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).

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)

Please note that Palestinians are represented separately from other Arabic-speaking groups in several figures. In Figure 5, Palestinians score higher by both measures on "Megiddo_MLBA+Iran_ChL" than all the represented Jewish groups except Iranian Jews. In Figure S4, Megiddo_MLBA and Iran_ChL are separated; we see that by one measure Palestinians score the same as Ashkenazi Jews on Megiddo_MLBA and well above other Jewish groups, while by the other measure Palestinians score well above all Jewish groups on Megiddo_MLBA. I believe it is reasonable to summarise what the article says about Palestinians. I don't agree that the existing sentence is unsupported by the article and I don't agree that the sentence suggests Palestinians are unique in this respect. If we want to turn it into a comparison by, for example including Jews and Bedouin, that would be fine but we would first have to decide whether the article is worth that much coverage. Zero^talk 04:46, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for tracking down that mention of the Palestinians and correcting me. As it only appears in the figures, rather than the text, I missed it.

Still, to me the bigger issue is the impression we're giving. If we say "Palestinians have this connection", it might or might not be unique - we're not telling the reader that, but we're not saying otherwise. However, we're saying this right after talking about "Arabization", implying the Palestinians might not have been originally Arab, but became such by conquest and adoption of language, religion and customs. Presenting the study at that point strengthens the reader's impression that Palestinians were local to Palestine, and then got Arabized. But the study tells us that most Arab groups share very similar levels of genetic connection to the Canaanites, and so this study cannot be used to say whether Palestinians originally were or were not an Arab people. That is - in the context in which it appears, the sentence does end up giving a false impression. okedem (talk) 05:50, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

You're talking about populations as if they have single origins - all populations are simply a mishmash and hodgepodge of genetic influences. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:30, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

When I say Arab origin, I include partial origins. Just like the article uses the term in "independent of the existence of any actual Arabian origins".

The article currently lists the Palestinians' genetic link, but then goes on to mention the Israelites, without any mention of their genetic link. In fact, it confusingly says "The Israelites emerged later as a separate ethnoreligious group in the region" - leaving the reader in the dark about the existence of a link between them and the Canaanites. Furthermore, by listing the Palestinians, and then saying "Israelites emerged later", an ignorant reader might believe there was a clear Palestinian group at a time preceding the Israelites - a nonsense conclusion, but a plausible one for the uninformed reader. okedem (talk) 15:44, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

I've been trying to think about how to properly phrase the text, but the basic issue is that discussing Palestinians when talking about antiquity is simply anachronistic and confusing. We can add a section about genetics, that would give a lot more context, but as is that single sentence is out of place. I'm removing it for now. okedem (talk) 04:39, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong in the phrasing of the sentence, and a whole section on genetics seems a bit much. Duvasee (talk) 20:21, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Duvasee, right now it states that the Palestinians have a genetic link to Canaanites; in the next sentence it mentions the Israelites "emerged", but says nothing about their link. The next sentence discusses the Jews, but again makes no mention of their link. A reasonable reader will assume only the Palestinians have such a link. Either mention the link for all, or for none. okedem (talk) 22:53, 20 November 2023 (UTC)