Palestinian Citizens of Israel
(Courtesy of Adalah - The Legal Center for the Arab Minority Rights in Israel)
After the establishment of the State of Israel in 14 May, 1948, only 150,000 Palestinians remained in the new state, of which approximately 25% were displaced from their homes and villages and became internally displaced persons as the Israeli army destroyed over 530 Palestinian villages and towns. As a result of this ethnic cleansing campaign, the Palestinian population in Israel found itself disoriented and severely weakened. They had been effectively transformed from members of a majority population to a minority in an exclusively Jewish state. They lacked political as well as economic power, as their leadership, as well as their professional and middle classes, were refused the right to return and compelled to live outside of the state.
Today, Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise close to 20% of the total population of the country. They live predominantly in villages, towns, and mixed Arab-Jewish cities in the Galilee region in the north, the Triangle area in central Israel, and the Naqab (Negev) desert in the south. A part of the Palestinian people who currently live in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Diaspora, they belong to three religious communities: Muslim (81%), Christian (10%), and Druze (9%). Under international instruments to which Israel is a state party, they constitute an indigenous, national, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority.