The Culture of Palestine

Palestinian culture is comprised of a blend of Eastern Mediterranean influences. Being Levantines, Palestinians share commonalities with nearby Levantine Arabs (Lebanese, Syrians, and Jordanians). Palestinians, although Arabized today, are genetically an indigenous Semitic (non-Arab) people which descended from the native Canaanites/Phoenicians and thereby mixed with their conquerers (Philistines, Hebrews, Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks).

Over half of Palestinians are in diaspora, and found outside of Palestine. The population of Jordan is 2/3 of Palestinian heritage. Most Palestinian refugees can be found other Middle Eastern countries, and North and South America. Many are also in Europe.

Language: Arabic (official), Aramaic, Hebrew, and Armenian. Most Palestinians speak Levantine Arabic, a dialect of Arabic spoken in Syria, Palestine, western Jordan and Lebanon. Palestinian rural dialects exhibit several distinctive features (particularly the pronunciation of qaaf as kaaf) which distinguish them from other Arabic varieties, but Palestinian urban dialects more closely resemble northern Levantine dialects, i.e., those of Syria and Lebanon.

The Bedouins of Palestine, however, are more securely known to be Arab by ancestry as well as by culture; their distinctively conservative dialects and pronunciation of qaaf as gaaf group them with other Bedouin across the Arab world and confirm their separate history.

In a number of villages in the Galilee (e.g. Maghar), and particularly, though not exclusively among the Druze, the qāf is actually pronounced qaaf as in Classical Arabic.

Religion: Currently, no reliable data are available for the worldwide Palestinian population. But an estimated percentage suggests 60% Muslim (mainly Sunni, but also a few Sufis), 30% Christian (predominantly Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and others) and 10% Other (i.e. Druze, Baha'i, Jewish, Samaritan, etc).

However, within the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, the (non-Jewish) Palestinian population is 97% Muslim and 3% Christian; there are also about 350 Samaritans and a few thousand Jews.