| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Regions with significant populations | |
  | |
| Languages | |
| English (British English) • Arabic (Palestinian Arabic) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Arabs in the United Kingdom • Palestinian diaspora |
Palestinians in the United Kingdom, commonly called British Palestinians, are people of Palestinian origin born or residing in the United Kingdom.
According to Youssef Courbage and Hala Nofal in Palestinians Worldwide: A Demographic Study (2020), Palestinian presence in the United Kingdom predates the Nakba. [2] Dina Matar writes in her 2005 thesis that the well-off and businesspeople arrived as early as the 1930s for education and work reasons. [3]
Still composed mostly of students and professionals, larger waves of Palestinians began migrating to the UK from the 1960s and on, spurred by events such as the Naksa and the Lebanese Civil War (as many Palestinians had previously fled to Lebanon during the Nakba). Since the 1980s, especially after the Second Gulf War, an increasing number of stateless Palestinians have sought asylum in European countries to escape wars and political turmoil in the Middle East. [4]
Outlined in Abbas Shiblak's The Palestinian Diaspora in Europe (2005), it was estimated there were 20,000 Palestinians in the UK in 2001, with the number rising after 1991. However, as pointed out by Lina Mahmoud in her essay for the same publication, [1] Ghada Karmi in a 2008 article for This Week Palestine, [5] and Dina Matar in her thesis, [3] the number was impossible to calculate due to a lack of data on British-born Palestinians and Palestinian residents of Britain born in other countries. In 2020, Courbage and Nofal estimated the number was 60,000 in 2017. [2]
From 2004 to 2006 and 2011 to 2012, Stéphanie Loddo (of the EHESS) collected ethnographic data from Palestinians living in Manchester, Oxford, and London and among Palestinian-related organisations. The respondents were both migrants (belonging to various categories – students, professionals, refugees – who arrived at certain intervals in different contexts) and British-born Palestinians. [4] As a result of these migration patterns, the Palestinian community in the UK is diverse in terms of social class, civil and legal status, place of origin, and religious and cultural background. [4] [3] [5]
Loddo, Courbage and Nofal, [2] and Karmi [5] agreed that Palestinians typically find relative success in the UK. Loddo considered the country a "favourable environment" for Palestinians as a "world leader" in higher education, arts, Arab media, and business. [4]
Organisations and collectives concerning British Palestinians specifically include the British Palestinian Committee (BPC), [6] [7] the Association of the Palestinian Community in the UK (APC–UK), the Palestine Community Foundation (PCF), [8] [9] and the Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB). [10] There is also the Scottish Palestinian Society (SPS). [11]
The Mission of Palestine (embassy) in London began operating as a delegation in the 1970s. [12]
Palestinians are an Arab ethnonational group native to the region of Palestine.
Abraham Moshe "Avi" Dichter is an Israeli politician currently serving as the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. A former Minister of Internal Security and Shin Bet director, he resigned from the Knesset and left Kadima in August 2012 in order to become Minister of Home Front Defense, a position he vacated in March 2013.
The culture of Palestinians is influenced by the many diverse cultures and religions which have existed in the historical region of Palestine and the state of Palestine. The cultural and linguistic heritage of Palestinian Arabs along with Lebanese, Syrians, and Jordanians is integral part of Levantine Arab culture. Palestinians also have their own dialect of Arabic called the Palestinian dialect.
Ghada Karmi is a Palestinian-born academic, physician and author. She has written on Palestinian issues in newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Nation and Journal of Palestine Studies.
Tawfiq Ziad, also romanized Tawfik Zayyad or Tawfeeq Ziad, was a Palestinian-Arab politician, poet, and activist who served in Israel's Knesset. He is best known for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Walid Khalidi is a Palestinian historian who has written extensively on the Palestinian exodus. He is a co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, established in Beirut in December 1963 as an independent research and publishing center focusing on the Palestine problem and the Arab–Israeli conflict, and was its general secretary until 2016.
Munib Rashid al-Masri, also known as the "Duke of Nablus", and "the Godfather"(b. 1934), is a Palestinian industrialist, and patriarch of the al-Masri family.
Palestinian handicrafts are handicrafts produced by Palestinian people or individuals. A wide variety of handicrafts, many of which have been produced by Palestine's inhabitants in Palestine for hundreds of years, continue to be produced today. Palestinian handicrafts include embroidery work, pottery-making, soap-making, glass-making, weaving, and olive-wood and Mother of Pearl carvings, among others. Some Palestinian cities in the West Bank, particularly Bethlehem, Hebron and Nablus have gained renown for specializing in the production of a particular handicraft, with the sale and export of such items forming a key part of each cities' economy.
Tarab Abdul Hadi, also transliterated Tarab 'Abd al-Hadi, (1910–1976) was a Palestinian activist and feminist. In the late 1920s, she co-founded the Palestine Arab Women's Congress (PAWC), the first women's organization in British Mandate Palestine, and was an active organizer in its sister group, the Arab Women's Association (AWA).
Al-Quds Arab Capital of Culture was the name given to Arab Capital of Culture programme in 2009. The programme, organised by UNESCO and the Arab League, is designed to promote Arab culture and encourage cooperation in the Arab world. The 2009 event was the 14th programme since its establishment in 1996.
In the 1948 Palestine war, more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's predominantly Arab population – were expelled or fled from their homes, at first by Zionist paramilitaries, and after the establishment of Israel, by its military. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba. Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme codenamed Operation Cast Thy Bread and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning. Other sites were subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names.
Abbas Shiblak is a Palestinian academic, historian, Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), University of Oxford, free-lance writer, former diplomat and an advocate of human rights.
The Palestinian diaspora, part of the wider Arab diaspora, are Palestinian people living outside the region of Palestine.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionist forces conquered territory and established the State of Israel, and over 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled. It was the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict.
The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) is a UK-based advocacy group established in 1996 in London. It is an "independent consultancy focusing on the historical, political and legal aspects of the Palestinian Refugees". In July 2015, PRC was given special consultative status at the United Nations as non-governmental organisation (NGO). The centre specialises in research and analysis of issues concerning the Palestinians who were displaced, and subsequently prevented from returning, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It advocates "their internationally recognised legal right to return."
Farah Nabulsi is a British-Palestinian filmmaker and human rights activist. For her short film The Present, she was nominated for an Academy Award and won the BAFTA Award for Best Short Film.
The Nakba is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is used to describe the events of the 1948 Palestine war in Mandatory Palestine as well as the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the long-running rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
Refqa Abu-Remaileh is a university teacher and author with a focus on Modern Arabic literature and film studies. Since 2020, she is associate professor in the department for Semitic and Arabic Studies at the Free University of Berlin, Germany. She is mainly known for her publications on the literature and films created by Palestinian people who often live as refugees and exiles, both in the Middle East and the world-wide Palestinian diaspora.
"Ongoing Nakba" is a historiographical framework and term that interprets the Palestinian "Nakba" or "catastrophe" as a still emerging and unfolding phenomenon. The phrase emerged in the late 1990s and its first public usage is widely credited to Hanan Ashrawi, who referred to it in a speech at the 2001 World Conference against Racism. The term was later adopted by scholars such as Joseph Massad and Elias Khoury. As an intellectual framework, the "ongoing Nakba" narrative reflects the conceptualisation of the Palestinian experience not as a series of isolated events, but as "a continuous experience of violence and dispossession", or as other have termed it, the "recurring loss" of the Palestinian people.
Falastin Al Thawra was an official weekly periodical of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which was published between 1972 and 1994 first in Beirut, Lebanon, and then in Nicosia, Cyprus. It was the major media outlet of the PLO.
