When writer-lawyer Sabri Jiryis wrote in 1968 his research about the 165,000 non-Jews that remained in their country when Israel was created in 1948, he called his book “The Arabs in Israel.”
For many years, the national identity of non-Jewish Arab citizens of Israel has been in flux. They are usually called "Israeli Arabs." Arabs, including those of nearby Jordan, call them 1948 Arabs. But in recent years, they have settled on the term Palestinian citizens of Israel as the agreed-upon identity for themselves. According to the Israeli Statistics Bureau, Palestinian citizens in Israel today number 1.7 million, 20.7% of the state’s 8.3 million citizens.