Dowty, Alan (2008). Israel/Palestine.
Palestinians are the descendants
of all the indigenous peoples who lived in Palestine over the centuries; since they seventh century, they have been predominantly Muslim in religion and almost completely Arab in language and culture.
‘Genetic Disease in Palestine and Palestinians,’ in Dhavendra Kuma (ed.) Genomics and Health in the Developing World, OUP 2012 pp.700-711, p.700.
Palestinians are an indigenous people who either live in, or originate from, historical Palestine... Although the Muslims guaranteed security and allowed religious freedom to all inhabitants of the region,
the majority converted to Islam and adopted Arab culture.' Bassam Abu-Libdeh, Peter D. Turnpenny, and Ahmed Teebi, ‘Genetic Disease in Palestine and Palestinians,’ in Dhavendra Kuma (ed.)
Genomics and Health in the Developing World, OUP 2012 pp.700-711, p.700.
David Ben-Gurion and
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi claimed that the population at the time of the Arab conquest was mainly Christian, of Jewish origins, which underwent conversion to avoid a tax burden, basing their argument on 'the fact that at the time of the Arab conquest, the population of Palestine was mainly Christian, and that during the Crusaders’ conquest some four hundred years later, it was mainly Muslim.
As neither the Byzantines nor the Muslims carried out any large-scale population resettlement projects, the Christians were the offspring of the Jewish and Samaritan farmers who converted to Christianity in the Byzantine period; while the Muslim fellaheen in Palestine in modern times are descendants of those Christians who were the descendants of Jews, and had turned to Islam before the Crusaders’ conquest.’
Moshe Gil,
A History of Palestine,634-1099 Cambridge University Press, (1983) 1997 pp.222-3
'The process of Arabization and Islamization was gaining momentum there. It was one of the mainstays of Umayyad power and was important in their struggle against both Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula....
Conversions arising from convenience as well as conviction then increased. These conversions to Islam, together with a steady tribal inflow from the desert, changed the religious character of Palestine’s inhabitants. The predominantly Christian population gradually became predominantly Muslim and Arabic-speaking. At the same time, during the early years of Muslim control of the city, a small permanent Jewish population returned to
Jerusalem after a 500-year absence.'
Encyclopedia Britannica,
Palestine,
'From the Arab Conquest to 1900,'.
'While population transfers were effected in the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian periods,
most of the indigenous population remained in place. Moreover, after Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 the population by and large remained
in situ, and did so again after Bar Kochba's revolt in AD 135.
When the vast majority of the population became Christian during the Byzantine period, no vast number were driven out, and similarly in the seventh century, when the vast majority became Muslim, few were driven from the land. Palestine has been multi-cultural and multi ethnic from the beginning, as one can read between the lines even in the biblical narrative. Many Palestinian Jews became Christians, and in turn Muslims. Ironically, many of the forebears of Palestinian Arab refugees may well have been Jewish.'
Michael Prior,
Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry, Psychology Press 1999 p.201
'the word 'Arab' needs to be used with care. It is applicable to the Bedouin and to a section of the urban and effendi classes; it is inappropriate as a description of the rural mass of the population, the fellaheen. The whole population spoke Arabic, usually corrupted by dialects bearing traces of words of other origin, but it was only the Bedouin who habitually thought of themselves as Arabs. Western travelers from the sixteenth century onwards make the same distinction, and the word 'Arab' almost always refers to them exclusively. . .Gradually it was realized that there remained a substantial stratum of the pre-Israelite peasantry, and that the oldest element among the peasants were not 'Arabs' in the sense of having entered the country with or after the conquerors of the seventh century, had been there already when the Arabs came.'
James Parkes,
Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine,(1949) rev.ed.Penguin, 1970 pp.209-210.
