Talk:Nakba

Statelessness

According to the Mandatory Palestine article, residents of Palestine were not stateful. It is therefore incorrect to say Palestinians immediately became stateless. Moreover, are there additional references that Palestinians were not given citizenship in Egypt, Jordan, or Israel? Elminstersage (talk) 14:15, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

See Mandatory Palestine passport and Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, among other related articles. Where in that article does it say "residents of Palestine were not stateful"? Please provide a quotation so it can be fixed if it is giving the wrong impression.

On your second point, which I am not sure I fully understand, see Casablanca Protocol.

Onceinawhile (talk) 14:47, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

According to Statelessness, "a stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law". According to Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, "Palestinian citizens had the right of abode in Palestine, but were not British subjects, and were instead considered British protected persons.". Furthermore, in British Protected Person, "individuals who only hold BPP nationality are effectively stateless as they are not guaranteed the right to enter the country in which they are nationals." As such, Palestinians were always stateless. My original comment therefore stands in that the subject article should be changed to reflect that Palestinians did not immediately become stateless because they always were. It would, however, be accurate to add that they lost their British Protected Persons status and that the passports were deemed to be void (or some phrasing thereof). Elminstersage — Preceding undated comment added 21:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

This is original research and is therefore not valid for wikipedia. It is also nonsense. Onceinawhile (talk) 22:27, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

It is not nonsense. Extending beyond wikipedia articles though (from which all the above citations come), Immigration Advice Services says, "If you are a British protected person, you are effectively stateless." . Furthermore, Palestinians with a mandatory palestine passport were british protected persons Perhaps there is some minor amount of synthesis of these two ideas, but the logic is clear and the verifiable sources clearly indicate the Palestinians were British Protected Persons and therefore stateless. Elminstersage (talk) 13:03, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

You are confusing two concepts. One is about non-British people in Britain, the other is non-British people in Palestine. Both are not British citizens. That doesn’t mean the latter were not Palestinian citizens. For that you would need to understand how colonial and mandatory citizenships worked in practice. I strongly suggest you don’t waste your time and further though because I promise you this rabbit hole does not end where you currently think it does. Onceinawhile (talk) 17:25, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure why any wikipedian would discourage someone from learning more. Therefore, I would love your citations. As I see it, there is a difference between being a citizen and having statelessness. As noted in Mandatory Palestine passport, Palestine citizens were citizens who had the right of abode but were also British Protected Persons . In other words they were not "considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law" . The definitions are clear to me, so I'm not understanding how the operation of how it worked would change this, but would like to. Elminstersage (talk) 21:13, 3 December 2023 (UTC) Elminstersage (talk) 21:13, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

The Palestine Citizenship Order in Council (1925) bestowed citizenship, not just right of residence, and it considered Palestine to be a state for that purpose. Palestine was a state for many other purposes too, for example it concluded treaties with other states independently of the UK. I've read a great deal about this issue and I have never seen Palestine citizens between 1925 and 1948 being considered stateless. Before 1924 things were less clear as the Ottoman Empire had not yet formally ceded sovereignty. Zero^talk 09:35, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Core sources

Works marked with an asterisk (*) are already cited in this Wikipedia article.

21st-century "classics"

Highly-cited (100s of cites) 21st-century books by highly-cited authors (and more-recent works by those same authors):

• *Morris, Benny (2004) [1988]. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00967-6.
  • Morris, Benny (2008). 1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9.
• *Pappe, Ilan (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld Publications. ISBN 978-1-78074-056-0.
  • Pappé, Ilan (2020-05-01). "An Indicative Archive: Salvaging Nakba Documents". Journal of Palestine Studies. 49 (3): 22–40. doi:10.1525/jps.2020.49.3.22. ISSN 0377-919X.
  • Pappé, Ilan (2021-11-12). "Everyday Evil in Palestine: The View from Lucifer's Hill". Janus Unbound: Journal of Critical Studies. 1 (1): 70–82. doi:10.2021/ju.v1i1.2319. ISSN 2564-2154.
  • Pappe, Ilan (2022) [2004]. A History of Modern Palestine (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-24416-9. (TWL link)
• *Masalha, Nur (2012). The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory. Zed Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84813-973-2.
  • Masalha, Nur (2018). Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History. Zed Books. ISBN 978-1-78699-275-8.

General

21st-century academically-reviewed books:

• *Schulz, Helena Lindholm (2003). The Palestinian Diaspora: Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-26821-9.
• Shlaim, Avi (2009). Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations. Verso Books. ISBN 978-1-78960-165-7.
• Davis, Rochelle (2011). Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-7313-3.
• Khalidi, Rashid (2020). The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-1-62779-854-9.
• *Slater, Jerome (2020). Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-045908-6.
• Manna, Adel (2022). Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-38936-6.
• Sabbagh-Khoury, Areej (2023). Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-3629-3.

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

• *Forman, Geremy; Kedar, Alexandre (Sandy) (2004). "From Arab Land to 'Israel Lands': The Legal Dispossession of the Palestinians Displaced by Israel in the Wake of 1948". Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 22 (6): 809–830. doi:10.1068/d402. ISSN 0263-7758.
• *Baumgarten, Helga (2005-07-01). "The Three Faces /Phases of Palestinian Nationalism, 1948–2005". Journal of Palestine Studies. 34 (4): 25–48. doi:10.1525/jps.2005.34.4.25. ISSN 0377-919X.
• Wolfe, Patrick (2012). "Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism's Conquest of Economics". Settler Colonial Studies (in Arabic). 2 (1): 133–171. doi:10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648830. ISSN 2201-473X.
• *Manna', Adel (2013). "The Palestinian Nakba and its Continuous Repercussions". Israel Studies. 18 (2): 86. doi:10.2979/israelstudies.18.2.86.
• Rouhana, Nadim N.; Sabbagh-Khoury, Areej (2014). "Settler-colonial citizenship: conceptualizing the relationship between Israel and its Palestinian citizens". Settler Colonial Studies. 5 (3): 205–225. doi:10.1080/2201473X.2014.947671. ISSN 2201-473X.

Nakba in culture

21st-century academically-reviewed books:

• *Sa'di, Ahmad H.; Abu-Lughod, Lila, eds. (2007). Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13579-5.
• *Lentin, Ronit (2013). Co-memory and melancholia: Israelis memorialising the Palestinian Nakba. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-84779-768-1.
• *Al-Hardan, Anaheed (5 April 2016). Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54122-0.
• *Nashef, Hania A.M. (2018). Palestinian Culture and the Nakba: Bearing Witness. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-351-38749-1.

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

• *Ghanim, Honaida (2009-03-01). "Poetics of Disaster: Nationalism, Gender, and Social Change Among Palestinian Poets in Israel After Nakba". International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society. 22 (1): 23–39. doi:10.1007/s10767-009-9049-9. ISSN 1573-3416.
• Khoury, Elias (2012). "Rethinking the Nakba". Critical Inquiry. 38 (2): 250–266. doi:10.1086/662741. ISSN 0093-1896.

Nakba and genocide studies

21st-century academically-reviewed books:

• Auron, Yair (2017). The Holocaust, Rebirth, and the Nakba: Memory and Contemporary Israeli–Arab Relations. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-1-4985-5949-2.
• *Bashir, Bashir; Goldberg, Amos, eds. (2018). The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-54448-1.
• *Wermenbol, Grace (2021). A Tale of Two Narratives: The Holocaust, the Nakba, and the Israeli-Palestinian Battle of Memories. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-84028-6. (TWL)

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

• Lustick, Ian S. (2006). "Negotiating Truth: The Holocaust, "Lehavdil", and "Al-Nakba"". Journal of International Affairs. 60 (1): 51–77. ISSN 0022-197X.
• Fierke, K.M. (2014). "Who is my neighbour? Memories of the Holocaust/ al Nakba and a global ethic of care". European Journal of International Relations. 20 (3): 787–809. doi:10.1177/1354066113497490. ISSN 1354-0661.
• Rashed, Haifa; Short, Damien; Docker, John (2014). "Nakba Memoricide: Genocide Studies and the Zionist/Israeli Genocide of Palestine". Holy Land Studies. 13 (1): 1–23. doi:10.3366/hls.2014.0076. ISSN 1474-9475.

Nakba denial / Nakba memory

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

• *Sa'di, Ahmad H. (2002). "Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity". Israel Studies. 7 (2): 175–198. doi:10.1353/is.2002.0016. ISSN 1527-201X.
• *Webman, Esther (2009). "The Evolution of a Founding Myth: The Nakba and Its Fluctuating Meaning". In Litvak, Meir (ed.). Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-62163-3.
• Milshtein, Michael (2009). "The Memory that Never Dies: The Nakba Memory and the Palestinian National Movement". In Litvak, Meir (ed.). Palestinian Collective Memory and National Identity. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-62163-3.
• Ram, Uri (2009). "Ways of Forgetting: Israel and the Obliterated Memory of the Palestinian Nakba". Journal of Historical Sociology. 22 (3): 366–395. doi:10.1111/j.1467-6443.2009.01354.x. ISSN 0952-1909.
• *Sayigh, Rosemary (2013-11-01). "On the Exclusion of the Palestinian Nakba from the "Trauma Genre"". Journal of Palestine Studies. 43 (1): 51–60. doi:10.1525/jps.2013.43.1.51. ISSN 0377-919X.
  • *Sayigh, Rosemary (2022). "On the Burial of the Palestinian Nakba". Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies (2 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003100607-31/burial-palestinian-nakba-1-rosemary-sayigh. ISBN 978-1-003-10060-7.
• *Rekhess, Elie (2014). "The Arab Minority in Israel: Reconsidering the "1948 Paradigm"". Israel Studies. 19 (2): 187–217. doi:10.2979/israelstudies.19.2.187. ISSN 1527-201x. {{cite journal}}: Check |issn= value (help)
• *Sela, Avraham; Kadish, Alon (2016). "Israeli and Palestinian Memories and Historical Narratives of the 1948 War—An Overview". Israel Studies. 21 (1): 1. doi:10.2979/israelstudies.21.1.1.
• *Rouhana, Nadim; Sabbagh-Khoury, Areej (2017). "Memory and the Return of History in a Settler-Colonial Context: The Case of the Palestinians in Israel". In Rouhana, Nadim N.; Huneidi, Sahar S. (eds.). Israel and its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-04483-8.
• Shenhav, Yehouda (2019). "The Palestinian Nakba and the Arab-Jewish Melancholy". In Shai Ginsburg; Martin Land; Jonathan Boyarin (eds.). Jews and the Ends of Theory. Fordham University Press. pp. 78–. ISBN 978-0-8232-8201-2.
• Gutman, Yifat; Tirosh, Noam (2021-01-29). "Balancing Atrocities and Forced Forgetting: Memory Laws as a Means of Social Control in Israel". Law & Social Inquiry. 46 (3): 705–730. doi:10.1017/lsi.2020.35. ISSN 0897-6546.
• Abu‐Laban, Yasmeen; Bakan, Abigail B. (2022-07-12). "Anti‐Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting". The Political Quarterly. 93 (3): 508–516. doi:10.1111/1467-923X.13166. ISSN 0032-3179.

Discussion (core sources)

Additions/subtractions? Levivich (talk) 03:15, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi Levivich, happy to add here - could you explain the objective? There are many more relevant books in the article bibliography, and in google books. Not to mention the various sources in Arabic (e.g. Ma'na an-Nakba). Onceinawhile (talk) 17:01, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

The objective is to identify the major books about Nakba -- the "best" sources. I had missed two books already in the article, which I just added to this list, but I think at this point all the books in the article are on this list. Did I miss any others? In addition to those, there are, listed above, books that should be cited in the article, but aren't. Are there any others? The article relies too much on not-the-best sources: newspaper articles, kind-of-obscure journal papers, etc., which can and ought to be replaced with better sources, like the major books by major scholars in the field. No doubt there are foreign-language books about Nakba as well, but I've only looked at English books. Levivich (talk) 18:14, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

In that case, your list - prioritizing Pappe and Morris - is incorrectly weighted. They are absolutely core to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, which is the story of what the Israelis did to the Palestinians. But the Nakba is a wider topic, about the overall Palestinian collective trauma.

I can bring more sources, but we should iron this difference out first.

Onceinawhile (talk) 20:27, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I didn't really intend this list to be weighted, except that the "classics" have like 10x or 100x the citations of other books on the list, so I separated them, and then I looked for any more-recent books by the same authors about Palestine, so we can see what if anything they changed or added in their writing about Nakba since they wrote their "classics." The classics, like all classics, are widely-cited, but relatively old. That's why I think it's important to look at newer sources and not just the classics.

I don't necessarily think classics should be given more weight than newer sources. In instances where newer sources say something different than the classics, we need to pay attention to that. We need to determine if the mainstream scholarly views have changed, or if new significant minority views have emerged, or what. One example: did Nakba start and end in 1948, or did it begin before 48, and/or continue after 48? My sense that scholarship has moved on those questions since Pappe 2006 and Masalha 2012, and I'd be keen on looking at how more recent sources describe the timeline of Nakba (and also what Pappe and Masalha have said in more recent writings on the topic, including papers and not just books).

I'm not entirely sure how to handle Morris. My gut instinct is that Morris represents a significant minority view on Nakba (or maybe more specifically, the causes of the Nakba). I see that other scholars discuss Morris's views, particularly in relation to Pappe's, and both Morris and Pappe discuss each other's views, and the Wikipedia article mentions them already. I was going to see how the most recent scholarship handled Morris. It may be one of those cases where Morris is talked about in the article more than used as a source for the article (and maybe same with Pappe).

For now, though, I'm just looking to collect the most in-depth, widely-cited, reputable works about Nakba... i.e., books by scholars reviewed in some academic journal, the more citations the better. That could obviously be expanded to book chapters and journal articles, but I think books is a good place to start because they will have the most depth. Levivich (talk) 21:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I added some papers that had decent cite counts, reorganized the list by topic, and clarified inclusion criteria. Levivich (talk) 16:08, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Outline

Outline

Full source citations at #Core sources History of Nakba Preconditions of Nakba Ottoman period and pre-Ottoman (pre-1917) Sources: Forman 2004, Pappe 2006 ch 2, Masalha 2012 ch 1, Wolfe 2012, Manna 2013, Masalha 2018, Pappe 2022 chs 1-2 Ottoman Empire Arab nationalism, Palestinian nationalism settler colonialism Zionism, Political Zionism, Labor Zionism, First Zionist Congress Yishuv, Old Yishuv kibbutz Jewish National Fund World War I McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, Sykes–Picot Agreement Balfour Declaration absentee landlord Western support of Zionism Early nonviolent Palestinian protests of Zionism Ottoman support, and restraint, of Zionism Zionist land acquisition using local laws Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight § "Concept of transfer in Zionism" Mandate period (1917-1947) Sources: Forman 2004, Pappe 2006 ch 2, Shlaim 2009 ch 1, Masalha 2012 ch 1, Wolfe 2012, Manna 2013, Masalha 2018, Khailidi 2020 ch 1, Pappe 2022 ch 3, Sabbagh-Khoury 2023 ch 3 Mandatory Palestine, Mandate for Palestine Jewish Agency Haganah Mapai, Hashomer Hatzair, Mapam Supreme Muslim Council 1929 Palestine riots, Shaw Commission, Hope Simpson Enquiry, Passfield white paper, MacDonald Letter 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Peel Commission World War II, The Holocaust United Nations Special Committee on Palestine British/Western support, and restraint, of Zionism Zionist land acquisition using local laws 1948 Nakba (1947-1949) Sources: Schulz 2003 ch 2, Pappe 2006 chs 3-8, Shlaim 2009 chs 2-4, Masalha 2012 ch 1, Wolfe 2012, Manna 2013, Masalha 2018, Khalidi 2020 ch 2, Slater 2020 ch 5, Manna 2022 ch 2, Pappe 2022 ch 4, Sabbagh-Khoury 2023 ch 4 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, 1948 Palestine War, 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight Plan Dalet Deir Yassin massacre, Safsaf massacre, Tantura massacre, Al-Dawayima massacre, 1948 Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle Haifa, Jaffa, Safad, Tiberias, Acre ~300-400k expelled/fled Nov 47 - May 48 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine Israel Arab League, Arab Higher Committee Abdullah I of Jordan 1948 Arab–Israeli War Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war Operation Hiram List of towns and villages depopulated during the 1947–1949 Palestine war West Bank, Gaza Strip Transfer Committee Resolution 194 United Nations Relief and Works Agency United Nations Conciliation Commission Lausanne Conference of 1949 Western support for Israel ~400k expelled/fled after May ~750k ttl expelled/fled Looting Sexual violence Destruction of holy sites Ongoing Nakba (1949-present) General sources: Forman 2004, Pappe 2006 ch 9, 12, Manna 2013, Masalha 2018, Manna 2022 chs. 3-7 Partition period (1949-1967) Sources: Pappe 2022 ch 5, general sources 1949–1956 Palestinian expulsions Palestinian refugees Internally displaced person Palestinian diaspora Palestinian Bedouin Druze in Mandatory Palestine Palestinian right of return Present absentee Absentees' Property Laws Office of the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property Israeli land and property laws, Law of Return, Israeli citizenship law Israel Land Administration Israel Central Bureau of Statistics Jordanian annexation of the West Bank Muslim Brotherhood Fatah Palestinian fedayeen Arab Nationalist Movement Arab Cold War Arab Communists, USSR, National Liberation League in Palestine, Palestine Communist Party, Maki (historical political party) United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Geneva Conventions Qibya massacre Kafr Qasim massacre Qalqilya Suez Crisis Palestine Liberation Organization, Palestine National Council Expelling "infiltrators" Hebraization of Palestinian place names Imprisonment Ghettoising Forestation Naksa period (1967-87) Sources: Schulz 2003 ch. 2, Baumgarten 2005, Khailidi 2020 chs 3-4, Pappe 2022 ch 6, general sources Six-Day War Naksa Resolution 242 Israeli occupation of the West Bank East Jerusalem Golan Heights Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine Battle of Karameh Mafdal Palestinian National Covenant Cairo Agreement (1969) Black September Yom Kippur War Likud Resolution 338 Lebanese Civil War Siege of Tel al-Zaatar Land Day Camp David Accords 1982 Lebanon War Sabra and Shatila massacre Intifada period (1987-present) Sources: Baumgarten 2005, Pappe 2022 chs 7-10, general sources First Intifada Hamas Oslo Accords Palestinian enclaves Palestinian National Authority, Palestinian Legislative Council Nakba Day Second Intifada Israeli West Bank barrier Battle of Jenin (2002) Israeli disengagement from Gaza Blockade of the Gaza Strip Fatah–Hamas conflict Nakba Law Naksa Day Features of Nakba Displacement Basically same sources as "1948 Nakba (1947-1949)" Loss of land Sources: Forman 2004, Masalha 2012 ch 3, Wolfe 2012, Sabbagh-Khoury 2023 chs 1-2 Statelessness Sources: Schulz 2003 ch. 4 Right of return Sources: Schulz 2003 chs. 5-6 Loss of records Sources: Masalha 2012 ch. 4 Loss of labor Sources: Wolfe 2012 Terminology / historiography Sources: Baumgarten 2005, Litvak 2009 ch. 1, Shlaim 2009 chs 27, 29, Masalha 2012 ch. 5, Manna 2013, Manna 2022 ch. 1 Cultural impact of Nakba Sources: Listed at #Nakba in culture Memory / denial Sources: Pappe 2006 chs 10-11, Litvak 2009 chs 2-end, Masalha 2012 chs 2, 6-7, Sabbagh-Khoury 2023 chs 5-6, and those listed at #Nakba denial / Nakba memory Genocide studies Sources: Listed at #Nakba and genocide studies

Discussion (outline)

A work in progress, but thoughts? Levivich (talk) 22:01, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Like nableezy - 23:19, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

The current structure is nothing to particularly write home about, so yeah, like. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:49, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Hired. ) Selfstudier (talk) 12:02, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Levivich (talk) 01:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm adding to the outline links to other articles, and sub-topics (where I'm not aware of an article to link), that I think are WP:DUE per the sources listed in each outline section. Please speak up if you think anything should be added or removed. Also, as the outline will be changing, just note that folks' approval/disapproval at any given point in time may no longer apply to a later, changed version of the outline. Levivich (talk) 01:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I think this outline is missing coverage of notable opposing narratives, namely the Israeli national narrative which is currently covered in the section 'Opposition to the notion of Nakba'. Marokwitz (talk) 10:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I expect that'll be covered in historiography and memory section; I haven't gotten to expanding those parts of the outline yet (and probably won't for a while, still on the history section right now). Levivich (talk) 22:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

I've added article links to the history section in the outline above. If anyone thinks there are other articles that should be linked in the history section of the Nakba article, or that we shouldn't be linking to something that is listed in the outline, please let me know. Levivich (talk) 20:53, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

I've added a very small bare-bones start to the History section of the article, and struck through the links on the outline that are now in the article. My plan is to expand the history section until all the links in the outline are in the article, then move on to the other sections. I may move some links to other parts of the outline and reorganize the outline a bit as I go. Levivich (talk) 05:59, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Preemptively creating a chat section of my contextualization edits

I am just proactively creating this section for discussion of my changes. I tied most of the changes to our own articles. I feel that we started our article, here, in media res. I hope that my edits give a neutral background of the situation that led up to the Nakba. --Bertrc (talk) 00:28, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

I reverted a couple of them, hopefully my edit summaries were clear in explaining the reasons. Levivich (talk) 06:55, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for fighting my laziness! References added this time. --Bertrc (talk) 16:12, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

(Also, my initial phrasing chained the broader war as coming out of the civil war. This time I just called it the subsequent broader war) --Bertrc (talk) 16:16, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Reverted again. I don't mean to be a jerk about it, but there were a number of problems with what you added, quick list:

1. Some of the citations were incomplete to the point of not being verifiable
2. Newspaper reports from 1947-1948 are contemporaneous and thus primary sources, not RSes
3. Recent newspaper articles are still not good sources for history; there is tons of scholarship to use as sources, much of it listed at #Core sources
4. Why would we cite French translations of English works instead of the English works themselves?
5. O Jerusalem! is like 50+ years old and pre-dates the opening of the archives; too old to be a reliable source for Nakba
6. Karsh 2002 is a 96-page booklet; even if we were to cite Karsh, there are better works by Karsh than this, including more in-depth and more recent works
7. Why cite a Pappe book from 2000 when there are more recent works by Pappe? I'm not sure why we'd cite anything by Pappe about Nakba that was written before 2006 (when he published his landmark work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine), and he's published a number of books and papers since then, his most recent book I think came out last year.
8. The content failed verification against Morris, Pappe, and even Karsh -- none of them, as far as I can tell, characterize it as "back and forth retaliatory violence" that "escalated" or "increased" in 1947. They characterize it differently. Especially Pappe's more recent works. The other sources at #Core sources also characterize it differently.
9. It's strange to say "the back and forth violence escalated" when the article doesn't talk about any "back and forth violence" (simply hasn't been added yet)
10. Not sure if you're aware of this, but in Wikipedia's organization, 1948 Palestine war is the parent article of the two phases, which are 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine and 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Right now, the Nakba article just links to the parent article.

Of course, the Nakba article should be (and will be) expanded to include more detail about the war, including detailing the two parts and probably linking to those two articles. However, that has to be done in a way that's WP:DUE, which means looking at which details are included in multiple sources about Nakba. This is not an article about the '48 war, and details that are DUE for the '48 war articles may not be DUE for the Nakba article (e.g, Lehi mining train tracks; siege of Jerusalem). Everything else in the History section is cited to multiple core sources, intentionally so. Expansions should as well, it's how we know what's DUE. Obviously, pre-48 violence would be DUE, as would the change in violence between 47 and 49. But those details, in order to be stated in WP:WIKIVOICE as they should be, need to be the details that are widely discussed by recent mainstream scholarship about the Nakba (and not just Israeli authors, but all authors). (Of course that's all just, like, my opinion, man; other editors may disagree.) Levivich (talk) 21:32, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Found a place where we can shout out to other editors to look at these changes and opine. I know it has just been a few reverts, but I am a casual, newb. I just don't know what phrasing or refs would meet your requests. I need to get others who are more dedicated to (and more energized with) WP to opine:

1. Your point 2 says newspapers are too old, while your point 3 says newspapers are too new.
2. Other points of yours talk about books being too old, or that authors have written later books, or that we cannot quote French translations;
   • I am not aware of any WP article saying "If an author has written a more recent work, don't cite their earlier work" (Does Pappe's later writings contradict their earlier writings?!)
   • Nor is there a "go find the English translation" rule (. . . as far as I know . . .)
3. Yes, "retaliatory" is my word, but I do not think it is an unfair summation of "in response to" and "reprisal".
4. Also, yes, I said "escalated"; I suppose I could have used "increased" but I do not know if you would accept that since you could have just changed it; Honestly, I do not think it is OR to summarize:
   • The execution of a family at the start of a year;
   • Then, over the course of a year, examples such as the murder of people on a bus, attacks in a market place, a workplace mob, etc.
   • Then, by the end of the year, the mining of railroads and the siege of a Jewish enclave.

   as "escalating violence" (or "increasing")

5. As for undue, it is a couple sentences in one section that is supposed to talk about what was happenning before and a sentence at the start of the next section so that people could start from there, directly, and still have a little context. I do not think a few sentences is undue weight.

As it stands, we just start with the Nakba and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villagers. The casual reader would see this and not know that violence had already been erupting between militant groups in the lead up -- In fact, I was the casual reader (Led to read this article after somebody claimed things were fine between the groups before the brits pulled out) but, while reading other coverage, I saw that "Oh, there actually was violence between Jewish and Palestinian militants before 1948"

• I do not think giving that context would be taken as an excuse for the ethnic cleansing by anybody, if that is what is really worrying you.
• At least, not anybody reasonable! :-D No more so than mentioning we were at war with Japan could reasonably be seen as an excuse for us rounding up Japanese civilians in America and stealing their property.

Forgot to sign on 03:28, 12 December 2023 --Bertrc (talk) 00:26, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

(Disclosure--I do have a COI on this subject, that being my personal opinion)

I think that it is absurd not to provide any context on inter-ethnic violence in the region beforehand. The article describes the history of Jewish emigration to Palestine in the 1890's, so why can't it also describe the 1921 Jaffa riots, the 1929 Palestine riots, and the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt?
Those all seem much more related to the subject, and provide way more context to the situation than a history of Jewish migration. For comparison, take a look at the article on the Rwanda genocide, which provides copious amounts of information on the history of Rwanda, and this provides a more complete image of the situation leading up to the massacre.

As for poor citation style, I'm pretty sure that citations only need to support the thing they're being cited for, so as long as the citation is verifiable, and there are plenty of verifiable citations on the events listed above, then the content should be allowed to stay.

AriTheHorse^{talk to me!}

05:19, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

AriTheHorse, :-D Everybody has that particular COI!  ;-) As long as you are not quoting your own published book, I think you can make your edits. Just back them with reliable sources. --Bertrc (talk) 14:32, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

@AriTheHorse:, I re-added my change (and fixed two refs that were displaying incorrectly) Does that meet your view in a balanced way? --Bertrc (talk) 03:58, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

I took a look, it seems fine.

AriTheHorse^{talk to me!}

04:31, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

• Yeah I meant like religion/worldview but I think now even that one is hard to avoid.

  AriTheHorse^{talk to me!}

  04:16, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Edit request: url parameter for Manna (2022) reference

I request this because right now the URL for the reference points to a Google Books page with a limited preview, while the publisher offers free access to the ebook version here.

The markup:

{{Cite book |authorlink=Adel Manna |last=Manna |first=Adel |url=https://luminosoa.org/site/books/m/10.1525/luminos.129/ |title=Nakba and Survival: The Story of Palestinians Who Remained in Haifa and the Galilee, 1948-1956 |date=2022 |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |isbn=978-0-520-38936-6 }}

The above markup is identical to the current version except for the URL parameter, but I included in case it helps with convenience. – spida-tarbell ❀ (talk) (contribs) 01:00, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

 Done, free access is awesome, thank you for bringing this up! Levivich (talk) 06:52, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Oh wow, so fast -- thank you so much! – spida-tarbell ❀ (talk) (contribs) 23:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 14 December 2023

It is written that the Palestinians were displaced but the people who were displaced were Arabs and some of them became later Palestinians in the year 1989 when Palestine was formed, and the reason why it happened isn't in the text. נדב רשף (talk) 15:34, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Not done, Palestinians didnt magically become Palestinians in 1989. nableezy - 15:37, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

factual inaccuracy in the article.

The article states that Jews owned 7% of the land and Palestinians owned 90% of the land but that is untrue. private ownership by Palestinians was around the same as Jews, the rest was state land 147.235.214.184 (talk) 21:36, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. Also the cited article speaks about *privately owned land*, which is different than all the land. Most of the land in Israel was *publicly* owned. The wiki text should differ between private and public. Gelbard (talk) 03:01, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, there are maps on Wikipedia itself right now that provide the correct data. The current wording is inaccurate and portrays a completely different situation before the Nakba occurred. Hopefully will be corrected!

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palestine_Index_to_Villages_and_Settlements,_showing_Land_in_Jewish_Possession_as_at_31.12.44.jpg#/media/File:Palestine_Index_to_Villages_and_Settlements,_showing_Land_in_Jewish_Possession_as_at_31.12.44.jpg

Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine 70.27.128.229 (talk) 08:56, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

I fixed part of this, but there is a separate calculation issue. Please see below. Mistamystery (talk) 19:55, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Pre-1948 Private Land Ownership calculation issue

In the history section, it currently reads as follows:

"In 1947, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, the United Nations partitioned Mandatory Palestine, leading to the 1948 Palestine war and the creation of the State of Israel. At the expiration of the Mandate, privately held lands amounted to approximately 25% of the total territory. Palestinian Arabs, who made up about two-thirds of the population, and owned about 90% of privately held lands, while Jews, who made up between a quarter and a third of the population, owned about 7% of the total territory."

90% of 25% privately held lands equals 22.5% of total Mandatory territory. 7% of total mandatory territory is equal to 25% of privately held lands.

There is no way that Palestinian Arabs owned 90% of privately held lands, while Jews owned 25% of that same category. Need more sources to clear this up. Mistamystery (talk) 20:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

The 7% figure is definitely total land and widely reported. But those sources don't all explain who exactly owned/possessed the other 93%. I assume it's Arabs -- who else? -- and it certainly was Arabs before the Mandate, but it's not entirely clear. Did Britain take ownership of previously-Arab-owned/possessed lands from the Ottoman Empire, or did previously-Arab-owned/possessed lands remain under Arab ownership/possession during the Mandate? I don't know.

As for the two sources cited for that phrase in the article, Abu-Laban and Bakan say "Arabs" (not Palestinian Arabs) "owned" 90% of "the land" (not "private"). But Manna says "Arabs of Palestine" "possessed" (not "owned") 90% of "privately-owned land" (so not total land). I'm not entirely sure if they are agreeing or disagreeing, or talking about the same thing. It's possible that Arabs (not just Palestinian Arabs) owned 90% of the total land, and also that Palestinian Arabs possessed 90% of the privately-owned land -- i.e., the two authors are talking about two different things. It's also possible that Abu-Laban and Bakan just meant that Palestinian Arabs owned or possessed 90% of privately-owned land, and they just weren't careful in their wording, i.e. the two authors are talking about the same thing and one of them is incorrect or inaccurate in their wording.

Here's another source (not used in this article) that was easy to pull because it's pullquoted in Mandatory Palestine:

It is not hard to understand the Palestinian Arab position. By 1947 the Arabs of Palestine constituted a two-thirds majority with over 1.2 million people, compared to 600,000 Jews in Palestine. Many towns and cities with Palestinian Arab majorities, like Haifa, were allotted to the Jewish state. Jaffa, though nominally part of the Arab state, was an isolated enclave surrounded by the Jewish state. Moreover, Arabs owned 94 percent of the total land area of Palestine and some 80 percent of the arable farmland of the country. Based on these facts, Palestinian Arabs refused to confer on the United Nations the authority to split their country and give half away.
— Eugene Rogan (2012). The Arabs: A History – Third Edition. Penguin. p. 321. ISBN 978-0-7181-9683-7.

Another huge wrinkle is the complexities of land ownership in Ottoman Palestine post-tanzimat, which involved legal methods of ownership and possession of land that was rather different from what is used in the West, e.g. tenants rights and so forth. Much of the land was technically owned by foreign (as in non-Palestinian) absentee landlords but inhabited, worked, possessed and controlled by local Palestinians, often for a very long time. That's too much too explain in this Wikipeida article, though there are other articles. (Although, I think the "arable farmland" point, which I've seen made by multiple sources in addition to Rogan above, should be added.)

More sources would certainly help resolve this. Alternatively, maybe it's better to just remove the 90% figure altogether, and just say the 7% figure. After all, for purposes of the Nakba, the "point" is that it went from 7% in 1947 to 78% by 1949. Levivich (talk) 20:36, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

There are plenty of counterfactuals or persistent misinterpretations that are considered by some to be the "point" of a public movement, message, or campaign. We don't need to give them the authority of unqualified restatement in wikpedia's voice.

If around 75% of land was owned by Britain, and this was handed over to the newly-formed Israeli state, it's natural that the latter would be 78% in 1949. It would definitely be misinformation to suggest that anything "went from" 7% to 78%; the combination of ("land privately held by Jewish Palestinians" + "state-held land in Mandatory Palestine") was around 80% in 1947, and ("land privately held by Jewish Israelis" + "state-held land in the new state of Israel") was around 80% in 1949. To be any more precise calls for a non-pointy source that uses consistent methodology to trace land ownership across the transition. – SJ + 04:35, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any source that says Britain handed over to Israel 75% of the land. I've seen many sources point out that the UN Partition plan allotted 55% to Israel and Israel took more than was allotted (taking half of the 45% that was allotted to Palestinians). I've seen almost every source I've read about Nakba point out that Jewish land ownership went from 7% or thereabouts before 1948 to 78% after 1948. Many of those sources are cited in the article. (The 90% figure, however, seems to be much more rare.) Levivich (talk) 05:47, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Casualties / Total Deaths of Palestinians

Does anyone have any information about the total number of Palestinians killed during the Nakba?

Some info I found here (of uncertain reliability): "According to the data documentation of www.palestineremembered.com, Israelis controlled 774 towns and villages during the Nakba. They destroyed 531 Palestinian towns and villages. Israeli forces atrocities also include more than 70 massacres against Palestinians killing 15,000 Palestinians during Nakba time." -Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/nakba%2060.pdf

IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Culprits of massacres should be specified

In Nakba#1949–1966 the sentence "Some two thousand Palestinians were massacred at the Siege of Tel al-Zaatar in 1976, during the Lebanese Civil War." suggests that Israelis massacred them, as the massacre is listed in the context of smaller-scale Israeli massacres, while this one was committed without Israeli involvement.

I don't think mentioning Lebanese civil war is enough to not be weasel-wordy, and the culprit should be explicitly specified. The same with later Sabra and Shatila massacres (in the next section), though Israelis did support the Lebanese militia which committed those massacres, which could be mentioned. Alternative is to explicitly define Nakba as mistreatment of Palestinians by both Israel/Zionists and Arab countries/factions, but I don't think this is the common usage and the edits I'm suggesting are far less drastic. Polystratus (talk) 19:06, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I made an edit addressing the Tel al-Zaatar massacre's responsibility. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:03, 22 December 2023 (UTC)