Dammi Israeli: The Genetic Origins of the Palestinians

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is being approached incorrectly. This is because Palestinians are not Arab. They are culturally arabized Jews/Israelites.

I am not the first person to hold this position. Both the first President of the state of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, and the Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, believed that the Palestinians were descended from Jews. David Ben-Gurion wrote several books and articles on the subject and even created a task force with Moshe Dayan to “Judaize” the Bedouins. As war and conflict continued this idea was eventually abandoned. At the time there was no way to really know. However, genetics has progressed incredibly far, and we now know that Ben Gurion was largely correct. Palestinian fellahin are the descendants of the Jews and more broadly Israelites who survived the Roman conquest.

I accidentally fell into this story. I am a Persian-Jew and a few years ago I decided to take a genetic test. Much to my surprise, the test indicated that I was genetically Lebanese. This confused me as I thought Lebanese were Arabs. As a naturally curious person I began to investigate the genetics of the Middle East. Through this process I discovered that most of the Middle East is not Arab, but rather indigenous peoples who are culturally arabized. For example, the Lebanese are largely just arabized Phoenicians. Lebanon is right next to Israel, which is partially why the test plotted me as Lebanese. This then immediately raised the question, what about the Palestinians?

To fully answer this question, we must discuss genetic anthropology. 60,000 years ago, a singular tribe of a few thousand individuals exited Africa. This tribe is the ancestor of every single human being outside the African continent. This includes the British, Chinese, Australian Aboriginals, and Indians.

For 60,000 years these tribes began to settle in different territory and these humans began to evolve to better match their environment. This includes changing skin color, eye shape, nose shape, etc. When these populations bumped into other nomadic hunter gatherer groups, they would go to war.

These groups again remained genetically distinct until the advent of farming and pastoralism 12,000 years ago. A Natufian would be as different to an Anatolian as a modern British person is to an Australian Aboriginal.

(Approximation of the areas where each hunter gatherer group inhabited, created by the author)

Once humans became settled these hunter gatherer tribes began to mix. Today every ethnicity and nation can be thought of as a mixing of various hunter gatherer groups. The following is the breakdown of some modern ethnicities.

The English are Anatolian Neolithic Farmer: 47.6% European Hunter-Gatherer: 44.2 Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer: 8.2% (Yes, the English are majority Middle Eastern go figure).

The French are Anatolian Neolithic Farmer: 59.0% European Hunter-Gatherer: 31.0% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer: 10.0%  (French are a supermajority Middle Eastern).

The Persians are Zagros Neolithic Farmer: 36.8% Anatolian Neolithic Farmer: 28.0% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer: 14.2% Natufian Hunter-Gatherer: 9.0% European Hunter-Gatherer: 8.8% Ancient Ancestral South Indian: 1.6%Baikal Hunter-Gatherer: 1.4% Jomon Hunter-Gatherer: 0.2% (very mixed).

So for reference, if a man who is English marries someone who is French, we would expect their offspring to have more Anatolian and Caucuses DNA and less European Hunter Gatherer DNA than their English parent. We would expect the children’s hunter gatherer group DNA to generally be an average between both their parents.

Here is where things get interesting. Looking at these hunter gatherer population breakdowns, one can quickly get a sense that Palestinians are not Arab.

Peninsular Arab DNA from Saudi looks like this: Natufian Hunter-Gatherer: 67.0% Zagros Neolithic Farmer: 21.2% Anatolian Neolithic Farmer: 7.6% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer: 4.2%.

However, Palestinian Christians DNA looks like this: Anatolian Neolithic Farmer: 41.8% Natufian Hunter-Gatherer: 24.8% Zagros Neolithic Farmer: 23.2% Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer: 10.2%.

That is very very different. If the Palestinians were Arab, we would expect their Natufian to be around 67%, but it is not, instead it is below 25%. Palestinian Christians are clearly not ethnically Arab.

So, who are the Palestinians? Until recently it would have been guess work as Palestinian Christians could hypothetically be a mix of people from around the world. However, recently genetic archeology had advanced, and for the first time scientists were able to extract genetic data from ancient dead bodies. As a result, we now know what the populations of ancient Israel looked like, and we can track the genetic changes of a region over thousands of years by dating the dead bodies. We will start with the first inhabitants of Israel, Natufians and their historical evolution in the area. However, to telegraph where we are going Palestinian Christians are 88-97% Israelite. Alongside the Jewish adjacent Israelite sect of Samaritans, they are the most closely related population in the world to the ancient Israelites.

9,000 years ago Anatolians from modern day Turkey moved into Israel and began to intermix with the local Natufian farmers. This group came to be the Levantine Neolithic Farmer. This group was 46% Anatolian Neolithic Farmer and 54% Natufian Hunter Gatherer.

7,000 years ago, the stone age ended, and the copper age began. During this period migration of Iranian/Persian people moved into the land of Israel. This migration changed the land of Israel to create the backbone of what are known as the Canaanites.

Now I do not want to get into a theological debate. What exactly is a Canaanite is a matter of large historical and biblical debate. However it does seem that there is continuity between the Canaanite and Israelite Samples.

The Genetic samples of these “Canaanites” are as follows:

Canaanite Megido: 1800-1280 BCE Natufian: 34.6% Anatolian: 34.4% Zagros: 19.2% Caucasus: 11.8% (Hunter Gatherer Groups abbreviated).

Canaanite Ashkelon: 1257-900 BCE Anatolian: 34.6% Natufian: 33.8% Zagros: 23.8% Caucasus: 7.8%.

Canaanite Sidon: 1750-1650 BCE Anatolian: 35.2% Natufian: 35.2% Zagros: 19.0% Caucasus: 10.6%.

The Canaanite samples vary a lot depending on where in Israel/Levant they come from. This makes generally pinning the directional change of their descendants a bit more difficult.

Moving on, the United Kingdom of David came into existence around 1000 BCE. So far scientists have extracted two samples from Israelites who lived between 1100 BCE-800 BCE, both from Northern Israel.

Israelite (Abel Beth Maacah): Anatolian: 38.0% Natufian: 30.2% Zagros:18.8% Caucasus: 13.0%

The Second Israelite (Megiddo): Anatolian: 37.8% Natufian: 31.0% Zagros: 26.6% Caucasus: 4.6%.

As we can see the Anatolian Neolithic Farmer ancestry increases dramatically. I point this out because many people like to look at what percent Canaanite individuals are to parse out what percent Levantine they are. This is incorrect one cannot be descended from the “Palestinian” Canaanites without the intermediate step of being descended from the Israelites. To reference the Levantine background it is important to consider a map of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Embed from Getty Images

Much of modern-day Jordan was Israelite. The Israelites also inhabited Lebanon up to Sidon. Of the non-Jewish tribes there were the Ammonites, Moabites, Edomites Philistines, Amalek, and Phoenicians.

The Philistines were a Greek people who settled in Israel. They were eventually destroyed and absorbed by Israel.

Philistine DNA looks like: Anatolian: 77.0% Caucasus: 10.6% European: 6.0% Zagros: 5.6% Sub-Saharan African: 0.6% Yellow River: 0.2%.

The Edomites were conquered and forcibly converted by the Hasmoneans close to a thousand years later. The Moabites and Ammonites were destroyed by the Romans. The Arameans are the forbearers of the modern-day Syrians.

The Phoenician samples we have look like Phoenician (1000-539 BC) Anatolian: 42.4% Natufian: 30.6% Zagros: 21.4% Caucasus: 5.6%.

The entire levant experienced a migratory wave of Anatolian Neolithic Farmer ancestry immediately preceding the establishment of the Kingdom of David. That is a long way of saying no one is directly descended from the Canaanites. By the period of King David the levant was largely split into the Ancient Israelites, Arameans, and Phoenicians each with elevated Anatolian differing them from Canaanites. The Nabateans later settled in southern Jordan, but this migration was population replacement as the Nabateans were an Arabian tribe.

Running a PCA test it is easy to see what modern ethnic groups are the most related to any given population. This is done by plotting their genetic data on a graph and then taking a Euclidean distance.

The closest to the Israelite Megiddo are:

The closest to the Israel Beth Maacah sample  are:

As we can see Samaritans, Lebanese Christians, Palestinian Christians, and Druze are very close to both Israelites.

The Samaritan genetic profile looks like: Anatolian: 36.8% Natufian: 32.4% Zagros: 21.4% Caucasus: 9.4%.

Today there are only 900 Samaritans left in Israel. Samaritans claim to be one of the descendants of the Israelites. The main difference between them and Jews is that Samaritans claim that the temple was not in Jerusalem, but actually in Samaria specifically on Mount Gerizim. The Samaritan genetic profile looks very similar to the ancient Israelite samples. It does seem that they are largely descendants of the ancient northern kingdom.

Let’s compare this again to the Palestinian Christian ancestry:

Anatolian: 41.8% Natufian: 24.8%  Zagros: 23.2% Caucasus: 10.2%.

As we can see Palestinian Christians have less Natufian like ancestry than the ancient Israelites. If Palestinians had substantial Arab ancestry, we would have expected the Natufian ancestry to increase as Arabs have 67% Natufian ancestry.

So let us talk discuss the actual history of Palestinians, not the fairy tale Arab replacement version. A good starting point is when the region was named Palestine. In 63 BCE the Romans conquered Israel from the Hasmonean dynasty. In 132-136 the Bar Kochba revolt takes place. The Romans arguably commit a genocide against the Jews with some historians placing the number of deaths north of half a million. The population of Israel collapses. The Romans name the area Syria-Palestina to spite the Jews. The survivors of the genocide would be the first Palestinians.

It is important to note that this war in Israel was between the Jews and the Romans. The surviving Christians and Samaritans would be ethnically Jewish/Israelite. Christianity was originally a Jewish sect after all. To reiterate almost all these Christians in Israel are Israelites/Jews who converted to Christianity.

The next big demographic change occurred in the 500s. The Samaritan population reached hundreds of thousands. As a result, they decided to rebel against the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire in an attempt to create their own Israelite state. Emperor Justinian mercilessly crushed the rebellion and the Samaritans as well as what was left of the Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. The region was now firmly Christian.

In 634 the Rashidun Caliphate conquered Israel/Palestine. In 1099 the crusaders took most of Israel. Records suggest they killed and expelled most of the non-Christian population.

The Crusader Kingdoms retained control of Israel until 1187 when Saladin defeated them. In 1260 the Egyptian Mamluks conquered Israel. It is likely at this point when we start to see major foreign admixture enter the Palestinian genetic pool and when the “Palestinian Muslim” ethnogenesis forms.  It is also at this point that the Palestinian Christian samples stopped changing. It would have been punishable by death for a Muslim to convert to Christianity, so Palestinian Christians were only able to marry other Palestinian Christians. Geneticists believe that Palestinian Christian genetics are frozen at the level found around the year 1200. Again, to reiterate Palestinian Christians are almost entirely Jewish/Israelite and appear usually between 88-97% Israelite on genetic tests.

I have hitherto refrained from discussing Palestinian Muslim genetics because I wanted to set the stage to better understand the general Palestinian background. By 1200 the Palestinian genetic sample probably looked like somewhere in between Samaritans and Palestinian Christians.

Palestinian Christian: Anatolian: 41.8% Natufian: 24.8% Zagros: 23.2% Caucasus: 10.2%.

The Palestinian Muslim genetic ancestry would have likely begun to shift starting from this Palestinian Christian core around the year 1200. Today the average Palestinian Muslim genetic profile looks like:

Natufian: 34.0% Anatolian: 29.2% Zagros: 21.0% Caucasus: 11.4% Sub-Saharan African: 2.6% European: 1.8%.

What we see is elevated Natufian coming from an Arab source (probably Bedouin), some Sub-Saharan coming from the African slave trade, and European Hunter-Gatherer from probably a Kurdish source.

As mentioned earlier the Canaanite and Israelite samples varied heavily in different regions. This remains true of Palestinians. Many Palestinians are uploading their genetic profile onto the website reddit, on the subreddit of illustrativeDNA. What we see it that percent Israelite varies dramatically by region. Some Palestinian Muslims are as high as 90% Jewish/Israelite while others are as low as 15% Jewish/Israelite ancestry.

In general, and this is a rough approximation, as I cannot aggregate the data, the West Bank is 70% Jewish/Israelite in genetic origin with a confidence interval around 10%. The remaining 30% split is very diverse but seems to be of Arab, Kurdish, African, and Turkish origin also varying from North to South, with the North generally having less foreign admixture. For example, Palestinians in and around Nablus can be modeled as nearly entirely Samaritan.

Gazans can in many ways be thought of as a separate ethnicity from West Bank Palestinians. This is because Gazans have substantial Egyptian ancestry not normally found in the West Bank.  Egyptians are also an indigenous people and not an Arab people and have a very distinct genetic makeup.

Egyptian DNA: Natufian: 35.8% Anatolian: 24.8% Zagros: 14.6% East African Pastoralist: 9.4% Sub-Saharan African: 7.8% Caucasus: 7.2% North African Neolithic Farmer: 0.4%.

If an East African Pastoralist element is found in a Palestinian’s genetic makeup, that is indicative of Egyptian heritage. Moreover, historical evidence suggests that in the 1800s Egyptian rulers settled populations onto the Israeli/Palestinian coastal plain following Egypt’s quasi break away from the Ottoman Empire.

Another important analytical tool requires analyzing Y DNA. All human DNA is composed of Y and X Chromosomes. Women have two XX and men have one X and one Y. Every time a person has a male child the XX’s are split and recombined, while the Y is directly passed down from your father with little mutation. Therefore, if a population is descended from the same males, they would have similar Y Chromosomes.

Studies have compared Palestinian and Jewish Y Chromosomes and found that there is a 70% match between the Y Chromosomes of Jewish males and Palestinians. The difference in Y chromosomes traces to Kurds, Bedouins, and Egyptians, in line with the mixing we theorize after the year 1200.

Another key question that has yet to be answered is the maternal lineages of Palestinians. It is possible to trace maternal lineages through MTDNA. I have yet to find any good studies comparing the maternal lineages of Palestinians and Israelis. 23and me holds that N1b, K1a1b1a, K1a9, and K2a2a are distinctly Jewish Ashkenazi MTDNA not found in Europe. Some of these maternal lineages are found in Palestinians suggesting possible Jewish maternal descent for many Palestinians (making Palestinians halachically Jewish). However, there has not been much research into this area.

In conclusion, the Palestinian genetic profile is indigenous Levantine and almost certainly comes from the Jews/Israelites. When Palestine became Islamic around the year 1200 we begin to see some foreign admixture. On the coastal plain the foreign admixture is usually Egyptian. In West Bank near Hebron and Jerusalem the foreign admixture is probably Bedouin. In the North near Tzfat the foreign admixture is minimal and believed to be Kurdish. On balance it is fair to state that Palestinians are in fact ethnically Israelite. The divide between the Israelis and Palestinians is on religious and linguistic lines only.