Palestinian people
By religious affiliation, most Palestinians are Muslim, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam, and there is a significant minority of various Christian denominations, as well as smaller religious communities. As the commonly applied term "Palestinian Arab" implies, the current language of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. For those who are citizens of Israel, known also as Arab Israelis, many are now also bilingual in Modern Hebrew. Recent genetic research has demonstrated that ancient Levantines live mostly with modern-day Palestinians and the Bedouins who live in the same region. Similarly, it shows that Palestinians as an ethnic group represent modern "descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times," since before the Arabian Muslim conquest that resulted in their acculturation and established Arabic as the language, which eventually became the primary language of the locals, most of whom would over time also convert to Islam from various prior faiths.