# How well integrated is the Palestinian population in Chile **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 7, 2025, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996 "2025-02-07T05:26:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/1 "2025-02-07T05:26:55Z")
Chile has a half million Palestinians living there. My understanding is that when Palestinians live in other middle eastern nations they tend to live as second class citizens and there are issues with terrorism and violence. Are they integrated in Chile? Are there issues with terrorism or trying to push religious views on others or does the population there get along well? ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/2 "2025-02-07T07:14:49Z")
Fairly well integrated: Palestinians have been in Chile for a very long time: > Palestinian migration to Chile evolved across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fluctuating according to political and historical events. The combination of forced conscription for Christians in the early 1900s and the deteriorating economic situation during World War I accelerated the number of arrivals to Chile; the majority of ancestors of Chilean Palestinians arrived around this period and in the years following the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1924. Emigration to Chile continued before, during, and after the Nakba in 1947-1948, the June War of 1967, and the Intifadas of the late 1980s and early 2000s. The main migration routes remained through family reunification and marriage, **but the numbers were much smaller than in the period between 1900 and 1930**. > **[The Palestinians in Chile](https://www.palquest.org/en/highlight/36894/palestinians-chile)** > > Highlight - A Large Community, Fully Chilean, Fully Engaged for Palestine - The Palestinian community in Chile , estimated at around 500,000 people in 2023, is generally considered to be the largest Palestinian community... ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/3 "2025-02-07T08:32:49Z")
Probably worth noting that, as the comment about enforced conscription of Christians in Palestine implies, the great majority of Chilean Palestinians are Christian (both Orthodox and Catholic). ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/4 "2025-02-07T08:35:33Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > Are there issues with terrorism or trying to push religious views on others or does the population there get along well? Note that the vast majority of Chilean Palestinians are Christian, primarily Eastern Orthodox but also Roman and Eastern-Rite Catholic Christians; only a small and largely isolated minority are Sunni Muslim, unlike the demographics of the Gaza Strip which is almost exclusively Sunni, or the West Bank which is ~85% Sunni with a smattering of Shia, Druze, and a variety of Arab and Maronite Christians. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/5 "2025-02-07T12:42:13Z")
I only learned there were Palestinians in Chile from Netflix’s series “Worst Roommate Ever” (the episode about [Youssef Khater](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/true-crime/youssef-khater-worst-roommate-ever-netflix/) who pretended to be a Palestinian ultramarathon runner). ---
**Author:** ![veryfrank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/87869e/32.png) [@veryfrank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/veryfrank)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/6 "2025-02-07T13:30:24Z")
The various diasporas are South America are fascinating: between the Welsh in Argentina; the Japanese in Brazil; and the Taiwanese, Lebanese, Korean and Iranian populations in Ciudad del Este, there are some intriguing mixes of culture down there. I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise, but I still feel like media portrayals of Central and South America are pretty uniformly Latin/Catholic. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/7 "2025-02-07T13:40:01Z")
> [@veryfrank](#): > > between the Welsh in Argentina And the Jews, the Poles, The Lebanese (we’ve had a president that was Syrian-Lebanese), the Germans (most from before WWII, let’s not reinforce that tired stereotype), and of course the Italians (to the point that most of us have Italian ancestry now). ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 7, 2025, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/8 "2025-02-07T13:53:49Z")
The fact the Peruvians even had a (disgraced) president named Fujimori pretty well suggests not everyone in Latin America is descended from a mix of Native Amerindian and Spanish / Portuguese 300 years-ago stock. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2025, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/9 "2025-02-08T06:41:50Z")
And the Afrikaners. There was a small immigration movement after the Anglo-Boer War in the very early 1900s. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2025, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/10 "2025-02-08T15:32:02Z")
Really? I never knew, I can think I’ve encountered any of their descendents. Now that I think of it there’s an actress called Marcela Kloosterboer, she may be related to them. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2025, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/11 "2025-02-08T20:29:58Z")
I think she’s from straight-up Dutch heritage. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2025, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/12 "2025-02-08T20:46:07Z")
Yeah after some more research it looks like she is, I was led astray by that “boer” at the end of the surname. ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2025, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-well-integrated-is-the-palestinian-population-in-chile/1013996/13 "2025-02-08T20:51:35Z")
_Boer_ means just farmer, I would guess an ancestor of hers cultivated something in a cloister (klooster) garden.