Prior to the rise of nationalism during the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the term Palestinian referred to any person born in or living in the region of Palestine, regardless of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious affiliations. During the British Mandate for Palestine, the term "Palestinian" referred to any person legally considered to be a citizen of Mandatory Palestine as defined in the 1925 Citizenship Order.

The population of Palestine have long used the term "Palestinian" as one of the endonyms of self-identification - e.g. Al-Maqdisi in the 10th century and Khalil Beidas in the 19th century. Terms such as "Arab" and "Palestinian Arab" were also used, particularly in the early 20th century following the immigration of non-Arabic speakers.

After the establishment of the State of Israel during the 1948 Palestine war, the Jews of Mandatory Palestine became known as "Israeli Jews", having developed a national Jewish identity centered on a Jewish National Homeland in Palestine, derived from a political and ideological movement known as Zionism. By the mid-1950s, the term "Palestinian" had shifted to be a demonym that exclusively refers to the Arabs of former Mandatory Palestine who did not become citizens of the State of Israel, including their descendants, who had developed a distinctly Palestinian Arab national identity.

In contemporary times, the term "Palestinian" is the national demonym of the Palestinian people.

"Palestinian" may be used as an adjective to describe persons or objects which are related to Palestine. Examples of such usages may include the "Palestinian Talmud", an alternative name for the Jerusalem Talmud. This was employed by historical authors such as Zosimus describing Palmyrene troops who originated from Palestine in the Crisis of the Third Century, Shams ad-Din al-Maqdisi as a term of self-identification in his travels, and Fulcher of Chartres describing the continuous settlement of the Frankish and Orthodox Crusaders.

During the British Mandate over Palestine, a "Palestinian" could mean any person who was born in or hailed from the region of Palestine or was a citizen of the Mandatory Palestine. The term covered all the inhabitants of the region, including people from Muslim, Christian and Jewish backgrounds, and all ethnicities, including Arabs, the Dom people, Samaritans, Druze, Bedouins and the traditional Jewish communities of Palestine, or Old Yishuv, whose ancestors were already living there prior to the onset of Zionist immigration.

In the aftermath of the 1948 Palestine war and the establishment of the State of Israel, a "Palestinian" tends to refer to individuals from non-Jewish communities born in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and citizens of the State of Palestine, including the populations of Palestinian refugees living in the wide Middle East and other Palestinian diaspora populations worldwide.

Prior to the establishment of the State of Palestine then an interim government during the Oslo Accords in 1993: the remaining parts of Arab Palestine were annexed by Jordan and occupied by Egypt. The people of the West Bank became citizens of the Kingdom of Jordan until its disengagement in 1988, as part of the annexation of the occupied parts which were later renamed as "West Bank of the Jordan River", while the inhabitants of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip were considered to be citizens of the internationally unrecognized client All-Palestine Protectorate. The residents of the Gaza Strip became stateless after the dissolution of the All-Palestine government.