages who fled in 1948, joined by later waves from the Golan in 1967 and from Jordan and Lebanon. A 1956 law gave them nearly the same rights as Syrians to work, study and serve the state, without citizenship, so for decades they lived as Syrians in all but passport while keeping a fierce attachment to their villages of origin and to the right of return. Yarmouk, on the southern edge of Damascus, was the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the region and the heart of their political and cultural life until siege and bombardment emptied it after 2012. Thousands were killed or disappeared in the war and over a hundred thousand emigrated to Europe. Since 2025 families priced out of Damascus rents have been returning to rebuild its shattered blocks, and its population has grown from about 15,000 to some 60,000.

Palestinians in Tunisia number perhaps 1,500 to 3,000, a community with three layers. The oldest are families who stayed on after the Palestine Liberation Organization made Tunis its headquarters from 1982 to 1994; many married Tunisians, and in 2020 President Kais Saied granted citizenship to 34 Palestinians who had lived in the country for decades. Students form the second layer, since Tunisia reserves up to 250 university places and scholarships for Palestinians every year, and since late 2023 about 180 wounded Gazans and 59 families have been flown in for treatment and housed by the Tunisian Red Crescent. Every 1 October Tunisians and Palestinians gather at the memorial in Hammam Chott, south of Tunis, where an Israeli air raid on the PLO headquarters in 1985 killed 50 Palestinians and 18 Tunisians.

Palestinians helped build the Emirates from the 1950s, arriving as refugees and graduates to staff the first schools, courts and ministries; one of them founded Sharjah's modern school system in 1954. About a quarter of a million now live in the country, many in their third generation, born in the Emirates yet without citizenship and travelling mostly on Jordanian passports. Most are Sunni Muslim professionals, teachers, doctors, engineers and business people, with a small Orthodox and Catholic minority. In August 2026 more than 50,000 people filled Expo City Dubai for the first 'Emirates Loves Palestine' festival of embroidered dresses, folk songs and date-filled ma'moul, while relatives in Gaza endure war and wounded Gazans and their families are flown to the Emirates for treatment.