Talk:Palestinians

Property Losses Estimate

The last sentence of the header reads: "According to Perry Anderson, it is estimated that half of the population in the Palestinian territories are refugees and that they have collectively suffered approximately US$300 billion in property losses due to Israeli confiscations, at 2008–09 prices."

However, the *total* national wealth of neighbouring Jordan (population >10M, greater than 2x the current population of the Gaza Strip + the West Bank) is $146 billion, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_wealth. Even if property in Israel is substantially more valuable per square foot (possible), Israel's total national wealth is only $1,046 billion or $1.05 trillion (same source), and Israel is an unusually stable/rich/technologically innovative country by Middle Eastern standards so the land in an independent Palestine has no guarantee to be as valuable as land in the state of Israel.

I submit that this sentence should be removed as not credible, or at least have some sort of qualification added to it providing context (such as the total wealth of neighbouring Jordan).

Please remove that specific part of the introduction .

Hey .

I just want to say what has already been said : remove the "are an Arab" part at the introduction.

The editor who forced this line , Skitash , is clearly an Arabist . A few days ago : he blatantly removed a crucial paragraph which takes into account the Levantine , non-Arab origins of Palestinians which explains what is exactly meant by Palestinians being an Arab group , and also the Pre-Islamic history of the region , and has the guts to say "unsourced for quite a while" , when that line has been around for years with a source .

It's clear such edits of this nature are not meant to discuss the identity, heritage , and origins of Palestinians on a holistic , unprejudiced basis , but to shed away Palestinian peoplehood in favour of Arabist views (which might also be shared by Zionists , which is exactly what they are looking for , so they can deny Palestinian existence and legitimacy ) . The very least thing we need now is saying that Canaanites , Israelites , and other semitic groups , are "Arabs"  ; confusing Arabian origin with Arabs , who didn't exist before Islam (Peter Webb , Imagining the Arabs) , let alone the Bronze Age .

I repeat : please delete this line . It is gratuitous , and misleading , and is making it seem the article is a circular argument , rather than an encyclopedic entry . 176.44.52.30 (talk) 21:10, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

It does seem repetitive as it is mentioned twice, in differing contexts. We shouldn't need to mention the fact Palestinians are Arab twice in one sentence. JJNito197 (talk) 22:42, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

An Arabist is someone who studies Arabic civilization or language. Selfstudier (talk) 23:04, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi . Sorry for the late reply ... got busy .

Anyway : I meant an Nasserist-Arab Nationalist , not Arabist in either the Academic , or the 1970s Political sense of Arabo-philes.

The problem with the introduction doesn't need to be reiterated , by saying "An Arab" right from the get-go  : we are in effect de-contextualizing the uniqueness of a national group , in favor of appealing to common prejudice of "Arab" referring to desert-nomads , or a synonym for "Arabian" .

Many , I would dare say most , people still can't comprehend that "Arab" isn't a racial identity , but one whose essence lies in traditions and language independent of phenotypical appearance , or biological ancestry . Let's look at a most obvious example , which is Egyptians . They are "Arabs" , yet they are still thier own nation independent of the label "Arab": just like saying "Hispanic" , but one could be Argentinian or Mexican . It is one thing to state some ethnographical classifications ; it's another to imagine monoliths , and forcing groups into it .

This is the impression of what an average reader would get from the keyword "an arab" introduced so early ; which defeats the whole purpose of the article enlightening readers about Palestinians and thier identity and roots , ending up instead appealing to Zionist or Nasserist-Arabist POV ( In fact : the so-called "Impartial" Israeli-Wikipedia uses such similar wording ) .

I know this might seem like a minor edit , but some people don't have the luxury of time , or developed the ability to speed-read Wikipedia articles . Is it really worth discussing the problematic impressions stemming from this edit any further ?. Sources might be "right" and valid , but sometimes they are included or placed in wrong places .

..I said my piece , just hope the problem with the edit is clear , besides redundancy . 176.44.92.130 (talk) 14:03, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 October 2023

{The definition of Palestinians on Wikipedia is currently - "descending from people who have inhabited the region of Palistine over the millennia." The references shown are all dated after 1970. Noah Webster 1828 has zero reference of A Palistine, therfore I submit that "over the millennia" be removed.} 2600:1009:B1C1:2624:584B:6B01:FC78:6725 (talk) 20:40, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

The reference point you make is not so much the issue as is an editor mangled the intro at some point to make the line about “over the millennia” - which previously appeared in the middle of the sentence. Now at the end of the paragraph it comes across as too editorial and may need to be reverted. Mistamystery (talk) 20:35, 25 October 2023 (UTC)

Seconding that it comes across biased to me as well, as written. Miladragon3 (talk) 02:14, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

I restored back to previous wording per Mistamystery. "Millennia" is otherwise well sourced. JJNito197 (talk) 07:41, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Regarding Muslim immigration

In Origins:

For several centuries during the Ottoman period the population in Palestine declined and fluctuated between 150,000 and 250,000 inhabitants, and it was only in the 19th century that a rapid population growth began to occur. This growth was aided by the immigration of Egyptians (during the reigns of Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha) and Algerians (following Abdelkader El Djezaïri's revolt) in the first half of the 19th century, and the subsequent immigration of Algerians, Bosnians, and Circassians during the second half of the century.

According to https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1949-3606.2012.00172.x

Between the years of 1871 and 1922, the land settled amounted to 360,431 dunams in the new Arab villages, with an additional 185,000 dunams by 1945.According to the same estimate, using settlements identified by this research, therewere 66,940 (6.5% of the Muslim population of Palestine) Muslim residents in 230 hamlets and villages that had been established between 1871 and 1945. Around a dozen of the villages were established by people who came from outside Palestine(Egyptians, Bosnians, Algerians, Circassians, Iranians, and Shiites from Lebanon).Some 25% of the villages were settled by sedenterizing the Bedouin, mainly in Northern Palestine, while an additional 25% were settled by Arabs from highland villages who moved down to the coastal plain because of population pressures in theirmother village. Another 39 villages were constructed on lands belonging to the sultanor absentee effendi landlords.Just over half the new villages were constructed on ruinsof old settlements, illustrating the degree to which the expansion of Muslim ruralsettlement in the Ottoman and British periods represented a return to areas that hadbeen settled in prior eras

The article should be clearer and say that there were around 67k Muslim immigrants into Palestine at the time, which only accounted for around 7% of Muslim Palestinians. According to Demographic history of Palestine (region) there were around 300k Palesitnians by 1800. Drsmartypants(Smarty M.D) (talk) 20:54, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

2020 Genetic study

To avoid repeatedly reverting each other, I want to discuss the genetic study here. The source is https://english.tau.ac.il/news/canaanites, and seems to be referring to this study: https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30487-6.pdf. The current phrasing in the article is "Palestinians share a strong genetic link to the ancient Canaanites."

There are two issues with the current phrasing:

1. The source never says "Palestinians". The press release says "modern-day groups in Lebanon, Israel and Jordan share a large part of their ancestry, in most cases more than half, with the people who lived in the Levant during the Bronze Age, more than 3,000 years ago." The journal article itself says: "we assembled a dataset of 93 individuals from 9 sites across present-day Israel, Jordan, and Lebanon, all demonstrating Canaanite material culture", and " Finally, we show that the genomes of present-day groups geographically and historically linked to the Bronze Age Levant, including the great majority of present-day Jewish groups and Levantine Arabic-speaking groups, are consistent with having 50% or more of their ancestry from people related to groups who lived in the Bronze Age Levant and the Chalcolithic Zagros". It is unclear whether any Palestinians were even sampled in this study. Therefore, using it to infer the characteristics of Palestinians is inappropriate.
2. Even if Palestinians are included in this work, to list them alone risks creating the impression that they are unique in this ancestry, whereas in reality all of the modern groups residing in the area seem to share the same genetic link. This is an important difference in trying to understand the Palestinian's origins relative to their neighbors.

Therefore, the study should either be introduced with an accurate phrasing (referring to all modern Levant residents), or removed altogether. okedem (talk) 22:06, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Per the page notice, the article permits no more than one revert per 24 hours, and you reverted multiple editors twice. Unless you want to risk getting blocked, I suggest undoing the last revert and discussing further here for consensus. Duvasee (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm confused by your response. I did revert my edit as soon as I saw the admin message about 1RR. Then I came to discuss here. okedem (talk) 23:40, 18 November 2023 (UTC)