| ’48ers | Palestinians who stayed on in the newly created State of Israel in 1948 | |
| aliyah (Heb.) | the immigration, by members of the Jewish diaspora, to Israel | |
| Amidar | State-owned housing company in Israel, providing subsidised housing, often in former Palestinian properties | |
| Ashkenazi | Jews of, and descended from, the communities of central and eastern Europe | |
| Bedouin | traditionally nomadic Arab peoples of the desert | |
| B’Tselem | the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories | |
| Chabad | see Lubavitcher | |
| collecteeve | a minibus or shared saloon taxi | |
| Eretz Israel | all the territory of Ottoman Palestine (Greater Israel) | |
| Falasha | the Jewish community from Ethiopia | |
| fellahin (Ar.) | a peasant or agricultural labourer/farmer | |
| galabiya (Ar.) | long, collarless robe worn by Arab men | |
| goyim (Heb.) | those not of Jewish descent | |
| Gush Emunim | a political movement, no longer officially in existence, committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights | |
| Haganah | Jewish underground paramilitary organisation during the British Mandate (1920–48) | |
| halacha | the body of Jewish religious laws | |
| Haredim | adherents to a strictly Orthodox branch of Judaism, which rejects modern secular culture in favour of strict adherence to Jewish religious law | |
| hasbara (Heb.) | propaganda | |
| hijab (Ar.) | a headscarf worn in front of men and in public to cover a woman’s hair | |
| imam (Ar.) | the leader of worship in a mosque | |
| Intifada | a period of intensified Palestinian struggle against occupation. The first Intifada ran between 1987–93, the second from 2000–5 | |
| keffiyeh (Ar.) | chequered black and white scarf, worn either around the neck or on the head, a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and those who support it | |
| kibbutz (pl. kibbutzim) | collective communities, originally agricultural, established in Israel throughout the twentieth century as an important aspect of secular Zionism, often with a utopian socialist origin. The inhabitant of a kibbutz is a kibbutznik. | |
| kipa (Heb.) | small cap worn by Jews, mostly men | |
| Lubavitcher | member of an extensive Orthodox Jewish, Hasidic movement which began in Belorussia in the eighteenth century, also known as Chabad | |
| Lurianic Kabbala | a school of Kabbala named after the Jewish rabbi Isaac Luria who developed it in the sixteenth century | |
| Mizrahi | a Jew whose family migrated to Israel from an Arab country | |
| muezzin | the man who recites the call to prayer from a mosque | |
| Nakba | literally the catastrophe; used to describe the 1947–8 uprooting of the Palestinians from their homeland | |
| Naksah | Israel’s seizure, in June 1967, of the West Bank from Jordan, the Sinai from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria | |
| narghile | a waterpipe for smoking flavoured tobacco called shisha | |
| Olim (Heb.) | those who have made aliyah, Jewish immigrants to Israel | |
| Operation Defensive Shield | large-scale military operation conducted by the IDF in the West Bank in 2002 during the second Intifada | |
| Oslo Accords | agreements signed in 1993 and 1995 between the PLO and Israel | |
| Palmach | the elite fighting force of the Haganah (see above) | |
| qadi | judge ruling in accordance with Islamic religious law | |
| sabra | a Jew born in the historical region of Palestine (Eretz Israel) | |
| Salafist | Muslims who emphasise their rigid adherence to seventh-century Islam | |
| Sephardi | Jews descended from the ancient community expelled from the Iberian peninsula in the late fifteenth century | |
| serveece | a communal taxi | |
| Shin Bet (Shabak) | Israel’s internal security service | |
| samoud (Ar.) | fortitude (sometimes defined as a mix of courage, obstinacy and pride) | |
| taboun (Ar.) | a flatbread | |
| wadi | river bed, which fills after heavy rains | |
| waqf | Muslim charitable endowment | |
| yeshiva (Heb.) | a Jewish college for the study of religious texts, often Orthodox | |
| Yishuv | the original Jewish population of Palestine, before the establishment of the State of Israel | |
| za’atar (Ar.) | a popular condiment containing sesame seeds and salt, with a combination of thyme, oregano and/or marjoram |