Palestinians are an Arab ethnonational group that descends from peoples who have inhabited the region of Palestine over the millennia, and who are today culturally and linguistically Arab. They are generally defined as Arabs who live in a certain geographical region in the Middle East, which spans from the Mediterranean Sea in the east to the Jordan River in the west. The term "Palestinian" was used to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by Palestinian Arabs from the late 19th century and in the pre-World War I period. The Palestinian National Charter defines "Palestinians" as "those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or stayed there". Palestinian Arabic is a subgroup of the broader Levantine Arabic dialect.

Today, there are roughly 13 million Palestinians in the world, according to a 2018 estimate from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. The majority of Palestinians are Sunni Muslims, although a significant minority is Christian. Palestinians live primarily in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Israel, Jordan, and parts of southern Lebanon and Syria. Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, the majority of whom are descended from Palestinians who remained in the country after the 1948 war, constitute about one-fifth of the Israeli population.