Palestinian Jews

Ottoman era

Under Ottoman rule following the 1516 conquest, native Jewish communities lived primarily in the four "holy cities" of Safed, Tiberias, Hebron and Jerusalem. In the mid-16th century, the Jewish population numbered roughly 10,000 (around 5% of the total). By the mid-19th century, Ottoman sources recorded a Jewish population of 5% to 7% out of a total regional population of approximately 600,000.

Unlike neighboring Arab regions where Jewish populations were comparatively homogeneous, the Jewish community in 19th-century Palestine comprised distinct sub-ethnic and linguistic groups. These included indigenous Musta'arabim (Arabic-speaking Jews who predated Ottoman rule), Sephardim (Judeo-Spanish speakers descending from the 1492 Iberian expulsion), Maghrebim from North Africa, and Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe. While Yiddish prevailed among European Ashkenazi immigrants in Jerusalem, Arabic served both as the native tongue for Musta'arabim and Maghrebim, and as the common lingua franca for commerce and daily interactions across mixed cities like Safed and Hebron.

In the late Ottoman period, local Arabic discourse often distinguished long-established native Jews from recent European arrivals. Autobiographies and diaries from the era, such as those of Khalil al-Sakakini and Wasif Jawhariyyeh, refer to native Jews as abnaa al-balad ("sons of the country"), "compatriots", or Yahud awlad Arab ("Jews, sons of Arabs"). When the First Palestinian Congress of February 1919 issued its anti-Zionist manifesto rejecting Zionist immigration, it similarly extended a welcome to Jews "among us who have been Arabicized... they are as we are, and their loyalties are our own."

Legally, non-Muslim subjects within the Ottoman Empire were organized under the millet system and historically classified as dhimmi (protected second-class subjects), subjecting them to specific restrictions and taxation. Although the mid-19th-century Tanzimat reforms formally granted equal legal citizenship to non-Muslims, social hierarchies and political friction over immigration persisted into the final decades of Ottoman rule.

British Mandate era

By the late Ottoman period on the eve of World War I, local Arab populations, increasingly organizing around a distinct Palestinian national consciousness, became alienated from local Arabic-speaking Jews over their expanding support for the Zionist movement and Jewish settlement in Palestine. Local Sephardic publications like HaHerut promoted a pro-Zionist and pro-Ottoman stance. While organizations like HaMagen were established by Arabic-speaking Jews to counter anti-Zionism in the Arab press, translate articles, and foster mutual understanding, rising nationalist sentiment made reconciliation increasingly difficult.

During the early British Mandate, Arab political figures and newspapers continued appeals to non-Ashkenazi Jews. In 1920, the newspaper al-Quds al-Sharif called on local Jews to reject political Zionism and recent European immigration, pointing to their shared local history. Although a 1921 delegation representing the Palestine Arab Congress claimed to British officials in London that native Sephardim opposed Zionism, these Arab political overtures were largely rejected by the local Sephardic leadership.

The 1929 Anti-Jewish riots marked a final breakdown in relations. The violence drove previously non-Zionist or indifferent native, Eastern, and Maghrebi Jewish communities to align fully with the broader Zionist Yishuv for physical security and political protection.

1948 transition to State of Israel

As the British Mandate drew to a close and the State of Israel was established, archival documents released by the Israel State Archives show that Jewish officials debated what the new country would be called in Arabic: Palestine (Filastin), Zion (Sahyoun), or Israel (Isra’il). Officials anticipated the concurrent creation of an Arab state under the UN partition plan and recognized that the Jewish state would encompass a large Arab minority. The name Palestine was ultimately rejected to avoid confusion with the projected Arab state, leading officials to select Israel.

References to Jews in Europe as Palestinians

European Jews were commonly considered an "Oriental" people in many of their host countries. The 18th-century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant in an anti-Jewish polemic referred to European Jews as "Palestinians living among us." The British Mandate referred to Arab Palestinians and Jewish settlers from Europe alike as "Palestinians," consistent with an Orientalist view of all Jews as Eastern people.

PLO Charter definition

The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO's Palestinian National Council in July 1968, defined Palestinians as "those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father—whether in Palestine or outside it—is also a Palestinian. The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians."