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)

Nakba definition

Nakba definition short quotes

Short quotes from core sources describing Nakba

Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, p. 5 "expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian population", p. 122 "relatively swift collapse and disintegration of Palestinian society" Abu-Laban 2022, p. 511 "violently forced to flee ... becoming stateless refugees ... dramatic disintegration of a society and a way of life.", p. 512 "occupation, land usurpation, displacement and being forced to live as refugees ... an ongoing continuity of trauma" Manna 2022, p. 7 "severed connections among the Palestinian people and caused the loss of a homeland" Sayigh 2022, p. 287 n.1 "expulsion ... ‘Israel’ replacing ‘Palestine’ in official recognition ... dispersed among multiple ‘host’ countries" Gutman 2021, p. 2 "extensive loss and displacement", p. 4 "loss in the 1948 war ... massive displacement and dispossession" Shenhav 2019, p. 61 "expulsion and displacement ... ban on return to homes and families immediately after the war and in fact to this date ... a formal act of ethnic cleansing" Wermenbol 2021, p. 4 n. 21 "loss of “the homeland,” ... disintegration of society ... frustration of national aspirations ... destruction of Palestinian culture", p. 12 "erasure of Palestinians, along with our history, language and stories" Slater 2020, p. 81 "massacres and expulsions of the Palestinians" Khalidi 2020, p. 60 "Palestinian polity had been devastated and most of its society uprooted ... forced from their homes and lost their lands and property ... made refugees ... violent transformation, Israel controlled 78 percent of the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, and now ruled over the 160,000 Palestinian Arabs ... seismic upheaval", p. 76 "transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority ... systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war ... theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel", p. 82 "a world turned utterly upside down ... profound social disruption ... destitution—the loss of homes, jobs, and deeply rooted communities. Villagers lost their land and livelihoods and urbanites their properties and capital ... shattered the power of the country’s notables together with their economic base ... Social upheavals in much of the Arab world, often triggered by military-backed revolutions, would replace the notable class with younger leaders drawn from more diverse social strata. The Nakba produced the same result among the Palestinians.", p. 82 "an enduring touchstone of identity ... an abrupt collective disruption, a trauma ... At the same time as the Nakba provided a new focus for their collective identity, it broke up families and communities, dividing and dispersing Palestinians among multiple countries and distinct sovereignties .... subject to three different political regimes ... dispersal", pp. 88-89 "political formations ... irrevocably shattered" Bashir 2018, Introduction "their defeat, their ethnic cleansing from Palestine,2 and the loss of their homeland ... having become a people living predominantly as refugees outside their land and as a fragmented minority living under occupation in their own land ... the destruction of hundreds of villages and urban neighborhoods, along with the cultural, economic, political, and social fabric of the Palestinian people ... the violent and irreparable disruption of the modern development of Palestinian culture, society, and national consciousness ... the ongoing colonization of Palestine that continues to the present through colonial practices and polices such as Jewish settlements, illegal land acquisition, imposing siege on Gaza, and the evacuation of villages ... largely miserable conditions of statelessness, occupation, fragmentation, rightlessness, and dispossession ... an explicitly continuing present ... aftermath of suffering and political weakness" Nashef 2018, p. 6 "a multitude of emotions, namely, defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, insecurity, lack of statehood and the continual struggle for survival ... a fall into chaos, damage and complete destruction ... The shared story of exile and pain ... the lost paradise ... the loss of the homeland and dignity" Al-Hardan 2016, p. xi "the dispossession of more than half of historic Palestine’s population ... annihilation of at least four-fifths of Palestinian society ... the obliteration of at least 531 villages and eleven urban quarters", p. 2 "destruction and uprooting of the major part of Palestinian society" Rashed 2014, p. 18 "‘transfer’, denial, elimination and discrimination" Lentin 2013, ch. 2 "‘ethnic cleansing’ ... dispossessed Palestinians ... ‘internal refugees’ ... live side by side with those who expelled them, took over their lands and properties, reconceptualised them as ‘Israeli Arabs’, and continue to deprive them of their rights ... foundational event for the Palestinians, a memory and a narrative ... a series of catastrophic events whose influence continues to the present" Sayigh 2013, p. 52 "ongoing source of suffering for the Palestinian people ... displacement ... continues today to disconnect them from their homeland, their communities, and their history. The loss of recognition of their rights to people- and state-hood ... an exceptional vulnerability to violence", p. 55, "not only severed Palestinians’ connection with a territory named Palestine, but also with their history and identity" Masalha 2012, p. 1 "uprooting ... dismemberment and de-Arabisation of historic Palestine ... the name ‘Palestine’ was wiped off the map ... the most traumatic event in the history of the Palestinian people ... rupture of 1948 and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine are central to both the Palestinian society of today and Palestinian social history and collective identity. Resisting ethnic cleansing and politicide has been a key feature of the modern history of the Palestinians as a people.", p. 10 "both ‘politicide’ and ‘cultural genocide’ ... ethnic cleansing and politicide ... immediately followed by Nakba memoricide: the systematic erasure of the expelled Palestinians and their mini-holocaust from Israeli collective memory and the excision of their history and deeply rooted heritage in the land, and their destroyed villages and towns from Israeli official and popular history ... de-Arabisation of the land ... ‘toponymicide’: the erasure of ancient Palestinian place names and their replacement by newly coined Zionist Hebrew toponymy", p. 12 "the destruction of much of Palestinian society and the dispersal and fragmentation of the Palestinian people ... the crystallisation of a distinct and resistant Palestinian identity", p. 13 "the dispersal, disintegration and fragmentation of the Palestinian people ... a major division between the minority of Palestinians who remained inside Israel and the Palestinian refugees forced outside its borders" Milshtein 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 47 "The 1948 war ... the central event in modern Palestinian history and the core around which the Palestinians’ national identity crystallized ... lost about 77 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine ... the destruction of 418 Palestinian settlements ... displacement ... fled or were deported ... a bipolar symbol of concurrent destruction and building ... severely shocked the Palestinians ... almost brought about their disappearance as a people ... also consolidate their fledgling national identity ... a tremendous and startling explosion that has ripped up a deeply rooted Palestinian society, away from its natural and harmonious historical course, and imposed on it a life of displacement or exile ... a national disaster ... accompanied by military defeat and loss of territory ... an unprecedented threat to their existence as a people, resulting in the dispersion of almost half the Palestinian population ... loss of hope for national sovereignty; destruction of the social, economic, political, and cultural fabric; and above all, with the fading and near disappearance of Palestinian national identity" Ram 2009, pp. 366-367 "their society was destroyed ... expelled ... lost their country and the opportunity for statehood ... uprooted and went into exile ... turned into refugees ... villages were destroyed ... those of them who remained in the state were subjected to a military regime (though they received full formal citizenship). The Arab states annexed the rest of the territories of Palestine ... their national movement was extinct for decades" Shlaim 2009, p. x "dispossession and dispersal ... became refugees. The name Palestine was wiped off the map ... not merely an injustice but a profound national trauma" Webman 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 29 "the defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, dependence, insecurity, lack of statehood, and fight for survival of the Palestinians" Sa'di 2007, p. 3 "devastation of Palestinian society ... became refugees. Their fate hung on the decisions of politicians in the countries to which they fled or bureaucrats in international agencies. The minority of Palestinians ... who remained behind became nominal citizens of the newly established Jewish state, subject to a separate system of military administration by a government that also confiscated the bulk of their lands ... repressive regime of the Hashemites ... uncaring Egyptian administration ... military occupation ... A society disintegrated, a people dispersed, and a complex and historically changing but taken for granted communal life was ended violently", p. 8 "many things at once: the uprooting of people from their homeland, the destruction of the social fabric that bound them for so long, and the frustration of national aspirations ... a constant reminder of failings and of injustice.", p. 9 "mostly about fear, helplessness, violent uprooting, and humiliation. It embodies the unexpected and unstoppable destruction that left them in disarray, politically, economically, and psychologically ... the destruction in a single blow of all the worlds in which Palestinians had lived ... a new era dominated by estrangement, and often poverty" Pappe 2006, p. 154 "not only houses or fields were destroyed in the Nakba but a whole community disappeared, with all its intricate social networks and cultural achievements" Schulz 2003, p. 1 "immediate diasporisation of the Arab Palestinians ... a new ‘wandering identity’ and the Palestinians became a ‘refugee nation’ ... suffering caused by dispersal, exile, alienation and denial", p. 2 "root cause of the Palestinian diaspora", p. 24 "the flight and the fighting ... ‘root structure’ in the narrative of Palestinian identity ... forceful process ... suffering ... constitutive of a specific Palestinian identity ... birth of the Palestinian nation ... beginning of a story" Sa'di 2002, p. 175 "changed their life beyond recognition ... dispersion [Shatat] ... turned into refugees ... among many other things, the loss of the homeland, the disintegration of society, the frustration of national aspirations, and the beginning of a hasty process of destruction of their culture"

Nakba definition full quotes

Full quotes from core sources describing Nakba

Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, p. 5 "But these lands became free only after the ethnic cleansing and eventual decimation of indigenous populations in North America and after the displacement of the peasants through aggressive land purchase in Palestine and the expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian population during the 1948 Nakba (Sabbagh-Khoury 2022d)." Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, p. 122 "Moreover, it tends at best toward a partial discussion of the causes of the relatively swift collapse and disintegration of Palestinian society during the Nakba." Abu-Laban 2022, p. 511 "The Nakba—Arabic for catastrophe—is the term used to capture the events of 1948 which led to over 80 per cent of the Palestinian population being violently forced to flee, and becoming stateless refugees in and outside historic Palestine. The Nakba is also a marker in what Abu-Luhod and Sa’di call ‘Palestinian time’.8 This is because in Palestinian collective memory ‘after 1948’ marks a dramatic disintegration of a society and a way of life." Abu-Laban 2022, p. 512 "For Palestinians, occupation, land usurpation, displacement and being forced to live as refugees have continued from 1948 until present times. The Nakba has in effect been an ongoing continuity of trauma." Manna 2022, p. 7 "The Nakba was like an earthquake that severed connections among the Palestinian people and caused the loss of a homeland where Palestinians had lived for centuries." Sayigh 2022, p. 287 n.1 "The Nakba [‘catastrophe’] is the term Palestinians use to describe their expulsion by Zionist forces in 1947–9, with ‘Israel’ replacing ‘Palestine’ in official recognition, and the Palestinians dispersed among multiple ‘host’ countries." Gutman 2021, p. 2 "The Jewish majority celebrates the country’s formative War of Independence or War of Liberation as a national holiday on, or close to, 5 Iyar in the Hebrew calendar (which corresponds to May 14 in 1948), while the Palestinians mourn their extensive loss and displacement in the 1948 war, which they term al-Nakba (the catastrophe, in Arabic), on May 15." Gutman 2021, p. 4 "When Israelis celebrate the War of Independence as a miraculous victory against all odds that resulted in many casualties (1 percent of the population), Palestinians mark their loss in the 1948 war, which resulted in their massive displacement and dispossession, also known as al-Nakba." Shenhav 2019, p. 61 "In recent years, historiography has abandoned the old question that sought to clarify how many Palestinians were expelled and how many of them fled on their own initiative or at the initiative of their leaders. This has been futile and removed from the center of historiography. Today many historians, Jews and Palestinians, provide a revisionist formulation in which the Nakba is not just the expulsion and displacement of 1948, but especially the ban on return to homes and families immediately after the war and in fact to this date. According to this interpretation, the sovereign decision of the Israeli government to prevent the return of hundreds of thousands of people to their homes after the war is a formal act of ethnic cleansing." Wermenbol 2021, p. 4 n. 21 "The Nakba not only represents the loss of “the homeland,” but also “the disintegration of society, the frustration of national aspirations, and the beginning of a hasty process of destruction of Palestinian culture.” Ahmad H. Sa’di, “Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity,” Israel Studies 7:2 (2002): 175." Wermenbol 2021, p. 12 "For Palestinian-Israelis, the law not only constitutes an attempt to erase their past, but equally is, as Joint List leader and Hadash Chairman Ayman Odeh stated, “Point of proof that the Nakba – the erasure of Palestinians, along with our history, language and stories – is not a single historical event. It is a continuing phenomenon.”" Slater 2020, p. 81 "However, the massacres and expulsions of the Palestinians—today widely known as the Nakba (the Catastrophe)—were an entirely different matter." Khalidi 2020, p. 60 "WHAT HAPPENED IS, of course, now well known. By the summer of 1949, the Palestinian polity had been devastated and most of its society uprooted. Some 80 percent of the Arab population of the territory that at war’s end became the new state of Israel had been forced from their homes and lost their lands and property. At least 720,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinians were made refugees. Thanks to this violent transformation, Israel controlled 78 percent of the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, and now ruled over the 160,000 Palestinian Arabs who had been able to remain, barely one-fifth of the prewar Arab population. This seismic upheaval—the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, as Palestinians call it—grounded in the defeat of the Great Revolt in 1939 and willed by the Zionist state-in-waiting, was also caused by factors that were on vivid display in the story my father told me: foreign interference and fierce inter-Arab rivalries. These problems were compounded by intractable Palestinian internal differences that endured after the defeat of the revolt, and by the absence of modern Palestinian state institutions. The Nakba was only finally made possible, however, by massive global shifts during World War II." Khalidi 2020, p. 76 "THE NAKBA REPRESENTED a watershed in the history of Palestine and the Middle East. It transformed most of Palestine from what it had been for well over a millennium—a majority Arab country—into a new state that had a substantial Jewish majority.40 This transformation was the result of two processes: the systematic ethnic cleansing of the Arab-inhabited areas of the country seized during the war; and the theft of Palestinian land and property left behind by the refugees as well as much of that owned by those Arabs who remained in Israel. There would have been no other way to achieve a Jewish majority, the explicit aim of political Zionism from its inception. Nor would it have been possible to dominate the country without the seizures of land." Khalidi 2020, p. 82 "For these many reasons, in the bleak new reality after the Nakba, more than a million Palestinians faced a world turned utterly upside down. Wherever they were, whether inside Palestine or not, they experienced profound social disruption. For the majority, this meant destitution—the loss of homes, jobs, and deeply rooted communities. Villagers lost their land and livelihoods and urbanites their properties and capital, while the Nakba shattered the power of the country’s notables together with their economic base. The discredited mufti would never regain his prewar authority, nor would others of his class. Social upheavals in much of the Arab world, often triggered by military-backed revolutions, would replace the notable class with younger leaders drawn from more diverse social strata. The Nakba produced the same result among the Palestinians." Khalidi 2020, p. 82 "For all Palestinians, no matter their different circumstances, the Nakba formed an enduring touchstone of identity, one that has lasted through several generations. It marked an abrupt collective disruption, a trauma that every Palestinian shares in one way or another, personally or through their parents or grandparents. At the same time as the Nakba provided a new focus for their collective identity, it broke up families and communities, dividing and dispersing Palestinians among multiple countries and distinct sovereignties. Even those still inside Palestine, whether refugees or not, were subject to three different political regimes: Israel, Egypt (for those in the Gaza Strip), and Jordan (for those on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem). This condition of dispersal, shitat in Arabic, has afflicted the Palestinian people ever since." Khalidi 2020, pp. 88-89 "The few political formations such as trade unions and other non-elite groupings like the Istiqlal Party that had developed in Mandatory Palestine were irrevocably shattered by the Nakba. The only exception was the remnant of the Palestinian Communist Party, which before 1948 had a largely Arab membership and a mainly Jewish leadership. Bashir 2018, Introduction "For the Palestinians, the Nakba is not merely about their defeat, their ethnic cleansing from Palestine,2 and the loss of their homeland, nor even about having become a people living predominantly as refugees outside their land and as a fragmented minority living under occupation in their own land. The Nakba also represents the destruction of hundreds of villages and urban neighborhoods, along with the cultural, economic, political, and social fabric of the Palestinian people. It is the violent and irreparable disruption of the modern development of Palestinian culture, society, and national consciousness.3 It is the ongoing colonization of Palestine that continues to the present through colonial practices and polices such as Jewish settlements, illegal land acquisition, imposing siege on Gaza, and the evacuation of villages.4" Bashir 2018, Introduction "By contrast, most Palestinians live under largely miserable conditions of statelessness, occupation, fragmentation, rightlessness, and dispossession. Indicating the constitutive centrality of the Nakba in Palestinian politics, society, and collective memory, Ahmad H. Sa’di claims that the Nakba has become for the Palestinians what the French historian Pierre Nora called les lieux de memoire.32 The Nakba is an explicitly continuing present. Its consequences as well as the eliminatory colonial ideas and practices that informed it are still unfolding, being deployed, and affecting contemporary Palestinian life.33 Its aftermath of suffering and political weakness affects almost every Palestinian and Palestinian family, along with the Palestinian collective, on a near-daily basis.34" Nashef 2018, p. 6 "To the Palestinians, the Nakba evokes a multitude of emotions, namely, defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, insecurity, lack of statehood and the continual struggle for survival whether within the borders of historic Palestine or in the diaspora (Webman 29). Nakba can also indicate a fall into chaos, damage and complete destruction, as the descriptions associated with it are borrowed from the dictionary of natural disasters (Ghanim 27). The shared story of exile and pain, which began in 1948, began to reconstruct a collective identity for the Palestinians, gradually replacing old identities, such as family, religion, village or city (Webman 30)." Nashef 2018, p. 6 "In the collective memory and narratives that followed 1948, Palestine was often remembered as the lost paradise, “stories of the sweetest grapes and figs, the most beautiful orange and lemon trees, the amazing seashores,” while the Nakba invokes the loss of the homeland and dignity (Hammer 50)." Al-Hardan 2016, p. xi "One of the beginnings of the research project that underpins this book is in the Nakba, or catastrophe, that resulted from the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestine in May 1948. This catastrophe saw the dispossession of more than half of historic Palestine’s population, some 800,000 people, the overwhelming majority between March and October 1948. This annihilation of at least four-fifths of Palestinian society as it had once existed in the conquered territories, which unfolded from the end of 1947 to the beginning of 1949 and afterward, took place alongside the obliteration of at least 531 villages and eleven urban quarters (Pappe 2006a).1 Reclaiming and claiming history, Indigenous scholars have argued, is an essential part of decolonization (Smith 2012)." Al-Hardan 2016, p. 2 "The Nakba, or catastrophe, is the Arabic word that Palestinians and Arabs more generally use to refer to the establishment of the state of Israel on Palestine in May 1948 and the resulting destruction and uprooting of the major part of Palestinian society (AbuLughod and Sa’di 2007)." Rashed 2014, p. 18 "The fact that these Palestinians are Israeli citizens means that we could view these policies from a minority rights perspective, as the acts of a selectively ‘repressive’ government. This does not preclude individual victims experiencing this as genocidal. Indeed, if we take the view that the Nakba – including the ‘transfer’, denial, elimination and discrimination against Palestinians – is still taking place as part of a process of settler colonialism, the relevance to Genocide Studies cannot be ignored." Lentin 2013, ch. 2 "Even though it is not the only act of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in modern history, the Nakba is unique in many ways, in that the dispossessed Palestinians, particularly those ‘internal refugees’ (Masalha 2005) who remained in Palestine, live side by side with those who expelled them, took over their lands and properties, reconceptualised them as ‘Israeli Arabs’, and continue to deprive them of their rights by the prohibition of land ownership on all but three per cent of publicly owned lands." Lentin 2013, ch. 2 "Not unlike the Holocaust for Jewish people, which changed the condition of modernity, the Nakba is a foundational event for the Palestinians, a memory and a narrative standing for a series of catastrophic events whose influence continues to the present." Sayigh 2013, p. 52 "The interview quoted above conveys the immensity of the Nakba and its continuation as an ongoing source of suffering for the Palestinian people. The Nakba is the historical circumstance which caused the displacement of the Palestinians, and continues today to disconnect them from their homeland, their communities, and their history. The loss of recognition of their rights to people- and state-hood created by the Nakba has led to an exceptional vulnerability to violence, as their desperate current situation in Syria shows." Sayigh 2013, p. 55, "The Nakba of 1948 not only severed Palestinians’ connection with a territory named Palestine, but also with their history and identity." Masalha 2012, p. 1 "1948 was the year of the Palestine Nakba (Catastrophe), the uprooting of the Palestinians and the dismemberment and de-Arabisation of historic Palestine. In the course of the 1948 war and immediate post-Nakba period the name ‘Palestine’ was wiped off the map. In 2012 Palestinians commemorate the 64th anniversary of the Nakba, which is a key date in Palestinian collective memory and the most traumatic event in the history of the Palestinian people. The rupture of 1948 and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine are central to both the Palestinian society of today and Palestinian social history and collective identity. Resisting ethnic cleansing and politicide has been a key feature of the modern history of the Palestinians as a people." Masalha 2012, p. 10 "The work also, crucially, argues that the Palestine Nakba is an example of both ‘politicide’ and ‘cultural genocide’ (see below). The ethnic cleansing and politicide of 1948 were immediately followed by Nakba memoricide: the systematic erasure of the expelled Palestinians and their mini-holocaust from Israeli collective memory and the excision of their history and deeply rooted heritage in the land, and their destroyed villages and towns from Israeli official and popular history. One of the key tools of the de-Arabisation of the land has been ‘toponymicide’: the erasure of ancient Palestinian place names and their replacement by newly coined Zionist Hebrew toponymy." Masalha 2012, p. 12 "The trauma of the Nakba affected Palestinian national identity in two contradictory ways. On the one hand the Nakba led to the destruction of much of Palestinian society and the dispersal and fragmentation of the Palestinian people. But, on the other hand, following the encounter with and rejection by neighbouring Arab states, the Nakba also led to the crystallisation of a distinct and resistant Palestinian identity (Litvak 2009: 103–11)." Masalha 2012, p. 13 "The Nakba led to the dispersal, disintegration and fragmentation of the Palestinian people and to a major division between the minority of Palestinians who remained inside Israel and the Palestinian refugees forced outside its borders; today these are numbered in millions." Milshtein 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 47 "The 1948 war—or the Nakba (the disaster, catastrophe) in Palestinian terminology—is the central event in modern Palestinian history and the core around which the Palestinians’ national identity crystallized.1 The Palestinians lost about 77 percent of the territory of Mandatory Palestine and witnessed the destruction of 418 Palestinian settlements2 and the displacement of 500,000 to 650,000 of their fellowmen, who fled or were deported.3 The Nakba embodies a bipolar symbol of concurrent destruction and building. It severely shocked the Palestinians and has, in their view, almost brought about their disappearance as a people. It did, however, also consolidate their fledgling national identity. The Palestinians describe the Nakba as a tremendous and startling explosion that has ripped up a deeply rooted Palestinian society, away from its natural and harmonious historical course, and imposed on it a life of displacement or exile. They view it as a national disaster, not only because it was accompanied by military defeat and loss of territory, but principally because it embodied an unprecedented threat to their existence as a people, resulting in the dispersion of almost half the Palestinian population. The Nakba also went hand in hand with loss of hope for national sovereignty; destruction of the social, economic, political, and cultural fabric; and above all, with the fad ing and near disappearance of Palestinian national identity." Ram 2009, pp. 366-367 "What Jewish-Israelis label their “War of Independence” is called by the Palestinians “Al Nakba” – The Disaster.1 For the Jews in Israel, 1948 is the historical turning point in which their state was established and their sovereignty constituted. For the Palestinians, the opposite is the case: 1948 is the point at which their society was destroyed, a large part of them expelled, and they lost their country and the opportunity for statehood. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were uprooted and went into exile outside the boundaries of the state and turned into refugees in the surrounding states. Hundreds of their villages were destroyed and those of them who remained in the state were subjected to a military regime (though they received full formal citizenship). The Arab states annexed the rest of the territories of Palestine that had been allotted by the United Nations resolution 181 to the Palestinian Arab state and their national movement was extinct for decades (on the Palestinian history and Palestinian perspective see Sa’di and Abu-Lughod 2007; Farsoun and Aruri 2006)." Shlaim 2009, p. x "As a result of the creation of Israel, the Palestinians suffered dispossession and dispersal. Over 700,000 Palestinians, roughly half of the indigenous Arab population, became refugees. The name Palestine was wiped off the map. This outcome of the war constituted not merely an injustice but a profound national trauma, a catastrophe or al-Nakba, as it is called in Arabic. Webman 2009 (in Litvak 2009), p. 29 "The Nakba represented the defeat, displacement, dispossession, exile, dependence, insecurity, lack of statehood, and fight for survival of the Palestinians." Sa'di 2007, p. 3 "The Nakba: The 1948 War that led to the creation of the State of Israel also resulted in the devastation of Palestinian society. At least 80 percent of the Palestinians who lived in the major part of Palestine upon which Israel was established—more than 77 percent of Palestine’s territory—became refugees.1 Their fate hung on the decisions of politicians in the countries to which they fled or bureaucrats in international agencies. The minority of Palestinians—anywhere from 60,000 to 156,000, depending on the sources—who remained behind became nominal citizens of the newly established Jewish state, subject to a separate system of military administration by a government that also confiscated the bulk of their lands. The Palestinians in the West Bank, whether refugees from other parts of Palestine or native to the area, came under the repressive regime of the Hashemites, the rulers of Jordan, while those residing in the Gaza Strip, bordering Egypt, came under an uncaring Egyptian administration. Then, in 1967, Israel brought both of these regions under military occupation (see Hadawi, 1967, 1988; I. Abu-Lughod, 1971; W. Khalidi, 1971; Said, 1979; Pappé, 2004). For Palestinians, the 1948 War led indeed to a “catastrophe.” A society disintegrated, a people dispersed, and a complex and historically changing but taken for granted communal life was ended violently. The Nakba has thus become, both in Palestinian memory and history, the demarcation line between two qualitatively opposing periods. After 1948, the lives of the Palestinians at the individual, community, and national level were dramatically and irreversibly changed." Sa'di 2007, p. 8 "The Nakba was many things at once: the uprooting of people from their homeland, the destruction of the social fabric that bound them for so long, and the frustration of national aspirations. The Nakba could also be part of an unsettling counter-history: a constant reminder of failings and of injustice." Sa'di 2007, p. 9 "For Palestinians, the Nakba was mostly about fear, helplessness, violent uprooting, and humiliation. It embodies the unexpected and unstoppable destruction that left them in disarray, politically, economically, and psychologically. If we agree with Nietzsche that every person’s or nation’s world consists of several worlds (Safranski 2002: 202), the Nakba meant the destruction in a single blow of all the worlds in which Palestinians had lived. For many, theirs was a dynamic, prosperous, and future-oriented society. The Nakba marked a new era dominated by estrangement, and often poverty. Nothing in their history or that of neighboring countries had prepared Palestinians to imagine such a catastrophe. The fact that the Nakba took place within a short period—a matter of months—made it hard to comprehend; there was little time to reflect." Pappe 2006, p. 154 "As in other places in Palestine, it is worthwhile to dwell a little on the local history of the village as it demonstrates how not only houses or fields were destroyed in the Nakba but a whole community disappeared, with all its intricate social networks and cultural achievements." Schulz 2003, p. 1 "One of the grim paradoxes of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is that the foundation of the state of Israel, intended to create a safe haven for the ‘archetypical’ Jewish diaspora, spelt the immediate diasporisation of the Arab Palestinians. The territorialisation of the Jewish diaspora spurred a new ‘wandering identity’ and the Palestinians became a ‘refugee nation’ (Siddiq 1995:87). To the Palestinians, the birth of Israel is thus remembered as the catastrophe, al-nakba, to imprint the suffering caused by dispersal, exile, alienation and denial." Schulz 2003, p. 2 "The nakba is the root cause of the Palestinian diaspora." Schulz 2003, p. 24 "As noted previously, the flight and the fighting are remembered as al-nakba, the catastrophe, a ‘root structure’ in the narrative of Palestinian identity. It is to this forceful process that the Palestinians trace their suffering, and the nakba is constitutive of a specific Palestinian identity. In narratives of identity the exodus is frequently given a ‘primordial’ quality. It is the birth of the Palestinian nation, it is the beginning of a story (R.Sayigh 1998)." Sa'di 2002, p. 175 "THE 1948 WAR RESULTED IN Al-Nakbah-the immense catastrophe-for the Palestinian people and changed their life beyond recognition. First and foremost, Al-Nakbah engendered the dispersion [Shatat]. Between 77 and 83 percent of the Palestinians who lived in the part of Palestine that later became Israel-i.e., 78 percent of Mandatory Palestine-were turned into refugees. Thus, for Palestinians, Al-Nakbah represents, among many other things, the loss of the homeland, the disintegration of society, the frustration of national aspirations, and the beginning of a hasty process of destruction of their culture."

Discussion (Nakba definition)

I went through most of the #Core sources (I don't have them all) and pulled quotes where they describe what "Nakba" is. (If anyone has sources to add to the core sources list, please do, and we can add quotes from those sources to this list.) The #Nakba definition short quotes list above has like just key words and phrases; #Nakba definition full quotes is there to provide context of the key words and phrases.

Currently, this Wikipedia article says in the first sentence that the Nakba was the loss of the Palestinian society and homeland in 1948, and the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs. I don't think that fully describes it, when looking at the quotes above. The "Components" section of this article says the Nakba encompasses the displacement, dispossession, statelessness, and fracturing of Palestinian society. That strikes me as a fuller description, but I still don't think it really covers all of it. (Both sentences are sourced to Webman 2009 and Sa'di 2002, both quoted above.)

I don't have any better language to suggest right now, but I'm going to read over the short quotes list and let it marinate, and I'll post something if I think of something, and I invite you all to do the same. Levivich (talk) 03:50, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

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I did a sort of word cloud thing. Below is a list of the various words that #Core sources use to describe Nakba, grouped by concept, and which core sources use which words.

Word list

For the full citations, see #Core sources. For a list of all the words used by a particular source, see #Nakba definition short quotes. For the context of the quotes that these are pulled from, see #Nakba definition full quotes. Displacement, etc. displaced: Abu-Laban 2022, Gutman 2021, Shenhav 2019, Nashef 2018, Sayigh 2013, Milshtein 2009, Webman 2009 expelled: Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, Sayigh 2022, Shenhav 2019, Khalidi 2020, Slater 2020, Ram 2009 exiled: Nashef 2018, Ram 2009, Webman 2009, Schulz 2003 uprooted: Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Sa'di 2007 fled: Abu-Laban 2022, Milshtein 2009, Schulz 2003 dispersed: Sayigh 2022, Khalidi 2020, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Shlaim 2009, Sa'di 2007, Schulz 2003, Sa'di 2002 fragmented: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Masalha 2012 severed: Manna 2022, Sayigh 2013 'transfered': Rashed 2014 diasporisation: Schulz 2003 Violence, etc. violence: Abu-Laban 2022, Slater 2020, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Rashed 2014, Sayigh 2013, Webman 2009, Sa'di 2007, Schulz 2003 ethnic cleansing: Shenhav 2019, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Lentin 2013, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Pappe 2006 destruction of cities/villages/fields: Bashir 2018, Al-Hardan 2016, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Pappe 2006 pain/suffering: Nashef 2018, Bashir 2018, Schulz 2003 trauma: Abu-Laban 2022, Khalidi 2020, Masalha 2012, Shlaim 2009 fear and humiliation: Sa'di 2007 Political loss lost national aspirations: Wermenbol 2021, Milshtein 2009, Sa'di 2007 and 2002, Bashir 2018, Ram 2009 statelessness: Abu-Laban 2022, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Ram 2009, Webman 2009 political loss: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Milshtein 2009 loss of rights: Bashir 2018, Sayigh 2013, Lentin 2013 loss of self-governance: Khalidi 2020, Ram 2009, Sa'di 2007 Dispossession, etc. dispossession: Gutman 2021, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Al-Hardan 2016, Lentin 2013, Shlaim 2009, Webman 2009 loss of land: Abu-Laban 2022, Khalidi 2020, Khalidi 2020, Khalidi 2020, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Milshtein 2009 economic loss: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Milshtein 2009 Loss of society: Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, Abu-Laban 2022, Wermenbol 2021, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Al-Hardan 2016, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Ram 2009, Sa'di 2007, Pappe 2006, Sa'di 2002 Loss of culture: Wermenbol 2021, Bashir 2018, Milshtein 2009, Sa'di 2002 Loss of homeland: Manna 2022, Wermenbol 2021, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Sa'di 2002 Became refugees: Abu-Laban 2022, Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Lentin 2013, Masalha 2012, Ram 2009, Shlaim 2009, Sa'di 2007, Schulz 2003, Sa'di 2002 From majority to minority: Khalidi 2020, Bashir 2018, Sa'di 2007 Occupation: Abu-Laban 2022, Bashir 2018, Sa'di 2007 1948 defeat: Gutman 2021, Bashir 2018, Nashef 2018, Milshtein 2009, Webman 2009 Loss of name/identity: Sayigh 2022, Wermenbol 2021, Masalha 2012, Shlaim 2009, Milshtein 2009 Built/strengthened Palestinian identity: Khalidi 2020, Lentin 2013, Masalha 2012, Milshtein 2009, Schulz 2003 Other denial: Rashed 2014, Schulz 2003 dependence: Webman 2009 helplessness: Sa'di 2007 discrimination: Rashed 2014 alienation: Schulz 2003

I still don't know how to sum that up in any kind of prose, but your thoughts on source selection, quote selection, organization, how to sum this up in a sentence or few, and any corrections, are all welcome. Levivich (talk) 21:54, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

What do we think of: the violent displacement and dispossession of Palestinians, and the destruction of their society, culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations? I'm not loving "political rights and national aspirations" but "statelessness" doesn't cover it all IMO either, and I'm not sure what words to use. Levivich (talk) 17:58, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

That certainly seems like a more fulsome summary of the sources than the rather truncated statement that one currently finds at the top of the article. Hat tip, as always, to the methodical approach. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:21, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

 Done Thanks, updated the article. Levivich (talk) 06:55, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

+1 for acknowledging the value of Levivich’s methodical approach to complex questions like this. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:18, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Could "Palestinian Arabs" rather than "Palestinians" be a more appropriate wording? Jewish and Arab residents were both referred to as Palestinians, under British rule, before Israel's 1948 establishment. The modern Palestinian national identity, exclusively referring to Arabs, did not develop until after 1948 and the Nakba. Neutral Editor 645 (talk) 23:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Historiography

Really? All that’s going to be said is that some Israeli-favoring critics say that the Nakba ignores Arab violence? That's all? No other side to the question of historiography surrounding the Nakba? Rather one-sided, hmmm, no matter where one falls on the side of the current conflict? Selahw (talk) 14:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Extended-protected edit request on 14 November 2023

In the lead, please change "The Palestinian national narrative views the Nakba as a collective trauma that defines their national identity and political aspirations, which the Israeli national narrative rejects and views it as a war of independence that established Jewish aspirations for statehood and sovereignty" to "The Palestinian national narrative views the Nakba as a collective trauma that defines their national identity and political aspirations, whereas the Israeli national narrative views it as a war of independence that established Jewish aspirations for statehood and sovereignty." According to the lengthy quote in the first ref, the Israeli view is a contrasting view, not an explicit rejection of the Palestinian view. 2001:BB6:47ED:FA58:8CD7:1AB7:9F03:2D13 (talk) 11:29, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Done, along with some other tweaks. Agreed it is not as simple as contradiction/rejection. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:05, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Questionable Wording

Under the "Nakba Denial" section the following can be found:

"In 2011, Israel enacted the Nakba Law which authorized the withdrawal of state funds from organizations that discuss the Nakba.[65] Israel also hosts grassroots movements, such as Zochrot, that have aimed to combat Nakba denial through direct memorial action.[65]"

The two sentences are attributed to the same source: [Kapshuk, Yoav; Strömbom, Lisa (November 2021). "Israeli Pre-Transitional Justice and the Nakba Law".]

Yet, the source does NOT support the implication (due to the wording: which may be innocently in error, or may be an attempt at propaganda/misrepresentation) in the 2nd sentence that the Israeli government encourages and supports the activities of Zochrot.

Rather, as the opening paragraphs of the Abstract, and Introduction, respectively, of the cited article say:

"Pre-transitional justice activities that expose past injustices during entrenched conflicts can incite strong reactions among actors who feel threatened by or dislike such activities, and who thus attempt to silence controversial truths."

AND

"In particular, we examine whether the Israeli so-called Nakba Law can be understood as a reaction to the pre-TJ actions of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Zochrot, which works to expose Nakba narratives to the Jewish-Israeli public."

In short, without going too much deeper into this source, it is CLEARLY claiming the Nakba Law is an attempt to *suppress* the activities of Zochrot- NOT that the Israeli government is supportive of this NGO.

Thus, the wording of the section here must be changed- it (falsely) implies the Israeli government is both trying to suppress awareness of the Nakba narrative AND is supportive of ("hosting" in this sentence implies not just tolerance of, but actual support for) an NGO that is openly antagonistic towards the Israeli government's attempts to suppress the narrative.

The Israeli government, according to the only cited source for these sentences, is trying to suppress the Nakba narrative and is mutually antagonistic with Zochrot (which can be confirmed simply by viewing the web page for Zochrot: their articles repeatedly accuse Israel's current ruling coalition of an attempt at Ethnic Cleansing and of covering up what it repeatedly refers to as a 'settler-colonial' past). Thus, I suggest a wording that does not mislead:

"In 2011, Israel enacted the Nakba Law: which authorized the withdrawal of state funds from organizations that discuss the Nakba.[65] Some legal experts suggest Israel took this action in response to the activities of NGO's, such as Zochrot, that aimed to combat Nakba denial through direct memorial action.[65]"

Note the "have aimed" is also changed to "aimed" as the "have" is unnecessary and only makes the sentence harder to understand.

This wording is much clearer, and does not falsely create confusion by implying the unsubstantiated claim that the Israeli government has HELPED spread awareness of the Nakba narrative (aside from circuitous and disingenuous arguments that can be made about not banning the NGO from Israel entirely...)- a narrative it has consistently sought to suppress (as it accuses Israel of, essentially, being built on Ethnic Cleansing: a claim the current Israeli governing coalition denies). Supadubya (talk) 04:49, 20 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)

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)