The
Palestinian people (,
ash-sha‘b al-Filasṭīnī), also referred to as
Palestinians (,
al-Filasṭīniyyūn, ), are an
ethnic group comprising the modern descendants of the peoples who have lived in
Palestine over the centuries, and who today are largely culturally and linguistically
Arab due to
Arabization of the region. Despite various wars and exoduses (such as
that in 1948), 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 2004, Palestinians constituted 49% of all inhabitants, encompassing the entire population of the Gaza Strip (1.6 million), the majority of the population of the West Bank (approximately 2.3 million versus close to 500,000 Jewish
Israeli citizens which includes about 200,000 in
East Jerusalem), and 16.5% 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, three-quarters of a million in the West Bank, and about a quarter of a million 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. 3.24 million of the diaspora population live in neighboring
Jordan, 1.5 million live between
Syria and
Lebanon, a quarter of a million in
Saudi Arabia, with
Chile's half a million representing the largest concentration outside the
Arab world.