Indigeneity in the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

Indigeneity is not presented in the sources as a single, universally agreed test. Encyclopaedia Britannica lists characteristics commonly associated with Indigenous peoples: being a distinct and generally nondominant cultural group, descent from a population present before colonization, self-identification as Indigenous, and a special relationship with traditional lands. These are common characteristics, not a universal rule that decides every claim.[1] A peer-reviewed chapter on Negev Bedouin claims likewise says that the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples contains no formal workable definition, although the Declaration affirms rights including self-determination and rights to lands, territories, and resources.[2][7]

The arguments in this debate use different combinations of ancestry, continuity, peoplehood, attachment to land, and historical dispossession. In an interview, Adam Louis-Klein describes one understanding of indigeneity as “a certain conception of the way that one's genealogical ancestry is connected to a specific territory where one emerged as a people, and through which one's own peoplehood is defined.” He distinguishes this from a framework that gives particular weight to histories of dispossession, often associated with European colonialism.[8] These are his interpretations of the concept rather than an agreed definition.

Tal Becker describes peoplehood as involving both observable features—such as shared language, history, and culture—and a collective's subjective understanding of itself as a people. He argues that Jews and Palestinians both meet the subjective criterion and have rights to self-determination. As Becker puts it, “The trick is to accommodate both, rather than denying one or the other.”[5] This approach treats peoplehood and political coexistence as related questions, but does not establish a universal legal definition of indigeneity.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September 2007 by a vote of 143 in favor, four against, and 11 abstentions. Its general provisions include self-determination and rights concerning lands, territories, and resources; the resolution record does not address how the Declaration applies to Israeli or Palestinian claims.[7] A peer-reviewed chapter on the Negev Bedouin further characterizes the Declaration as nonbinding and argues that its lack of a formal workable definition complicates its application in Israel.[2]

Jewish claims of indigeneity commonly emphasize historical connection to the Land of Israel, collective identity, and continuing religious and cultural ties. The Anti-Defamation League describes the land as integral to Jewish religion and culture, with ties reflected in the Bible, rituals, and texts. It also states that Palestinians, like Jews, are native and indigenous to the land, making its position one of shared rather than exclusive connection.[3]

Israel's Declaration of Independence, issued on 14 May 1948, calls Eretz-Israel “the birthplace of the Jewish people” and says Jewish spiritual, religious, and political identity took shape there. The declaration presents Jewish attachment as continuing through dispersion, describes successive generations' hope of return, and grounds statehood in what it calls the Jewish people's “natural and historic right.” These are claims made in the founding document and evidence of the state's stated national self-understanding, rather than an independent adjudication of indigeneity.[9]

The Declaration also describes modern Jewish settlement and national restoration, referring to the 1897 Zionist Congress, the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the League of Nations Mandate, and the United Nations General Assembly's 1947 decision. It promises development of the land for the benefit of all inhabitants and social and political equality without distinction of religion, race, or sex. It calls on Arab residents of the new state to participate in its construction on the basis of full and equal citizenship and appropriate representation.[9][10]

The Palestine Mandate's preamble records recognition of “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and grounds for reconstituting their national home there. Its provisions tasked the Mandatory with securing that national home and developing self-governing institutions while safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all inhabitants; another article called for facilitating Jewish immigration and settlement while protecting the rights and position of other population groups. The text documents a historical connection and national-home policy, not a determination of contemporary indigeneity.[11]

The 2018 Basic Law: Israel—The Nation State of the Jewish People declares the Land of Israel to be the Jewish people's historical homeland and says national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people. The U.S. Department of State also notes that the law calls for promoting Jewish settlement, and records fears among Arab organizations and leaders that this could increase discrimination in housing and land-related legal decisions.[12] The law thus expresses an official Israeli national claim while its political and legal implications remain disputed.

The American Jewish Committee describes Jewish historical connections through ancient kingdoms, Jerusalem and its Temples, religious practice, and the diaspora. It says some Jewish population remained in the land during periods of exile while other communities settled across the world, and that small groups of Zionist pioneers returned in the late nineteenth century and joined Jews who had remained.[13] Encyclopaedia Britannica describes ancient Israelite settlement in Canaan around the 12th century BCE and characterizes modern Israel, for Jews, as the restoration of their homeland after the diaspora that followed the end of the Herodian kingdom in the first century CE.[14]

The ancient history and its evidence are not described uniformly. Britannica's account of ancient Palestine places Israelite movement into the region in the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, while saying archaeological evidence suggests settlement was more complex and disconnected than biblical accounts indicate; it also notes that later regional histories rely heavily on biblical narrative, whose validity has often been disputed.[15] The contrast illustrates why historical connection, interpretation of evidence, and the political consequences assigned to that connection should be distinguished.

Advocacy sources also assemble evidence of continuity across periods. The Jewish Virtual Library article by Mitchell Bard argues that Jewish ties extend back more than 3,700 years and cites continued Jewish life after the destruction of the Second Temple, communities in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century, Jewish communities in other towns in the 11th century, and more than 10,000 Jews in what is now Israel by the early nineteenth century.[16] These details are presented as part of an advocacy argument for Jewish claims and should be understood in that context.

Alan Baker, writing for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, argues that Jews are Indigenous because of historical continuity with an ancestral homeland, collective identity, and persistent cultural and religious ties. He invokes a working description centered on continuity with pre-invasion or pre-colonial societies, distinct identity, ancestral territories, and self-identification, while acknowledging that there is no definitive universal definition. He also cites the Balfour Declaration, the San Remo Resolution, and the League of Nations Mandate as recognition of historical connection and support for a Jewish national home, and interprets Article 33 of the 2007 UN Declaration as relevant to Indigenous peoples' ability to determine their own identity or membership. These are Baker's arguments, not a neutral ruling on competing claims.[17]

A 2024 review of S. Ilan Troen's Israel/Palestine in World Religions discusses arguments over Israel's legitimacy, including historical claims, labor and land ownership, post–World War I authority, and settler-colonial interpretations. The reviewer presents Troen's challenge to applying a settler-colonial framework to Zionism, and reports that Palestinian jurist Henry Cattan and the PLO Charter treated conquest as secondary to the rights of legitimate landowners. The review discusses arguments and the reviewer's assessment rather than resolving them.[18]

Arguments for Palestinian indigeneity draw on Arab presence in the land, residence across generations, attachment to homeland, and the development of Palestinian collective identity. My Jewish Learning describes Muslim and Christian Arabs who identify as Palestinian as grounding their nationality in residence in the land they call Palestine and Jews call Israel, and characterizes Palestinian peoplehood through indigenous settlement and centuries of continued residence.[19] The Congressional Research Service describes Palestinians as an Arab people whose origins are in present-day Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[20]

The scale and timing of Arab presence and migration are themselves disputed in the sources. An Anti-Defamation League backgrounder says Palestine had an Arab presence when Jewish immigration increased in the late nineteenth century, but notes that historians dispute both how many Arabs lived there at the time and when many had arrived. It also reports that some Arabs migrated to Palestine in response to economic growth and employment opportunities associated with Jewish immigration; this is the backgrounder's account, not a resolution of the broader historical debate.[21]

Accounts of Palestinian national identity distinguish modern national formation from the older history of populations in the land. Britannica says the term Palestinian refers to Arabs who historically inhabited Palestine and that Palestinian identity gained prominence in the twentieth century, particularly after the War of Independence, which Palestinians call the Nakba. It describes Arabs of Palestine as having developed an identity over roughly 200 years, while noting that the idea of Palestinians as a distinct people is comparatively recent; after 1948, and especially after 1967, the term expressed a shared past and a shared future in a Palestinian state.[22]

My Jewish Learning likewise says the timing and development of distinct Palestinian national identity are disputed. It notes that some regard the 1834 revolt against Egyptian conscription and a head tax as formative for Palestinian national consciousness. It also says that Zionism's rise and significant Jewish migration to Palestine in the early twentieth century profoundly shaped Palestinian identity, without creating it, and that Palestinians understand themselves as possessing a distinct national identity and a right to a national homeland.[23]

Other sources describe national identity as a process shaped by political circumstances and cultural life. Yossi Amitai argues that Palestinian national formation continued through the creation of territorial states after World War I and the collapse of Ottoman rule, and that this modern development does not make Palestinians an “invented people.” He describes Palestinian collective memory as encompassing scholarship, biography, literature, poetry, folklore, and visual art, rather than only opposition to Zionism.[24] A separate Globes essay argues that Palestinian nationalism took shape in the modern period, particularly through conflict with Zionism, while stressing that Arabs lived in the land long before the emergence of modern Palestinian Arab nationalism.[25]

Karma Nabulsi, in an essay on Palestinian identity, places its basis in a people's shared political will rather than a fixed set of ethnic, religious, or linguistic traits. She describes Palestinians as a “landed people with a close bond to their homeland,” connecting that bond to displacement, refugee experience, and ties between Palestinians inside and outside the homeland.[26] This account foregrounds political identity and lived attachment, rather than treating a single ancestry claim as the sole basis of belonging.

The 1968 Palestinian National Charter defined Palestinians as Arab nationals who normally resided in Palestine before 1947, including those displaced, and described identity as transmitted from parents to children. Article 20 rejected Jewish historical or religious ties to Palestine and denied that Jews constituted a nation.[27] The U.S. Department of State archive records subsequent changes: in 1993 Yasser Arafat said articles inconsistent with the PLO's new commitments were no longer valid; in 1996 the Palestinian National Council voted to cancel articles contrary to its exchanged letters with Israel, reaffirming that decision in 1998. The Charter is consequently evidence of a historical political position, not by itself a statement of current Palestinian policy.[27]

The name Palestine and the designation Palestinian have their own histories, which do not by themselves decide indigeneity. A ynet explainer says the Arabic term Filastin was used in the nineteenth century for a region on both sides of the Jordan and acquired a political-national meaning toward the century's end. Under the British Mandate, Jews and Arabs alike were called Palestinians; Arab residents gradually adopted the designation as an expression of distinct national identity, while Jews did not.[28] The source treats the history of names as distinct from proof or disproof of a people's historical connection to the land.

An answer in the ynet encyclopedia says that identifying when Palestinians appeared as inhabitants is complicated by disagreement about what “Palestinian” means. It describes Arab populations among the inhabitants after the Muslim conquests of the seventh century and notes that some researchers have proposed links between present-day Palestinians and earlier inhabitants, while saying a specific proposed connection to Canaanite tribes has little supporting evidence. The answer raises but does not resolve questions about the emergence of a distinct people and the ancestry of some Palestinians.[29]

Claims about ancestral descent are also advanced in sharply differing scholarship. A BESA Center article argues against describing Palestinians as Indigenous and Jews as settler-colonialists; it attributes modern Palestinian ancestry to local converts from earlier populations as well as migrations from elsewhere in the region, and argues that a distinct Palestinian national identity developed around and after World War I. These are the author's contested interpretations, not an uncontested account.[4] A 2025 journal article, by contrast, characterizes Palestinian nationalist narratives invoking Canaanite ancestry, Solomon's Temple, and Jesus as efforts to assert continuity and autochthony while contesting Jewish historical claims. Its authors also say modern Jews and Palestinians share ancestry and have Indigenous roots in the region, while cautioning that genetic studies are politically charged; these are the authors' analysis, not a settled finding.[30]

The 1948 displacement is central to Palestinian claims and remains a point of disagreement over its scale and causes. My Jewish Learning reports that more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from homes in what is now Israel during Israel's War of Independence. It describes differing explanations: a traditional Zionist account cited in the article says Arab leaders encouraged flight, while more recent scholarship has shown that Jewish forces sometimes forcibly evicted Arabs.[19] The distinction between displacement, its causes, and the longer history of Palestinian presence matters to arguments about indigeneity, but does not by itself resolve them.

The Congressional Research Service's 15 April 2025 brief reports approximately 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, 2.1 million in Gaza, and 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel. It also reports about 5.9 million registered Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, and identifies refugee claims to land in present-day Israel as a major conflict issue.[20] These are population and refugee figures reported in that brief, not a definition of indigeneity.

Whether Zionism should be understood as a movement of national return, a settler-colonial project, or through another framework is a major point of dispute. An educational history handout describes Zionism as emerging in late-nineteenth-century Europe amid rising antisemitism, violence against Jews, and nationalism, and as seeking the return of the Jewish people to a sovereign state in the Land of Israel. It says that by the eve of World War II Arab national consciousness had coalesced into Palestinian nationalism with aspirations to independence, and describes the two aspirations as clashing.[31]

The Jewish Virtual Library presents traditional Israeli and Palestinian narratives side by side rather than adjudicating between them. In the Israeli narrative it describes Jewish legitimacy through descent from ancient Israelites, enduring ties, and presence despite expulsions, and characterizes Zionism as return rather than colonization. In the Palestinian narrative it describes descent from earlier inhabitants, including Canaanites and Jebusites, continuous residence and an identity by the 1920s or earlier, and a characterization of Zionism as colonialism and the 1947–49 displacement as planned expulsion.[32] The paired presentation highlights disputes about ancestry, continuity, colonialism, and displacement.

Ilan Pappe, in “New-Old Thinking on Palestine,” frames the conflict as one between a settler-colonial movement and a native Palestinian population rather than as a dispute between two national movements. He argues that Palestinians were the native population and that Zionist settlers also regarded themselves as Indigenous while viewing Palestinians as outsiders. These are Pappe's interpretations in an essay published in a 2023 collection, not universally accepted findings.[26] The 2023 book Decolonizing the Study of Palestine presents a Palestinian-centered decolonial framework. Its description says contributors build on Elia Zureik's argument for studying Israel through concepts used for other colonial societies, treating colonialism both as a political-economic system and as a mode of life and consciousness affecting settlers and the Indigenous population. Its 13 chapters address settler colonialism, dispossession, the separation wall, surveillance, decolonization methodologies, and popular resistance; the publisher description notes that contributors are mostly Palestinian scholars or scholars of Palestinian heritage.[33]

Other writers challenge the settler-colonial framework or its application to Zionism. A 2020 Jerusalem Post report records Rabbi Andy Kahn's view that an argument for Jewish indigeneity could also be made for Palestinians, but that indigeneity may not be a useful framework and could obscure Palestinian concerns. The same report describes Ilan Troen's argument for Jewish indigeneity and his dispute with Palestinian claims tied to descent from the Jebusites; it also reports Troen's call for empathy toward the reasons Palestinians make claims of connection.[34] The disagreement concerns not only historical evidence but also whether the category clarifies or distorts political questions.

The Institute for National Security Studies frames the conflict as a struggle between two ethnic-nationalist movements over one piece of land. It identifies boundaries, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, and security arrangements as issues that have impeded agreement, and says settlement expansion and outposts in the West Bank add complexity to the entanglement of Jewish and Palestinian communities.[35] This is a framing of the conflict's national and political dimensions, not a finding about which group meets a definition of indigeneity.

Debates about indigeneity in Israel also include the specific claims of Bedouin Arabs in the Negev, which should not be collapsed into claims about Palestinians generally. A peer-reviewed article by Oren Yiftachel, Batya Roded, and Alexandre Kedar treats Bedouin indigeneity in the Negev/Naqab as a conceptual, legal, and political controversy. The authors describe indigeneity as a relational concept associated with colonial and postcolonial settings and global human-rights struggles, and conclude that Naqab Bedouin Arabs exhibit typical Indigenous characteristics under accepted international definitions and norms.[36]

The authors say they assess historical and geographic evidence and respond to scholars they call “the deniers,” who reject Bedouin and broader Palestinian Indigenous claims. They acknowledge relevant questions and dilemmas raised by those scholars, but argue these do not undermine Naqab Bedouin indigeneity. They contend that recognition would entail protecting Bedouin Arabs against further removals, dispossession, and marginalization and addressing past harms where possible.[36]

A different peer-reviewed chapter by Havazelet Yahel, Ruth Kark, and Seth Frantzman argues that applying indigeneity to Israel is inappropriate and that Negev Bedouin claims are incompatible with prevailing notions of indigeneity. The authors examine international concepts and regional and local history, including the Bedouin's Arabian Peninsula origins and the arrival date of their forebears. They also argue that the UN Declaration is nonbinding and lacks a formal workable definition.[2]

That chapter describes Israeli indigeneity discourse as emerging during the two decades before its 2017 publication, focused mainly on Negev Bedouin demands for private land ownership through recognition as the Negev's Indigenous population. It identifies the development of international Indigenous-rights concepts and the region's particular histories and legal traditions as relevant to evaluating the claims.[2] A separate peer-reviewed article by Frantzman, Yahel, and Kark traces activism for recognition of Negev Bedouin communal Indigenous rights, including activists' submission of a petition to the United Nations in 2005. It places the advocacy amid growing international recognition of Indigenous rights and examines how individuals and organizations helped shape an Indigenous Bedouin identity discourse.[37]

Historical connection, indigeneity, national self-determination, sovereignty, and ownership are related but distinct questions in the sources. A ynet encyclopedia answer says that asking whether the land historically belonged to Jews or Palestinians is not a simple historical question, but a moral claim with historical and political dimensions. It points to the United Nations partition resolution of 29 November 1947 as envisioning division between two peoples, and to the 1993 Oslo Accords as intended to establish direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians over a permanent settlement.[29]

The American Jewish Committee says it regards the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as Indigenous to both Jews and Arabs, and argues that it should not be the exclusive domain of one people. It links this position to the 1947 partition resolution and advocates for Israel alongside a Palestinian political entity.[6] Becker similarly argues that both peoples have claims to self-determination and that the challenge is to accommodate both; his proposed territorial arrangement is a Palestinian state alongside Israel.[5] These are institutional and analytical positions on political arrangements, not determinations that all parties agree on the meaning or legal effect of indigeneity.

The Declaration of Independence combines the founding claim of Jewish national restoration with stated commitments to equality and participation for Arab citizens.[9][10] The Nation-State Basic Law, in turn, states that national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people, while the State Department's account records concerns among Arab organizations and leaders about possible consequences for equal treatment in housing and land decisions.[12] The documents therefore bear on political debates about national status and rights, but the sources do not treat them as conclusive answers to the broader question of Indigenous status.

The distinction between a historical connection and an exclusive political entitlement also appears in the ADL's shared-indigeneity formulation and AJC's position that the land cannot be the exclusive domain of one people.[3][6] Conversely, some sources make arguments for priority or exclusivity through their interpretations of ancestry, displacement, or colonialism. Across these positions, the basic political problem is the coexistence of competing national claims in the same territory, alongside disputes over borders, Jerusalem, refugees, security, settlements, and the legal and moral consequences of historical narratives.[5][35]

The sources do not reach a shared determination of whether indigeneity applies to Jews, Palestinians, both, or neither under a particular legal or scholarly test.[3][1] They differ over the definition itself, the relevance of ancestry and continuity, the role of dispossession, the interpretation of archaeological and historical evidence, and whether settler-colonial analysis is appropriate to Zionism.[4][26] Arguments about Palestinian identity's modern political development must also be kept distinct from questions about earlier residence and attachment to the land.[22][23]

Several sources advance explicit advocacy or interpretive positions. The ADL and AJC support shared claims of Jewish and Arab indigeneity.[3][6] BESA Center authors argue against Palestinian Indigenous claims, while Palestinian-centered decolonial scholarship emphasizes settler colonialism and dispossession.[4][33] Other scholars argue for Jewish indigeneity or reject applying the category to Negev Bedouin.[17][2] These positions should be read as arguments made by the cited organizations and authors, not as a single scholarly or legal consensus.

The 1948 displacement and its causes remain contested, as do historical Arab population figures and migration patterns.[19][21] Sources also disagree over when Palestinian national identity became distinct.[23] The historical Palestinian National Charter's rejection of Jewish historical and religious ties is not a sufficient description of current Palestinian policy, given the later actions recorded in the State Department archive.[27] Keeping these distinctions visible helps avoid treating a contested historical interpretation as a definitive ruling on present-day rights.