Palestinian Americans
Palestinian Americans are Americans who are of full or partial Palestinian descent.
There are around 160,000 Palestinian Americans according to the 2023 American Community Survey, making up around 0.05% of the U.S. population.
The Palestinian community is concentrated in the Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Houston, and Detroit metropolitan areas, with other populations in the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas. Some Palestinians have emigrated to smaller metropolitan or micropolitan/rural areas, such as Gallup, New Mexico, in the late 20th and 21st century.
History
Early immigration
The first Palestinians who immigrated to the United States arrived after 1908, when the Ottoman Empire passed a new conscription law mandating all Ottoman citizens into the military. These Palestinians were overwhelmingly Christian, and only a minority of them were Muslims. The 1922 census of Palestine lists 1,778 Palestinians living abroad in the United States, the second highest number behind the group listing of South and Central American republics. Palestinian immigration began to decline after 1924, with a new law limiting the number of immigrants, as well as the Great Depression, which heavily reduced immigration.Palestinian exodus
The population in the United States began to increase after World War II. During the 1950s, many Christians from Ramallah started immigrating to the states, then followed by Muslims from nearby towns. The establishment of the state of Israel led to many Palestinian Jews becoming Israeli citizens, and those that remained Palestinian were principally Arab, many of whom were then displaced in the Nakba due to the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. However, the greatest wave of Palestinian immigration began in 1967 after the Six-Day War, or as Middle Easterners and North Africans call it, the June War. This wave of immigrants reached its peak in the 1980s.Modern history
After the Immigration and Nationality act of 1965 was enacted, many Palestinians started immigrating again into the United States. Most Palestinians that immigrated to the United States in this period were more educated than the Palestinians that arrived before 1965, due to the preferential status for educated immigrants, and a "brain drain" of professionals and the more educated Palestinians.Beginning in the 1990s, many Palestinian communities were subject to intensive government surveillance under Operation Vulgar Betrayal, an FBI-led dragnet operation launched in collaboration with Israeli intelligence which sought to uncover networks of financial support for Hamas and Hezbollah among Palestinian Americans. These suspicions proved to be unsubstantiated, and no terrorism-related convictions were ever made. In 2015, filmmaker Assia Boundaoui produced a documentary on the experience of Palestinians living in Bridgeview, Illinois, revealing the unscrupulous tactics used by the FBI as well as the total lack of transparency surrounding the surveillance effort.
Demographics
U.S. cities
, is home to the largest Palestinian concentration among US metropolitan areas: There is an estimated population of 85,000 Palestinians in greater Chicagoland, and Palestinians form 60% of the Arab community in the region. Bridgeview, Illinois, and its surrounding suburbs in southwest Cook County also have a significant population of Palestinian Americans, alongside a large Jordanian American community. The southwest suburban Palestinian community features prominently in Ta-Nehisi Coates' 2024 book, The Message, with the author visiting a survivor of the Deir Yasin Massacre now living in Orland Park, Illinois, and dining in a Middle Eastern restaurant alongside local Palestinian activists and leaders.A large number of Palestinians settled in the areas surrounding Paterson, and Bay Ridge, which together make up the New York metropolitan area. Many other Palestinians settled in the Houston metropolitan area, Los Angeles metro area, Metro Detroit, Greater Cleveland, Metro New Orleans, Metro Jacksonville, and Metro Miami.
Paterson, New Jersey, has its southern half of the city nicknamed Little Ramallah, with an Arab American population estimated as high as 20,000 in 2015. It is one of the most concentrated areas of Palestinian Americans in the entire United States. It is also called Little Istanbul, since it also has a growing Turkish American community.
Bay Ridge's Arab community in Brooklyn, New York, is also a significant neighborhood home to an estimated population of 35,000, of which its largest Arab ethnic groups are Palestinians and Yemenis. However, it is also home to many other Arab ethnic groups, making Bay Ridge's Arab community a diverse population. File:Babil in Brooklyn.jpg|thumb|Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, New York City; also has a strongly diverse Arab community, in which its largest Arab groups are Palestinians and Yemenis. Its strong presence is noticeable from Arab shops to Babel Barber Shop, shown above during the January 2016 snow storm.
There are nearly 3,000 Palestinians in San Mateo County, accounting for a half percent of its population; while still small on a large scale, it is ten times higher than the national rate of Palestinians Americans. The San Francisco Bay Area, including San Francisco proper, has had a history of Palestinian settlement since the early 20th century.
According to the 2000 United States census, there were 72,112 people of Palestinian ancestry living in the United States, increasing to 171,969 by the 2022 American Community Survey. It is difficult to count the numbers of Palestinian Americans, since the United States does not recognize Palestine as a country, and only recognizes "Palestinian" as a nationality.
Top 10 Cities with the Largest Palestinian Community in the United States are, according to Zip Atlas:
| Rank | City | No. of Palestinians |
| 1 | New York, NY | 4,376 |
| 2 | Chicago, IL | 2,554 |
| 3 | Houston, TX | 2,134 |
| 4 | Philadelphia, PA | 1,971 |
| 5 | Orland Park, IL | 1,876 |
| 6 | Los Angeles, CA | 1,861 |
| 7 | Tinley Park, IL | 1,381 |
| 8 | Cleveland, OH | 1,285 |
| 9 | Columbus, OH | 1,211 |
| 10 | Alafaya, FL | 1,170 |
Also according to Zip Atlas, the top 10 Cities with the Highest Percentage of Palestinian Population in the United States are:
| Rank | City | Percent of Population as Palestinian |
| 1 | Junction, IL | 16.07% |
| 2 | Orland Hills, IL | 13.51% |
| 3 | Apple Mountain Lake, VA | 9.20% |
| 4 | Chicago Ridge, IL | 7.87% |
| 5 | Clarkson, NY | 7.62% |
| 6 | Willards, MD | 6.52% |
| 7 | Hickory Hills, IL | 6.10% |
| 8 | Spring Valley Village, TX | 5.57% |
| 9 | Bridgeview, IL | 5.28% |
| 10 | Roseland, IN | 4.99% |
Religion
Palestinian Muslim Americans practice the Sunni sect of Islam, in the Hanafi and Shafi'i madhab.A large part of Palestinian Christians belong to the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, with a significant presence of the Latin and Melkite church followers. Smaller minorities adhere to various sects of Protestantism.