The choice of terms for Palestinian citizens of Israel is a highly politicized issue, and there is a broad range of labels that members of this community use to self-identity. Generally speaking, supporters of Israel tend to use Israeli Arab or Arab Israeli to refer to this population without mentioning Palestine, while critics of Israel (or supporters of Palestinians) tend to use Palestinian or Palestinian Arab without referencing Israel. According to The New York Times, most preferred to identify themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel rather than as Israeli Arabs, as of 2012. The New York Times uses both 'Palestinian Israelis' and 'Israeli Arabs' to refer to the same population. The relationship of Arab citizens to the State of Israel is often fraught with tension and can be regarded in the context of relations between minority populations and state authorities elsewhere in the world. Arab citizens consider themselves to be an indigenous people. The tension between their Palestinian Arab national identity and their identity as citizens of Israel was famously described by an Arab public figure as: "My state is at war with my nation".
List of terms Arab/Palestinian citizens of Israel may refer to themselves by a wide range of terms. Each of these names, while referring to the same group of people, connotes a different balance in what is often a multilayered identity assigning varying levels of priority or emphasis to the various dimensions which may be historic-geographic ("Palestine (region)"), "national" or ethnoreligious (Palestinian, Arab, Israeli, Druze, Circassian), linguistic (Arabic-speaking), civic (feeling "Israeli" or not), etc.:
Palestinian citizens of Israel is a term that most Arab citizens of Israel prefer to refer to themselves, and which some media (BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News) and other organizations use to refer to Israeli Arabs, either consistently or alternating the use of other terms for Israeli Arabs. Palestinian Arabs Palestinian Arabs in Israel Palestinian Israelis Palestinians in Israel Israeli Arabs Israeli Palestinian Arabs Israeli Palestinians Arab citizens of Israel Arab Israelis 48ers, '48 Arabs Two appellations, among others listed above, are not applied to the East Jerusalem Arab population or the Druze in the Golan Heights, as these territories were occupied by Israel in 1967:
the Arabs inside the Green Line the Arabs within (Arabic: عرب الداخل, romanized: 'Arab al-Dākhil).
Self-identification According to The New York Times, as of 2012, most Israeli Arabs preferred to identify themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel rather than as Israeli Arabs. The Council on Foreign Relations also states that most members of the Israeli Arab community prefer this term. The Washington Post asserted in 2021 that "surveys showed" that Israeli Arabs preferred the term "Palestinian citizen of Israel" and that "for people who often feel caught between two worlds, however, the contours of what it means to be a Palestinian citizen of Israel remain a work in progress." However, these findings conflict with a 2017 Tel Aviv University poll which showed most Israelis self-identify as either Arab-Israeli or simply Israeli. Similar terms that Israeli Arabs, media and other organizations may use are Palestinian Arabs in Israel and Israeli Palestinian Arabs. Amnesty reports that "Arab citizens of Israel" is an inclusive term used by Israel that describes a number of different and primarily Arabic-speaking groups, including Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Druze and Circassians. At the end of 2019, considering the number of those defined as Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs together, the population of Palestinian citizens of Israel amounted to around 1.8 million. There are at least two terms which specifically exclude the East Jerusalem Arab population and the Druze and other Arabs in the Golan Heights: the Arabs inside the Green Line, and the Arabs within (Arabic: عرب الداخل, romanized: 'Arab al-Dākhil). These terms clarify that
Although Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, the vast majority of its Arab population does not have Israeli citizenship Although Israel annexed the Golan Heights, that area was originally part of Syria, not Mandatory Palestine.
As Palestinian While known officially by the Israeli government only as "Israeli Arabs" or "Arab Israelis", the development of Palestinian nationalism and identity in the 20th and 21st centuries has been met by a marked evolution in self-identification, reflecting a rising identification with Palestinian identity alongside Arab and Israeli signifiers. Many Palestinian citizens of Israel have family ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Between 1948 and 1967, very few Arab citizens of Israel identified openly as "Palestinian", and an "Israeli-Arab" identity, the preferred phrase of the Israeli establishment and public, was predominant. Public expressions of Palestinian identity, such as displays of the Palestinian flag or the singing and reciting of nationalist songs or poetry were illegal. With the end of military administrative rule in 1966 and following the 1967 war, national consciousness and its expression among Israel's Arab citizens spread. A majority then self-identified as Palestinian, preferring this descriptor to Israeli Arab in numerous surveys over the years. In a 2017 telephone poll, 40% of Arab citizens of Israel identified as "Arab in Israel / Arab citizen of Israel", 15% identified as "Palestinian", 8.9% as "Palestinian in Israel / Palestinian citizen of Israel", and 8.7% as "Arab"; the focus groups associated with the poll provided a different outcome, in which "there was consensus that Palestinian identity occupies a central place in their consciousness". A November 2023 poll asked respondents from this demographic what the most important "component in their personal identity" was to them; 33 percent answered "Israeli citizenship", 32 percent "Arab identity", 23 percent "religious affiliation", and 8 percent "Palestinian identity".
Druze and Circassians as Palestinian In the Amnesty International 2022 report "Israel's Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity", the organization excludes the Israeli Arab Druze and Circassians from the term Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel:
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