Palestinian Americans

Palestinian Americans, a division of Arab Americans who themselves or whose families originate from historic Palestine, constitute the largest Palestinian community outside the Arab world. While sharing many characteristics with other minority and immigrant groups as well as with other Arab communities in the [Page 1012]United States, the Palestinian American experience remains unique owing to political, historical, cultural, and social reasons. It is distinct in terms of the causes, dates, places, and conditions of Palestinians' immigration to the United States.

Although (as with other immigrants) both push and pull factors have affected Palestinian immigration, the political conditions in Palestine and the subsequent wars in the Middle East region since World War I have played a significant role. Thus, experts tend to divide Palestinian immigration to the United States into three waves, usually discerned as a matter of socioeconomic status of the immigrants and place of immigration but separated mainly by the major political events that befell the Middle East and Palestine: from the middle of the 19th century up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, from 1948 until the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, and from 1967 onward. Other political events, such as the 1975–1990 Lebanese civil war, the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the 1987–1993 Palestinian Uprising, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 2000 Palestinian Uprising, all contributed to Palestinian immigration and influenced the composition and the variety of immigrants. The Palestinian Territory as defined in 2007 was estimated to have a population of 4 million people, although most Palestinian people live outside this area in Israel and neighboring Arab states. This entry examines their history of immigration, the current U.S. community, and their adaptation to life in the new land.