Editing Palestinian identity (section)

===Legally===
During the [[Mandate for Palestine|British Mandate over Palestine]], a "Palestinian" could mean any person who was born in or hailed from the [[Palestine (region)|region of Palestine]] or was a citizen of the [[Mandatory Palestine]]. The term covered all the inhabitants of the region, including people from Muslim, Christian and Jewish backgrounds, and all ethnicities, including [[Arabs]], the [[Dom people]], [[Samaritans]], [[Druze]], [[Bedouin]]s and the traditional [[Palestinian Jews|Jewish]] communities of Palestine, or [[Old Yishuv]], whose ancestors were already living there prior to the onset of [[Zionism|Zionist immigration]].

In the aftermath of the [[1948 Palestine war]] and the establishment of the [[Israel|State of Israel]], a "Palestinian" tends to refer to individuals from non-Jewish communities born in the [[West Bank]] and [[Gaza Strip|Gaza]], and citizens of the [[State of Palestine]], including the populations of [[Palestinian refugees]] living in the wide Middle East and other [[Palestinian diaspora]] populations worldwide.<ref>[http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/glossP.html Definition of Palestinian] ([[Jewish Virtual Library]])

"Although anyone with roots in the land that is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is technically a Palestinian, the term is now more commonly used to refer to non-Jew Arabs with such roots ... Most of the world's Palestinian population is concentrated in Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan, although many Palestinians live in Lebanon, Syria and other Arab countries."</ref>

Prior to the establishment of the [[State of Palestine]] then an interim government during the Oslo Accords in 1993: the remaining parts of Arab Palestine were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. The people of the West Bank became citizens of the [[Jordan|Kingdom of Jordan]] until its disengagement in 1988, as part of the annexation of the occupied parts which were later renamed as "[[West Bank|West Bank of the Jordan River]]", while the inhabitants of the Egyptian-occupied [[Gaza Strip]] were considered to be citizens of the internationally unrecognized client [[All-Palestine Government]]. The residents of the Gaza Strip became [[Statelessness|stateless]] after the dissolution of the All-Palestine government.    

In Israel, former [[Palestinian Jews]] that acquired [[Israeli citizenship]] became [[Israeli Jews]], while non-Jewish Palestinians that acquired Israeli citizenship came to be referred to as [[Israeli Arabs]].

====Palestinian refugees====

[[United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East|UNRWA]] defines the Palestinian refugees as those whose normal place of residence between June 1946 and May 1948 was in the land that is now Israel, but they went outside during the 1948 war. UNRWA, however, provides aid to Palestinian refugees defined as such, as well as the descendants of those Palestinians. UNRWA does define "Palestinian refugees" to include descendants of "refugees".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees|title=Palestine refugees|website=UNRWA}}</ref>

'''<big>Politically</big>'''  

The PLO's Palestinian National Covenant of 1964 defines a Palestinian as "the Arab citizens who were living permanently in Palestine until 1947, whether they were expelled from there or remained. Whoever is born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, within Palestine or outside it, is a Palestinian".