Talk:1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 → Archive 5

Proposed rewrite, 2003

I got the opposite feeling after reading it: it's pro-palestinian. Danibo

This article seems, at least at first glance, pro-Israeli. Let's take a closer look and try to balance it out. --Ed Poor

I agree. Uri suggested to merge this article with Palestine refugee (equally biased), which I support, so we have to work on two articles. Suggestion of an outline:
  • short abstract what happened (carefully worded)
  • a little bit of historical details about the war 1948 with the different flight and expulsion movements (If I trust Morris there happened both: spontaneous flight and direct expulsion)
  • what happened after the war, confiscation of the property, conference of Lausanne, right of return, UN-resolutions, creation of UNRWA etc.
  • at the end of the article a resumee of the ongoing debate:
    • Israeli view: flight encouraged by Arab leadership and surrounding Arab countries, mention of "New historians".
    • Arab view: systematic expulsion
    • Arab demand: granting of right of return
    • Israeli fear of the demographic consequences for Israel as a Jewish state
  • second refugee wave 1967...

And as a basis for rewriting the article, I think we should adopt a view that it is totally normal human behaviour for civilians to move out of an area in a war. This is directed against extremist views and arguments on both sides "total systematic expulsion" vs. "but they left on their own free will!" which I consider both as rubbish and which should be clearly marked as views. In history there is no "one single truth". --Elian

Well, certainly. People who flee a war zone are usually called "refugees" because they are seeking refuge from danger. But I don't know if the "exodus" and "refugee" articles ought to be completely merged, as this would blur the distinction (if any) between non-combatants fleeing a battle zone and migrants lured by politicians' promises.

It might be easier to say how many people went, where they started from and ended up, and when all this happened -- then to account for why they moved.

I tried one time to find this out and ended up with "there is no one single true answer". I think we should avoid a discussion of the "why". --Elian

As for who has a "right of return", that is another kettle of fish (hm, I shoudn't have skipped breakfast - it's another food metaphor!). I propose right of return as a separate article. --Ed Poor

I support Elian's proposal, it is realistic and sensible to all sides. I think that we should leave right of return, though, as it'll make no sense to re-write the whole introduction about who Palestinian refugees are. --Uri

I wrote a short paragraph in Right of return. If nobody objects we could regard the article as finished and work on merging exodus and refugees. Maybe it would also be a good idea to protect pages where all parties agree as non-biased, so we don't have to do the sisyphus-work of removing and rewriting over and over new added biased statements. What do you think about it? --Elian

The quote from Le Monde Diplomatique is quite interesting in the regard that it conveys only a part of Benny Morris's conclusions. Elsewhere, he writes that exiling Arabs was never a leadership policy. I therefore opt for the shortening of the quote and adding mentioning of his conclusions from the Righteous Victims. --Uri

The article makes apprearance of that the Israeli version is the commonly agreed upon version. That is, the propaganda that says the Palestinians was called out by Arabs. That is not right. --BL

added quite a lot. now the other side is at least represented. --BL

This is one of Martha's edits that I'm going to leave. It seemed considerably POV before, maybe less so now. -- Zoe

I removed the section quoting this webpage. It seems a bit beyond fair use to quote so much -- sannse 07:04 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

Absentee property law

Soon after the cease fire Israel adopted a unique law that allows it to take over land if the owner is vacant for a certain amount of years (it is the only country in the world with such a law). This allowed Israel to settle the millions of immigrants arriving.

-- That's not true, two different things are being confused. One is that a type of land holding inherited from the Ottoman system (called miri) was a type of perpetual lease where the land reverted to the state if it wasn't worked for a three consecutive years. That was not a new Israeli law though much land was seized using it (a practice that continues in the West Bank). The other thing was the Israeli "Absentee Property" law which passed the property of "absentees" to a state official (effectively making it available for Jewish use). An absentee was defined as anyone not in their normal place of residence in Palestine on a particular date, even if they were just in a nearby village. I'll correct this part of the page after I check a reference book or two for the details. -- zero UTC 14:00 7 Aug 2003

Suggested merge with Palestinian refugees

Shouldn't this page be combined with the one on Palestinian refugees? They seem to be precisely the same topic. Also, this article makes it seem as if all Israeli historians suddenly have decided that Israeli is almost totally at fault for the large Arab exodus However, these Israel "new historians", many of whom have a leftist political agenda, are not the sole voice of Israel academia, and some of them have been accused of bad scholarship on occasion as well. Let us be careful, and not fall for the standard Wikipedia bias - being politically left-wing doesn't make one automatically right, and being centrist or right-wing doesn't make on automatically wrong. I would like to look into this issue further. RK 22:56, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This page is about the creation and reasons behind the creation of the 750,000 Palestinians in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Palestinian refugees is more about that group of people and the second and smaller refugee wave in 1967. Both topics are so broad that they deserve separate articles imho. You are welcome to mention other Israeli historians, provided they are printed in other languages then Hebrew ofcourse. :-) BL 23:49, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Benny Morris quotation

I replaced the Morris quotation by a longer version, and also mentioned Rabin's famous admission that the Arabs of Lydda and Ramle were expelled by force. (Morris quoted the actual expulsion order, btw). I also slightly cleaned up the part about abandoned property but it is still pretty sketchy--I'm not sure if it belongs on this page. I also deleted "Recent studies have showed that 80-90% of the refugees from arabic villages were expelled by the israeli army while the remaining 10-20% fled because of the fightings." because it has no source and I think every contentious thing on this page should be sourced. Finally, I don't like the last paragraph but didn't try changing it yet. The actual situation is more complex than that. -- zero 12:38, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC)


In regards to all issues relating to Israel and Arab nations, and especially with regards to Palestinians, there is a tendency to hold that Israel's "New Historians" are somehow to be much more trusted than others. Just a reminder - the same rules of scrutiny that applied to traditional historians, also should apply to historians on the left. Consider the article Benny Morris and the Reign of Error, by Efraim Karsh, professor of Mediterranean studies at King's College, University of London, and editor of Israel Affairs. In regards to israeli "New Historian" Benny Morris, he writes:

So successful has this effort been that what began as propaganda has become received dogma. It is striking to see how popularity has widely come to be equated with veracity, as if the most commonly held position must by definition be the correct one. I personally learned this when some critics rejected my exposure of the New Historians methods not on scholarly grounds but because my work ran counter to the popular view. Thus Joel Beinin of Stanford University questioned my conclusions on the grounds that "many of the arguments of the `new historians' are widely accepted today in liberal Israeli intellectual circles." ...I shall focus on a key charge: the claim by Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University, a leading New Historian, that the Zionist and Israeli establishments have systematically falsified archival source material to conceal the Jewish state's less-than-immaculate conception...Morris engages in five types of distortion: he misrepresents documents, resorts to partial quotes, withholds evidence, makes false assertions, and rewrites original documents.
Benny Morris and the Reign of Error
Interestingly, Benny Morris is no longer anti-Zionist (if he ever was one), and he no longer holds to the rosy view of the Palestinian Authority he once had. He has repudiated many of his old views on this subject.
Israel's Freedom Fight

Propaganda, contested quotations and myth debunking

The stuff just added (which I am going to revert when I complete these comments) is nothing other than a standard set of discredited propaganda distortions that has been going around for decades. I am confident that this anon editor has never seen any of the sources he claims to be quoting. Nor have any of the hundreds of web pages and assorted articles and books (just don't call them history books) that present them.

I'll illustrate the nature of these "quotations" using the example from Edward Atiyah. The sentence in Roman text is what was quoted and the part in italics is what immediately follows in the same source.

This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to reenter and retake possession of their country. But it was also, and in many parts of the country, largely due to a policy of deliberate terrorism and eviction followed by the Jewish commanders in the areas they occupied, and reaching its peak of brutality in the massacre of Deir Yassin.
There were two good reasons why the Jews should follow such a policy. First, the problem of harbouring within the Jewish State a large and disaffected Arab population had always troubled them. They wanted an exclusively Jewish state, and the presence of such a population that could never be assimilated, that would always resent its inferior position under Jewish rule and stretch a hand across so many frontiers to its Arab cousins in the surrounding countries, would not only detract from the Jewishness of Israel, but also constitute a danger to its existence. Secondly, the Israelis wanted to open the doors of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration. Obviously, the fewer Arabs there were in the country the more room there would be for Jewish immigrants. If the Arabs could be driven out of the land in the course of the fighting, the Jews would have their homes, their lands, whole villages and towns, without even having to purchase them. And this is exactly what happened.
--Atiyah, The Arabs, p183.

Reading the whole passage makes it clear that Atiyah's opinion was actually close to the opposite of what we were intended to believe. Whoever extracted the first sentence alone (not this anon editor who never thought to check the source) did so with the deliberate intention of deceiving his or her readers.

More of this comment to come later. --Zero 03:12, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

All true, but please do not just revert it. Those quotations has to be confronted and there has to be some kind of "myth debunking" section or something. I'm not sure how to write that NPOV but otherwise those quotes will just return every two weeks. BL 14:02, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't like myth debunking sections because they attract people who want to add to them endlessly and in the end the article starts to look like a chat-room transcript. In the interests of "NPOV" people will want to add counter-quotes and counter-debunkings. For example, someone might want to add things like this:

I don't suggest that we should trample on others' rights, but one must call a spade a spade: Zionism and rights don't always go hand-in-hand. The very establishment of this state is an affront to the Arabs' rights. Arabs lived in Jaffa. They didn't leave; they were expelled. We went into the villages and said 'Get out.' And they got out. Yes, it's important for me and others that this state be a democratic one, but you still have to consider the difference between ourselves and the other countries and remember that democracy is not an end in itself but rather an instrument. Zionism takes precedence over everything.
-- Limor Livnat, member of the Likud Central Committee, quoted in Tikkun, Sep/Oct 1991, p14.

Sorry, couldn't resist;-). But seriously, we should stomp on this idea that history can be reduced to a series of carefully selected quotations. I want to record here what is wrong with these particular quotations so that the explanation can be referred to easily in the future. Incidentally, one of the quotations is going to stay with some modifications because it raises a serious issue that needs an answer; can you guess which one? --Zero 14:16, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Ok let me rephrase what I meant. In itself quotes like "We will smash the country with our guns..." not very relevant. They don't tell anything about what actually happened. But I don't think writing about history is just writing about what happened but also write about what others have written happened. Otherwise the article shouldn't even need to mention the "called out-theory". If you google for some of the quotes you'll find hundreds of pages defending the Israeli thesis by using them, even some governmental sites. That is, I think, interesting and worthy of a whole topic on itself imho. And I'll be damned if the quote in the question isn't King Abdullah's. :-) BL 05:45, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Next, a quick look at what Habib Issa said in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). Who is Habib Issa? The answer is that I don't know, and it seems that nobody else knows either. Some web sites claim he was Azzam Pasha's successor - he wasn't. Years ago I looked in the indexes of about 100 books of Middle East history and none of them mentioned "Habib Issa". Presumably Al Hoda identified him, but the collector of this "quotation" chose to remove that information. If he isn't anyone significant, why is his testimony of what Azzam Pasha is supposed to have said interesting? Anyway, why is there no contemporary evidence of what Azzam is supposed to have said? Why do we need to quote from some unknown person in an American Lebanese newspaper years later? Enough said! --Zero 14:09, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

One more quotation for today, Monsignor Hakim:
Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al Janub (August 16, 1948): "The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
Read it carefully and you will realise that the quotation says nothing about why the refugees left. All it says is that the refugees hoped that they could return soon with the help of the Arab armies. They were mistaken. Hakim has confirmed this interpretation and clarified his opinion of why the refugees left:

There is nothing in this statement to justify the construction which many propagandists had put on it...
At no time did I state that the flight of the refugees was due to the orders, explicit or implicit, of their leaders, military or political, to leave the country... On the contrary, no such orders were ever made... Such allegations are sheer concoctions and falsifications.
The truth is that the flight was primarily due to the terror with which the Arab population of Palestine were struck in consequences of atrocities committed by the Jews... These brutalities were the cause of the flight of the inhabitants of Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem.
But as soon as hostilities began between Israel and the Arab States, it became the settled policy of the Government to drive away the Arabs...
- George Hakim, Archbishop of Galilee, quoted in E. B. Childers, The Wordless Wish, in I. Abu-Lughod (ed) Transformation of Palestine, Northwestern University Press (1971), 197-198.

In 1947, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri is quoted as having said, "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."
-- That one is supposed to appear in a book published in Arabic in 1952. I'm not going to try locating it, because it is perfectly likely that Nuri Said said something like that. However, just suggesting to someone to move their families to a safe place is sensible advice and irrelevant to this issue. I don't think he would have said "safe areas" if he meant "other countries" anyway. --Zero 14:56, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Incidentally, this same 1952 book is the first printed source for the claim that there was a major massacre of Arabs at Tantura. --Zero 11:43, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The "tantura massacre" was examined by israeli court. Teddy Katz (who came up with the story) was convicted of libel and his "records" of the issue have been proven false. He never apealed that verdict. Zeq 10:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Jordan's King Abdullah,
writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem: "The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue."
--This does not appear in the edition of Abdullah's memoirs that I have (American Council of Learned Societies, 1954), but it's plausible that extra material might be in the 1978 Longman edition. The meaning of the quotation (assuming it is genuine) is clear from the memoirs. Adbullah is scathing in his attack on the other Arab states, who he says "looked idly on" in 1948 rather than giving full support to the military effort. He blames the Arab states for the refugee problem in the sense that the Palestinians would not have been "uprooted" if the Arab states had united in a serious effort to stop the "Jewish aggression" by military force. The "false and unsubstantiated promises" were that the Arab states would do what they said they would do. This is hardly the interprettation that the collector of this quotation wanted us to make. --Zero 14:56, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Open questions

How many were there in 1890

About 431,800 arabs and 42,900 jews and 57,400 Christians. (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

How many were there in 1920

In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000. Thus, the Arab population continued to grow exponentially even while that of the Jews stagnated. However, throughout the British occupation, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants. The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.” The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is...due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.” (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

The figures for 1915 are incorrect. See McCarthy "The Population of Palestine". For 1914: 602,000 Muslims, 81,000 Christians, 38,700 Jewish Ottoman subjects and 20,000 or slightly more Jews who were not Ottoman subjects. The claim attributed to the Hope Simpson report does not appear there. In fact all the many British reports that considered Arab illegal immigration concluded that it was very small. The last sentence is irrelevant to the immigration question. --Zero 02:13, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In response this text was copied from the Hope Simpson report (End of chapter X):

(Start Quote) Importation of other than Jewish labour.—Further, it is clear that if unemployment is a valid reason for preventing Jewish immigration, it is also a reason for preventing importation of labour of other nationalities. At the time of writing, even with marked unemployment among Arabs, Egyptian labour is being employed in certain individual cases, and its ingress has been the subject of adverse comment in the Press.

Prevention of illicit immigration.—Finally, in closing the front door, steps should be taken to ensure that the backdoor should not be kept open for would-be immigrants into Palestine. The Chief Immigration Officer has brought to notice that illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material. This question has already been discussed. It may be a difficult matter to ensure against this illicit immigration, but steps to this end must be taken if the suggested policy is adopted, as also to prevent unemployment lists being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania.

Arab unemployment as a political pawn.—The question of un-employment and immigration has been treated solely from the economic standpoint. It has immediate political repercussions with which this enquiry is not concerned, but which must receive consideration from His Majesty's Government in arriving at a decision. Two of these repercussions will require particular attention :

First, Arab unemployment is liable to be used as a political pawn. Arab politicians are sufficiently astute to realise at once what may appear an easy method of blocking that immigration to which they are radically averse, and attempts may and probably will be made to swell the list of Arab unemployed with names which should not be there, or perhaps to ensure the registration of an unemployed man in the books of more than one exchange. It should not prove difficult to defeat this manoeuvre.

Article 6 of the Mandate and its effect on immigration.—Second, there is the repercussion on the policy of the Jewish National Home. It is evident that any interference with freedom of immigration is a limitation to the admission of Jews who desire to take part in the local constitution of that Home. Article 6 of the Mandate, how-ever, directs that the rights and position of other sections of the population shall not be prejudiced by Jewish immigration. Clearly, in cases in which immigration of Jews results in preventing the Arab population obtaining the work necessary for its maintenance, it is the duty of the Mandatory Power, under the Mandate, to reduce, or, if necessary, to suspend, such immigration, until immigration will not affect adversely the opportunities of the Arab for employment. Elsewhere in this report the exclusion of Arab labour from the land purchased by the Jewish National Fund has been discussed, and it is pointed out that this exclusion is liable to confirm a belief that it is the intention of the Jewish authorities to displace the Arab population from Palestine by progressive stages. This belief, which, however unfounded it may be, is unfortunately very widely held, will be confirmed when it is realised that the immigration of Jewish labour is permitted while the Arab cannot earn his daily bread. On general grounds, therefore, as well as in order to carry out the terms of Article 6 of the Mandate, it is necessary that the existence of Arab unemployment should be taken into considera-tion when determining the number of Jews to be admitted at the time of preparation of the Labour Schedule. (End Quote)

From here it would seem the that immigration/population game was being played by both sides. The Palestinian exodus article only mentions one side of it. (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

Nothing in the extract above says that Arab immigration was large, nor that it was of significant economic consequence. The symmetry you speak of did not exist. The illicit immigration across land borders was mostly Jewish. The "front door" is immigration by sea which was almost entirely Jewish. The report is saying that if Jewish immigration by sea is restricted then other avenues will have to be closed as well. Only as an afterthought does it add that controlling the other borders will have the added advantage of restricting Arab immigration from Transjordan. As I said before, all the British reports that investigated Arab immigration concluded that it was a minor issue, quite unlike Jewish immigration. Take the Peel Report for example: "... unlike the Jewish, the rise [of Arab population] has been due in only a slight degree to immigration" [page 125]. --Zero 02:59, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So you would say that this page of articles The Refugees has little or no merit to it. I think that it is well documented and gives a better and clearer picture of what actually did happen. The same applies to the rest of the site. (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 11)

Some of the articles at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org are quite good. The page you mention, on the other hand, is one of the worst I've seen. All full of strawmen and distortions. --Zero 01:37, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How many people left?

between 1,000 and 1,000,000 -- everyone agree with this range?

Depending on estimate, 700-850,000.

Why did they leave?

  • Forced at gunpoint (immediate danger)
Yes
  • Scared of being caught in crossfire (future danger)
Yes

Where did they go?

  • Gaza
25%
  • West Bank
39%
  • Jordan
<10%
  • other - please specify
Lebanon 13%. A smaller amount came to Iraq, Egypt and Transjordan. Mostly middle and upper-class families that had money to spend on travel. Most refugees fled by foot and therefore didn't get very far. Numbers from my head so dont take it to seriously.

How have they lived?

  • lives of splendor and freedom - no one says THIS, right?
Some has ofcourse. There was not only poor people in Palestine. Jordan's king's wife, for example, is a Palestinian refugee.
  • ordinary lives, but they'd rather go back
It seems that most does very much want to go back. See the guestbooks on www.allthatremains.com for examples.
  • hard lives, but they have schools and jobs and property
Depends on where they ended. Most of Gaza is a refugee camp and so is also southern Lebanon. The West Bank is a "real society", atleast it was 10 years ago.
  • squalid tents, malnutrition, disease
Yes.
(unsigned addition by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9, 2004): (They lived like that before, and they continue to live that way. This manner of living is not limited to Israel either. The living conditions of the arab populations in other arab states is the same.)

BL 15:45, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Usually I don't make full reverts since such things often ignite edit wars. But in this case I think it was the best thing to do:

...events surrounding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

The name "1948 Arab-Israeli War" is a subtle POV name. First of all the war lasted from 1947 to 1949. And it wasn't "Arab-Israeli" before May 15, 1948 when Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon invaded Palestine. And it certainly wasn't "Israeli" before that point either.

Perhaps not other war in history has produced such a long lasting refugee problem as the events surrounding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Therefore other factors must have played a role forming and preserving the refugee problem.

The "preservation" of the refugee problem is off topic for this article that deals with the refugee flight 1947-1949. And even though other wars has produced numerically larger refugees, no other wars (that I know of) produced sugh a massive refugee flight compared to the population (90-95%).

yet areas such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and its surroundings a Jewish majority was established by 1931.

The city Jerusalem had a Jewish majority, the Jersualem district had not. BL 20:47, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding recent edits:

  1. Writing "Palestine", with the quotes is a cheap propaganda ploy.
  2. It was not sparseley populated and underdeveloped. In comparsian to other Arab countries it was densely populated and well developed. The main reason for that was that the British invested alot of money in Palestine due to its strategic location.
  3. 12 counted cases of rape. Historians therefore assume that many, many more took place because both the perpeutrator and the victim would prefer the crime to remain unknown.
  4. I thought we had dealt with the "the Arabs told them to leave" myth properly before. Guess I was wrong.

BL 14:26, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

Nakba

While this page is protected, a parallel page Nakba is being written up about the same subject. An initial attempt to turn it into a redirect was reverted. Can this be discussed?? JFW | T@lk 01:03, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Arabs never developed the land, they wouldn't fight for the land. The independence war was fought primarily with Israel's neighbors not with the Arabs who lived there. Also, a lot of them had recently come for work and so then left when things got too hot. It doesn't sound like they ever had much ties and therefore claim to the land.

The most important issue is from whom did all the Arabs who did own land in Israel buy it from? I would like to see deeds of sale from all the Jews who owned the land before the Romans expelled them.

(unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

Expelled? The truth is the left for similar reasons that the Palestinians did. The difference being this was about 2000 years ago whereas the Palestinians left about 50 years ago. The Jews made a successful living in many other countries. Which is something the Palestinians have not been able or willing to do.

Sadly, for a number of reasons, they were massacared by the Nazis during WW2. It is perhaps understadably that they want to form there own land. However it is not acceptable for them to steal land from others in doing do. Unfortunetely, this happened and Israel clearly should not be destroyed now. There are clearly two options. Give a decent amount of land back and pay them for the lost land, houses and property or leave and find a new land. No one can deny that the Arabs who fought Israels creation were doing it for xenophobic and racist reasons. However, similarly no one can deny that the Israelis took land which already belong to others in the formation of Israel.

Unprotected

I've unprotected the page. I encourage everybody to discuss changes, avoid revert wars, be civil, and try to reach consensus so that the page does not need to be protected again. Snowspinner 14:12, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)


Arab Immigration

According to the figures of the official Ottoman Turk census in 1882 there were only 141,000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab, in the entire land. By 1922, it skyrocketed to 650,000 Arabs—a 450% increase in only 40 years. By 1938, this shot up to over 900,000—an 800% increase in only 56 years! Where did all these Arabs come from? Clearly, it was not due to natural births; a natural growth rate such as this would be impossible. The historical answer is that the empirical evidence shows that they came from the neighboring states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt.

Any sort of nonsense can be proved by starting with phoney data. Joan Peters' lies notwithstanding, the population of Palestine in 1880 was approximately 399,000 Muslims, 14,700 Jews, and 42,800 Christians. This is from Ottoman statistical data with slight adjustments for undercounting according to standard methods. See J. McCarthy, The Population of Palestine. --Zero 13:12, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Zero,

Fine. You take the ideological stance of Norman Finklestien on Joan Peters' book.


Daniel Pipes states:"Granting all this, the fact remains that the book presents a thesis that neither Professor Porath nor any other reviewer has so far succeeded in refuting. Miss Peters's central thesis is that a substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century. She supports this argument with an array of demographic statistics and contemporary accounts, the bulk of which have not been questioned by any reviewer, including Professor Porath."

If the professional critics cant refute the statistical findings, I doubt you can either.

Guy Montag 23:46, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am not taking an ideological stance at all. I know that the book is crap from my own study of it. Above I told you what the best available data is regarding 1882 population from the leading Ottoman demographer (with the possible exception of Kemal Karpat, who also gave similar figures). Whether you like it or not is of no concern to me. As for Pipes, his claim "have not been questioned" is nonsense. In fact this "evidence" has been repeatedly examined and dismissed starting in 1931 (when the census report had a whole chapter on it that I challenge you to find a mention of in Peters' book). --Zero 02:26, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The British Governor of the Sinai stated in 1922 that "illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria." In 1930, the British Mandate-sponsored Hope-Simpson Report noted that "unemployment lists are being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania" and that "illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material." The Governor of the Syrian district Hauran, Tewfik Bey el Hurani, himself admitted in 1934 that in one instance 30,000 Syrians moved to the land of Israel in a span of only a few months. Winston Churchill said in 1939, "...far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied." Malcolm MacDonald, a contemporary of Churchill, and one of the chief authors of the British White Paper—a document which actually restricted Jewish immigration into the land— admitted that if it weren't for the presence of the Jews, the Arab population would have been about half of what it was.

More Joan Peters lies, compounded by additional distortions. Why didn't you quote the remainder of Churchill's sentence "...till their population has increased more than even all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population" and then wonder how Churchill could be wrong by more than a factor of 10? --Zero 13:12, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Also this. [1] I will use this link as a source.

That is all very nice, and I am aware of this theory about Arab immigration, but it is far from being an accepted one. As you can read in the link you have gracefully provided yourself, Ottoman figures are unreliable. The article you refer to cites several figures for 19th century population, all of which are sifnificantly higher than your figure. During the mandate years, the growth from 650,000 to 900,000 in 16 years corresponds to 2.1% per year, which is not high by Palestinian standards. And the various quotes you have provided are interesting impressions, but nevertheless provide no record of immigration. According to the 1945 Survey of Palestine estimate of illegal Arab immigration, it was insignificant compared to Jewish immigration, and so was the legal immigration as the figures your link cites show. This is an interesting debate, which may be worth an article in its own right, but since there is no record of significant Arab immigration and no widely-accepted estimate, to claim that Arab immigration was greater than Jewish immigration, or even that it was significant, is questionable at best, many would say false, and has no place in an encyclopedia.--Doron 18:34, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
And another thing - even with your (undoubtably false) figure of the 1882 population, the annual growth is only 4%, which may be very high for the period (it's higher than todays Gaza Strip growth rate), but still does not by any means provide proof of immigration. All the figures cited in the link you have provided give annual growth of less than 2%, which is perfectly plausible as (mainly) natural growth. And again, Wikipedia is no place for such debate, you can do your own research, have it published, have it gain universal acceptence and only then post it in Wikipedia.

It appears that no one here can provide any evidence since entire history is marred with ideological fog! Does anyone actually want to take a critical look into this, or are we just going to continue in our ignorance of the truth?

This is similiar to the claim that from 700,000 thousand Palestinian Arabs, that left Israel, there are now 6 million refugees. Everyone just nods silently even though there is something wrong here. Sooner or later it passes into legitimacy no matter the logical wounds that such data leaves.

Lets take a look into this please.

Guy Montag 23:46, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Have you considered that the problem may be that the original 700,000 estimate is too low?AndyL 03:35, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The official UN estimate was 711,000. A couple of years later, after an estimated 30,000 births a year, and a great deal of fraud, the estimated number of registered refugees was around 875,000. Jayjg (talk) 04:52, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Don't know where did the 6 million number come from, but this is a different discussion. Going back to the immigration question, does anyone have actual proof of significant non-Jewish immigration to Palestine over the last 150 years? Anything besides controversial theories? --Doron 23:24, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

5.5-6.5 million palestinians?

It doesn't make any since to me that the original refugees and their descendants amount to 5.5-6.5 million. Concerning the fact that this article says there were originally 520,000 to 1,000,000 refugees, a 500%-1200% growth in their number (during a 50 years period) just doesn't make any sense, considering the only factor affecting this number is natural growth. 62.0.152.184 18:45, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

If memory serves me, according to UNWRA there are about 3 million "refugees" --Doron 02:00, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Who says there are 6 million refugees and their descendants? Anyway, let me correct an error in calculation that I think I detect. Suppose we have 710,000 refugees initially and they have a natural growth rate of 3%. Then after 50 years, there are 710,000 x 1.0350 = 3.1 million people, right? Wrong! The calculation assumes there was only breeding within the group. Especially in the WB, Gaza, and Jordan, the refugees mixed with the existing population. The number of people with at least one refugee ancestor then grows faster than 3%, since it takes on average less than 2 existing refugee descendants to make each extra refugee descendant. That is, the number of descendants of a subset of a population grows faster than that of the whole population. Clearer than mud, I hope. --Zero 23:46, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Clear but troubling, in that we now have people classed as refugees who descend from non-refugee parents as well, and may well have grown up in the ancestral homes of those non-refugee parents. This is a problem with the unique definition of refugee in the case of Palestinians. Jayjg (talk) 23:48, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
It isn't so simple, because the UNRWA definition only covers descendants in the male line. Whether that is always adhered to in practice, I don't know. It means that the number of refugees and descendants is a different statistic from the number of UNRWA-eligible persons. Another contribution to the difference is those people who move to a country (eg USA) not covered by UNRWA. I haven't researched numbers, but can imagine there being a million or two people difference between the two counts. --Zero 00:08, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
As Zero has asked before, where did the 6 million figure come from? Is it widely accepted? Who's claiming it and how do they substantiate it?--Doron 23:16, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The UNWRA claims there are over 4 million Palestinian refugees. Palestinians claim as many as 8 million Palestinians. They don't substantiate it in any meaningful way that I can see. Jayjg (talk) 23:18, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Then I don't see the point in discussing them (except for the fun of it).--Doron 23:28, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, it appears that the total number of Palestinians world-wide is 9.7 million, which corresponds to a growth rate of 3.6% per year from 1.3 million in 1948. Dunno what this means. Also note that "refugees" may also refer to those internally displaced within Israel, those living in refugee-camps in the occupied territories, those displaced in 1967, and as Zero has pointed out, the descendants of at least one refugee ancestor.--Doron 23:59, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wow, 1.3 million in 1948. That's almost twice the official estimate made by the U.N.'s statistician in 1950, which would indicate a much, much higher growth rate than 3.6%. One wonders why they didn't just round it up to 1.5 million for "simplicity". Jayjg (talk) 15:59, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
No, Jayjg, this refers to the total number of Palestinians world-wide, i.e., those that are descendants of the original non-Jewish population of Palestine, which numbered 1.3 million in 1948.
Ah, I see. Sorry for the confusion. Jayjg (talk) 16:56, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Part of the reason for this is the very broad definition the UN has specifically for Palestinian refugees, as opposed to other types of refugee. Palestinians were counted as refugees even if they had only lived in Palestine for 2 years before 1948, even if they only moved from one part of Palestine to another, and regardless of their reason for leaving (normally the reason has to be a "well-founded fear of being persecuted").--steveajg 16:50, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

POV Tag

In light of the vigorous consensus-building and dispute resolution attempts in Talk sections of articles related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, I am removing the POV tags. If someone has a any further problems not already covered in Talk then by all means restore the tag but please start a new section and bring forth your concerns for consensus building. These perpetual NPOV tags are unreasonable.--A. S. A. 09:17, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

palestenians have lots of children. It is not unusual to find 15 or 16 children in one family.

---

I added a POV tag for the following reasons:

  1. Only one historian's work (Benny Morris) is referenced for much of the article's body.
  2. There exists much controversy over the accuracy of Morris' work.
  3. Only one school of thought (New Historians) is represented for most of the body. Other historian
  4. Other viewpoints on the set of events listed in the article are neither given space nor is their existance mentioned.
  5. Loaded terminology is repeatedly used.
  6. Many of the quotes are not listed in the reference area, nor is cross-referencing provided for their sources. While this is not technically a POV issue, I feel that this exacerbates the underlying POV issue by not allowing the reader to read the source firsthand, and to see if the writer read the material firsthand or was relying on its reference elsewhere for information.

I missed this section, so I just removed it. Apologies. That said, I agree with the comment currently at the top of this page by Elian regarding the proper way to rewrite from scratch.

-- Elflng

Expulsions

Leifern wants to change "actual expulsions" to "isolated expulsions" and wonders whether there were more than 3 examples. Leifern might read a history book, such as that of Morris cited on the page, where there is an expulsion documented from Israeli archives every couple of pages. --Zero 11:01, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Problems with Finkelstein insertion

Problems with the Finkelstein insertion include:

  • He's not a historian, he's a polemicist expressing his opinion.
  • His work is a derivative re-working of real historians, like Morris.
  • The quotes themselves, even if relevant, are overlong, particularly as they are just expressing personal opinions, and should (at best) be briefly summarized.
  • The quotes are not even relevant to the section into which they have been inserted.

I know it's sometimes very exciting for editors when they get hold of a particular narrative (in this case the anti-Zionist one of Chomsky, Finkelstein et al), and then try to slant articles to conform to that POV, but that's not really what Wikipedia is about. --Jayjg (talk) 19:06, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Problems with Jayig's Problems

  • Finkelstein is an assistant professor of politics at DePaul in Chicago, but his work (inevitably) deals extensively with historical matters; he has served as an academic in history; his academic background is in history.
  • All contributions draw on the work of others, but those making an original and publishable contribution to knowledge cannot be classed as derivative.
  • Assessments based on expert knowledge are not simply expressions of personal opinion; either the facts support the assessment or they don't.
  • The quotations included are directly relevant, being an assessment of the nature of the expulsions of Arabs against both the background of the facts as established by Morris and others and the history and theory of Zionism of which Finkelstein is a scholar.
  • Finkelstein is one of the most prominent of Morris's academic critics and there is no reason why the Wikipedia article should defer to Morris' position.
  • I don't particularly object to Jayig's personal remarks, but they are quite inappropriate, some would perhaps use harsher terms.

--Ian Pitchford 19:47, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Problems with Ian Pitchford's Problems with Jayjg's Problems

  • Finkelstein is a political scientist notorious for having a particular agenda.
  • Historical works which rely exclusively on the works of other authors are, by definition, derivative.
  • Finkelstein is not a recognized historian of the 1948 War, so he clearly does not have "expert knowledge" in this area.
  • The quotations have nothing to do with the section they were inserted in; please re-read the title of (and information covered in) the section.
  • Finkelstein's "prominence" as a critic of Morris comes solely through his popularity among non-academics as an anti-Zionist Jew, not through critical approval of historians, and there is no evidence that this article is deferring to Morris's position. Furthermore, editors attempting to seek "balance" should not be inserting one-sided and misleading narratives into Wikipedia articles, particularly of complex historical events (e.g. [2]).
  • I don't particularly object to Ian Pitchford's personal remarks in describing my edits as "vandalism", but it was quite inappropriate, some would perhaps use harsher terms.

--Jayjg (talk) 20:21, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Final comment on Jayig's comments

  • Finkelstein is an academic with a reputation based on his scholarship and published works - something easily checked.
  • Finkelstein's academic and PhD status can only be attained through original research, i.e, its non-derivative status is a fact.
  • Finkelstein's expert knowledge is directly relevant to the assessment of the questions with which the article deals - indeed I don't see how expulsions of the Arabs could be understood without such knowledge.
  • Finkelstein's reputation is based on his published research.
  • Deleting an appropriate and properly-referenced contribution is not constructive and surely qualifies as "vandalism"; a claim of vandalism is not personal comment. As you're anonymous I have no idea who you are or what your motives are.
  • Criticism and revision is appropriate; complete deletion is not - you've now deleted all reference from this and the article on the 1982 Invasion of Lebanon to stated policy goals accepted and adopted by a succession of Israeli leaders - precisely those goals discussed by Finkelstein and articulated by Ben-Gurion in the quotations provided.

--Ian Pitchford 20:55, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Reply

  • Finkelstein's popular and academic reputation are entirely different things.
  • Finkelstein did not obtain his academic and PhD status because of the work in question, which is derivative.
  • If Finkelstein's opinion is indeed relevant, it's certainly not relevant where it was placed, nor were the overlengthy quotes appropriate.
  • I haven't deleted your references here, and in any event doing so would not qualify as "vandalism" in Wikipedia terms; see Wikipedia:Vandalism.
  • A statement in a speech made by David ben Gurion in 1937 does not qualify as "stated policy goals accepted and adopted by a succession of Israeli leaders", and reference to it in an article discussing the 1982 Invasion of Lebanon is original research at best, POV-pushing at worst (which, by the way, was deleted by another editor).

--Jayjg (talk) 21:13, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

WP:POINT

Ian, please don't delete relevant information in order to make a point. A historical figure describing the events that were happening at that time from the Arab POV is not the same a political scientist 60 years later promoting his opinions as to why certain events happened. Jayjg (talk) 20:30, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm deleting this quotation for the following reasons: 1. It's a non-English source that cannot be verified 2. It's personal opinion 3. It states something research by Morris and others has proven to be false 4. The only reference I can find to it is in the Joan Peters hoax volume 5. It's irrelevant, not being connected with the real reasons for the Palestinian expulsion and 6. it qualifies as original research and is not appropriate to Wikipedia and 7. the majority of Google hits point back to Wikipedia, which means that the encyclopedia is being used to authenticate the quotation, i.e., it's being used for propaganda purposes [3], and 8. the aforementioned are good reasons for suspecting that the quotation is fake. --Ian Pitchford 20:46, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

1. The source is referenced in English sources. 2. The opinion of the PM of Syria, who was involved in the events, is quite relevant. 3. It states something that has not been proven to be false. 4. Peters volume is tendentious and misleading, but not a hoax. 5. It's quite relevant, and your claim that it is unrelated to the "real reason for the Palestinian expulsion" indicates severe bias. 6. It does not qualify as Original Research at all; please explain what has misled you into making this claim. 7. Not everything is found on the internet, it exists in the real world - that does not make it propaganda. 8. A well respected (and I might add, typically pro-Palestinian) editor has stated that it is real and he has the original. 9. Disrupting Wikipedia to make a point is not a good way to edit, and if pursued typically leads to sanctions of some sort; I highly recommend that you adopt a more collegial approach instead. 10. Please make sure you don't violate the Wikipedia:Three revert rule. Jayjg (talk) 21:16, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I first saw this quotation in English in Maurice Roumani, The Case of the Jews from Arab Countries, which is a fairly polemic book but not in the Peters category. In order to check it, I got hold of the original Arabic memoirs and sent the relevant pages to an academic with Arabic as a first language and a good knowledge of the subject. He verified the translation except for a few words that he regarded as not exactly right. The only example appearing in the excerpt here is that the original translation said "made them leave it". However, the Arabic uses Hamalnahum, not Ja'alnahum, and so indicates a lesser degree of responsibility than "made them". Al `Azm does not provide any evidence for his claims, at least within a few pages of this passage. As for the meaning of all this, I think the key is that Syria was in political turmoil at this time, with serial coups, etc.. Al `Azm was apparently during what every politician in power does: blame the country's troubles on the previous administration; but this is speculation. --Zero 07:21, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ian Pitchford 10:26, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC) adds

  • I've added qualifiers to indicate that the source is an untranslated Arabic work, which appears to have different translations; is questionable, and has different interpretations. As a compromise, if the scan of the original is made available to me I will make it available for download, although I think it's irrelevant for all of the reasons given.
  • I've changed the reference to Morris to indicate that the revised opinion given is from an interview, not the book, and that the book gives a different conclusion.
  • I've added Porath's questioning of this quotation.
  • I've added Morris' conclusions from the 2003 book.
  • I've added Morris' explanations of the al-Azm quotation.
  • I've formatted the references and provided links to the ISBNs.
  • As a general point I don't think its persuasive or appropriate for editors, anonymous or otherwise, to claim expert judgement of work by published authors.
  • I don't think that collegiality is inspired by thinly veiled threats from anonymous editors pushing strong POV claims.

--Ian Pitchford 10:26, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree that collegiality is not inspired by "editors pushing strong POV claims".
  • Good edits, thanks.

--Jayjg (talk) 03:26, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Germen's additions

Germen, there are a few problems with your additions:

1- "Amounts to a seven-fold increase" - whose numbers are you depending on? There are different numbers of refugees cited in the article depending on source, why did you choose a particular one without a citation/source? If it's the UN estimate of 711,000, this needs to be cited.

  • I used the average of the cited number of 1948 refugees and the average number of contemporary Palestinians. This amounted to a sevenfold increase.--Germen (Talk | Contribs ) 12:02, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

2- "High birthrate of Palestinian women" - sounds like original research unless a source is cited.

  • 7 or more children per woman is well above world average. --Germen (Talk | Contribs ) 12:02, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

3- "...the refusal of Arab states to award national citizenship" - The vast majority of refugees, according to UNRWA, are in the occupied territories or in Jordan; one is not a sovereign country and cannot grant citizenship (which is what the Intifada is about), and the other does grant citizenship.

  • It is an established fact that all Arab states refused and still refuse to award citizenship to Palestinian refugees. I mentioned Jordan as an exception. --Germen (Talk | Contribs ) 12:02, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

4-"Israel did reward national citizenship to all immigrants and their descendants." - Israel grants citizenship to all Jews regardless of status, most of whom are willing immigrants, not refugees. To compare this in the same paragraph to Palestinian refugees in Arabic-speaking countries where they do not belong is inappropriate.

  • Many of them were refugees, e.g. the Yemenite Jews. Many Sefardim Jews fleed from Arab countries and thus can be categorized as refugees. Comparing them thus is appropriate. It is and stays a fact that Israel treats the Jewish immigrants like their beloved brothers and sisters, while the Arab states treat the Palestinian immigrants like trash and a kind of war material. [4]--Germen (Talk | Contribs ) 12:02, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
Israel grants citizenship to Jews regardless of whether they are refugees or not. Israel does not generally grant citizenship to non-Jewish refugees (with very few exceptions), and particularly not to returning Palestinian refugees. This is an article about the Palestinian exodus and comparison to Israel's nationalistic immigration policies is irrelevant.--Doron 15:44, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

5- "The property of Jewish refugees from Arab states has been confiscated by those states." - This again needs to be cited.

Basically your additions seem to strongly suggest original research, because while some individual statements may be true in and of themselves, their inclusion in this context is inappropriate.

Ramallite (talk) 14:08, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I've added sources for some fairly up-to-date statistics in a new section headed "demographics". --Ian Pitchford 16:46, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
Thanks - you might also want to see this, I think Palestinians in Israel total over 1.1 million... Ramallite (talk) 16:56, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
Extrapolating from 1997 the Israeli statistics look about right. Perhaps you'd like to add a ref to the article? --Ian Pitchford 17:15, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
Sorry for not getting back earlier - I've tried to update the stats in the first sentence, but some other references (like the population of refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria) are way underestimated according to UNRWA, which puts the figure at 1.8 million. Do you know if the Bowker, 2003, p. 72 reference refers to only those living in refugee camps, because UNRWA numbers are all those "registered" as refugees regardless of living conditions. Thanks Ramallite (talk) 15:17, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Most of the differences arise because people are using different definitions, and even the same people (e.g., Bowker) use different definitions in different places. --Ian Pitchford 17:23, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

In need of serious work

Firstly, this article is very, very one-sided. The "Transfer principle" section is greatly overstating the presence of transfer thinking in the Yishuv leadership, for which there is only very slim evidence. The argument, "For some of the Zionist leadership, the "transfer" of a large Arab population appeared to be the only solution" is deceptive, for there were few more than Yosef Weitz who felt this way. The point should be made unambiguously that the Peel Commission report suggested transfer, and that it was not placed on the agenda by the Yishuv. Obviously, it should also be noted that realizing the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine may have necessitated extraordinary measures; on the other hand, these measures were not articulated or considered, as the article implies.

The "Alleged "Master Plan"" section is balanced, but unfortunately it's followed by a section that almost totally ignores the effect of the flight of Arab effendi and the prospect of British departure in bringing on an almost Apocalyptic mood. Public servants fled; businesses closed; schools shut as the teachers left: this phenomenon was enormously significant in giving the urban masses and the fellahin the sense that their society was collapsing. It both directly caused flight and encouraged it when prompted more immediately by the Jewish Plan Dalet offensives. Instead of detailing this, the "First stage" section places an unnatural emphasis on Jewish responsibility, when at that time it was insignificant.

Why do we have such a long quote for the "Third stage"? Is it perhaps because it contains the biggest expulsion of the war, at Lydda and Ramle? Other than to exaggerate the responsibility of expulsions for the flight, is there any reason why we are not devoting more space to the "Second stage"? By the way, the figure for the "Third stage" is wrong; 100,000 Palestinians fled during the Ten Days (according to Birth Revisited), not 300,000. In fact, the main stage of the exodus was the April-June period, which saw 250,000 more Arabs flee (not 250,000 in total, as the article erroneously states). It is also the most complex stage, and was caused by an intermingling of the general sense of collapse I mentioned, war itself, Arab (AHC and ALA) orders, the destructiveness of the Arab irregulars, Jewish psychological campaigns, Jewish expulsions and Jewish atrocities (namely by Lehi and Etzel at Deir Yassin).

Indeed, it is to this article's severe detriment that it makes no serious attempt to describe the impact of Arab evacuation orders (such as at Haifa and Tiberias) and the behaviour of the irregulars and the ALA (and their theft, violence and intimidation) in causing the Arab flight, as these were significant factors - for the April-June period, probably exceeding in effect that of direct Jewish expulsions. I can't stress this more heavily: they desperately need to be included, and without them the article is profoundly unbalanced.

What the article does include is an attempt to discredit it as a factor, and surprisingly quotes Benny Morris in support of that notion. For example, in Morris's Tikkun article, "Had such a blanket order (or series of orders) been given, it would have found an echo in the thousands of documents produced". Except virtually nobody is claiming that there were blanket orders by Arab leaders for Palestinians to leave. Rather, what is claimed is that there were in many specific instances orders to that end, particularly in the April-June period. This is a view Morris actually supports and details in both editions of Birth. I can only conclude that the misrepresentation of Morris's position and the extremely one-sided treatment of direct Arab responsibility for the Palestinian exodus is a product of a distorting POV.

The "fourth stage" of the exodus was caused primarily by Jewish pressure or direct expulsions, because, yes, the Arabs knew that their return would not be imminent if they fled, but also because they were not nearly as demoralized as the towns that fell in or near the November 29 Jewish state borders and because the IDF was demonstrating an increasing willingness to expell inhabitants (unfortunately, the article gives no sense of the evolution of Israeli policy in this area). Otherwise this section is acceptable.

Unfortunately, the next section, as I pointed out, is terribly one-sided once again and also resumes a totally inappropriate practice of quoting from everything, making for unpleasant reading - what happens is that in one instance, the article is very general, then all of a interrupted by extremely specific detail. This is not an encyclopedic approach; it's a propagandist's.

In short, this article fails to weigh all the factors of this complex phenomenon and rather spends a lot of words in a partisan argument in favour of a few of them. It needs a severe and sweeping revision.--Zaxios 05:37, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I said "Firstly" in talking about bias but I didn't clearly state any subsequent points, did I? Well, let's see, the constant quotations disrupt the flow of the article and are out of place in an encyclopedia, which is only meant to summarize arguments, not make them. There is a conspicious absence of any attempt to evaluate the significance of the Palestinian exodus, both as an immediate political issue (such as at Lausanne) and an ongoing one. Perhaps the article should be renamed to "Causes of the Palestinian exodus" if that's all it's going to concern itself with. It is unfortunate that the "References" section includes the unabashedly partisan polemics of Finkelstein and Masalha, both of whom lack expertise and knowledge about the 1948 war and rather confine themselves to using it to satisfy their present politics. Walid Khalidi has done the most scholarly work suggesting a Yishuv policy of transfer, so it would be best to cite him - I'll dig up some references for it. More pressing is the inclusion of representatives of the argument that the Arabs were primarily responsible for their own exodus, which hasn't been given any kind of airing in this article. Efraim Karsh and Shabtai Teveth offer such criticism of, and alternatives to, Morris's account. Finally, this article is also poorly written. The "fourth stage" section I called "acceptable" is nevertheless unclear and awkward; both in individual sections and between them the article repeats itself too much. It needs to be revised with an emphasis on structure, clarity and balance, because at present it lacks all three.

Why am I not doing anything about it myself? I don't have the time right now. The flaws in the present article are gaping and easy to identify; but writing something that does justice to the complexity and importance of this issue (something that scarcely appears to have even been attempted here) is far more be difficult, and time-consuming, too, as I'd probably have to read Birth and the articles around it again (so as not to misrepresent them - obviously quarms that certain Wikipedians do not share).--Zaxios 06:03, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

While it is hard to deny that this article needs more work, many of your criticisms are not justified. (1) The "transfer" section is if anything understated. Morris' whole chapter on it in Revisited proves beyond doubt that Weitz was far from alone and that the idea was articulated and was discussed. And you know that Morris has since then moved even further in that direction. (2) The article already states very clearly that the Peel Commision suggested transfer, and also, correctly, that the Zionists embraced the idea. (3) The early flight of the upper-class and its effect on morale can be expounded on more, but it is not as absent as you claim. (4) The second stage paragraph needs a significant expansion. (5) The "Arab orders" explanation is indeed believed by many. In fact it is still the official Israeli position. A 1992 statement [5]: "During the war, the Arab states called on the Palestinian Arabs to temporarily leave the country and to 'return with the victorious Arab armies.' Some 590,000 followed this directive and left the area..." Has that position changed? I don't think so. Actually a great many Israelis who aren't old enough, or not in Israel long enough, to know better believe this story (in my personal experience). Despite what you claim, Morris in Tikkun was not refuting a strawman but refuting Shabtai Teveth who (unless he has changed since then) is a proponent of the Arab orders version. The case against this version needs to be presented. On the other hand, Morris' much weaker replacement needs an airing too. To put it into perspective, Morris' summary at the start of the book lists "Abandonment on Arab orders" as the "decisive cause of abandonment" for only 5 locations out of 377, and as a joint cause along with military assault only for Haifa. (6) Mashala is not ignorant, he's only biased. You damage your case for removing him by proposing to add the right-wing extremist Karsch. (Morris says his work resembles that of Holocaust deniers, btw.) We should include both. --Zero 12:29, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

I will respond to a few of your points. Before I do so, I'd like to note that most of my comments haven't been addressed in the article or in your reply; they are both unchallenged and unsolved. As such, this post really just confines itself to answering you and won't reiterate or update my remarks above.

Would I be wrong to suppose that the only thing you know about Shabtai Teveth and Efraim Karsh is what Morris has written? Karsh is simply not a "right-wing extremist" by any measure: he supports the establishment of a Palestinian state (contrary to the platforms of all right-wing parties in Israel) and has evidently earned the title "right-wing extremist" solely by arguing that the basis of such a state is the principle of national self-determination, not Israel's culpability for the Palestinian exodus. Yes, I've read Morris's frankly unconvincing rejoinder in the Journal of Palestine Studies, of which the comparison of Karsh's work to Holocaust deniers' was the flabbergasting climax. I must ask, Have you read Teveth's actual article in Ha'aretz (and subsequently Middle Eastern Studies) or just Morris's reply to it? Teveth in fact does a very, very good job of identifying a pattern of tendentious interpretation of sources in Morris's work. The problem with both Karsh and Teveth's conclusions is that they don't offer anything vaguely resembling a satisfactory substitute to Birth (which is what Morris seized on in his replies, rather than addressing their allegations of distortion). Teveth divides the exodus into pre-May 15 and post-May 15. In pre-May 15, he argues that a fusion of the flight of the Palestinian upper classes, actual Arab orders and pervasive fear of battle was the chief cause of the exodus; post-May 15, and because the invasion made the Arab population enemy combatants of sorts, expulsions conducted for military reasons by the IDF became major factors. The problem with that, of course, is that it's too simplistic. Expulsions were occurring before May 15 and Arabs were fleeing of their own accord after, and nowhere in the course of the Palestinian flight can you simply ascribe it to a single reason as Teveth yearns to. You seem to have the same habit of simplification. While it is true that Teveth's conclusions were twisted in fitting a case for Israeli moral sanctity, you've twisted them much further in calling him merely a "proponent of the Arab orders version". Your diligently unthinking recitation of Morris's vitriolic attacks has well and truly scuttled any impression that you have followed this debate properly. Let me remind you: Karsh in Fabricating Israeli History and some articles in the Middle East Forum delivered a death blow to the "transfer thinking" part of the first edition of Birth. The problem is, Karsh's attack was in reality localized there, and the rest of Birth remains untarnished. Karsh's own view (as explained in Commentary) is that expulsions occurred but that they were secondary to the general character of a flight ordered by Arab leaders or undertaken voluntary. That's certainly no substitute for Morris's balance, nuance and rigour, and consequently Birth is still the only authoritative history of the flight, even though Karsh's interpretation is not that of a "right-wing extremist". So, to sum up, there are reasons to criticize Karsh and Teveth; the problem is that you don't seem acquainted with them.

Masalha is indeed biased, but he's also no expert on 1948. He admits that his research amounted to merely reading Morris, whose findings he accepts and rejects on no principle other than whether they satisfy his predetermined conclusions. Masalha shouldn't be in this article because he has done no research of his own and his sole contribution to the field has been to cut pieces off Morris, turning his pesky moral dissonance into a simply melody of Israeli guilt. Not that I have a problem with that conclusion, by the way. "Israel did it" was also the line of Walid Khalidi (who's written about it in the Journal of Palestine Studies), but Khalidi actually had some research to contribute to the idea. Include him, not Masalha.

I've read Revisited, and in my humble opinion "transfer thinking" remains the most dubiously argued part of his book. To paraphrase Anita Shapira, Zionism was one of the most talkative movements ever. Morris's clinging onto marginal references (with the notable exception of the discussion of 1937) does a very poor job of proving that transfer was in the Zionist mainstream. In light of the abundance of other documentation, Morris's unceasing reliance on Yosef Weitz's diaries has always roused my suspicion; his greatly expanded section on transfer is characterized by precisely what Morris has accused Karsh of: fighting the current of the sources in the pursuit of an agenda. Nonetheless, that's just my opinion and I'm not asking Wikipedia to do anything like reflect it. Instead, I would prefer that it indicate what an area of contention this is.

To be honest, I think you've missed the point of my post. I don't want the idea that there was "transfer thinking" in the Yishuv to be cut from the article, I want it to be balanced by opposing views so as to make the article evenhanded; were "transfer thinking" missing entirely, I would want it included for exactly the same reason. What the section is now is a list of quotes designed to convince the reader of one interpretation; I think it should be replaced with a discussion of several. Do you genuinely disagree? --Zaxios 11:28, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I have a fat file of Teveth's writings on this subject including his MES article of Apr 1990 and I've read them all. One thing I recall is that, as you correctly pointed out wrt Masalha, the bulk of Teveth's primary data comes directly out of Morris' work. I believe that I've read all of Morris's and Teveth's journal articles and books that have appeared in English, including Teveth's article in Commentary that was the main target of Morris in Tikkun, and the section in Morris' "1948 and After" that replies to Teveth. My opinion of that debate was that Teveth scored a few valid points but Morris's basic thesis was untouched. Teveth can write good history but his polemics are terrible ("Ben Gurion and the Holocaust" is the worst). I can't say I've read all of Karsh, but I've read enough to know that he's not a historian I respect. His penchant for presenting public pronouncements as proof of the real policy is transparent nonsense. His treatment of Avi Shlaim I thought was shameful. Btw, lots of right wing extremists claim to believe in a Palestinian state. On transfer, I think Morris was right in his infamous interview that people like Ben Gurion knew that the establishment of the Jewish State he wanted was impossible without a major reduction of the Arab population. When he saw the opportunity, he took it. -- I know that isn't a complete reply but it's all I have time for right now. Maybe I'll add to it later. --Zero 12:22, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Rape

I think we should drop the rape statement. It isn't a great endorsement of us humans, but actually 12 cases of rape in a war of this magnitude is exceptionally few. These few cases didn't play any significant role, either. Most of them only came to light via modern research and they were not used for propaganda purposes at the time. Claims that the other side were committing rape, yes, but claims that specific people were raped, no. --Zero 14:41, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Oral histories show that fear of reported rape, true or not, played a part. Secretary of State George Marshall specifically cited widespread reports of sexual abuse of Arab women as a major factor in Arab war sentiment, if not refugee flight (this is found in Foreign Relations of the United States.) They were most defintely used, real, exaggerrated, or not, particularly in relation to Deir Yassin, and believed.

There should be a way of putting both points into the article. Jayjg (talk) 17:21, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Arabic Spelling

Isn't the word "Hijra", in "al-hijra", in the first line, spelled using the arabic letter Haa (as in aHmad) and not the haa currently displayed? I may be wrong.

No, with ه

Edit war and dismissal

An editor have added a lot of info. some of it at first glance look crediable. Why did Ramallite reverted it all ?

I am new to wikipedia. Is this how you do things here, just dismiss a whole section without any specifics ? (Signed User:Zeq)


Hi - This is why I reverted it:

"The Palestinians left their homes in 1947-49 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders' calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle."

  • There is no source for this claim that "wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war", it sounds like original research. The comment about a handful being expelled is not only POV, it's not factual, as a lot more than a "handful" were expelled. The editor was trying to make it seem that the numbers expelled were insignificant to the numbers that left before the war, and that is not a neutral point of view.

"This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower figure — 472,000, and calculated that only about 360,000 Arab refugees required aid.2"

  • The official UN figures are cited in the article. When an editor writes something like "This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees", this is very much original research, because he/she is doing his/her own calculations. There was an argument before about which numbers to use (Israeli, Palestinian, or UN), and finally there was a decision (not by me) to use the UN numbers.
  • The rest of that entry is about Jewish refugees, and it is credible but does not belong in this article because this article is about Palestinian refugees. There is a separate article for Jewish refugees. Most editors try not to mix topics in articles where they do not belong. Also, the Jewish refugee problem was not created by the Palestinians, it was created by Arab states who invaded Palestine. Even the Jordanians kicked some Jews out of the West Bank according to sources (although they probably would have gone to Israel anyway). These all belong in the Jewish refugees article. Ramallite (talk) 15:25, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
The U.N. Mediator's report cited was an interim report made while the exodus was on-going, and thus significantly undercounts the final number of Palestinian refugees. Jayjg (talk) 15:40, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Ramallite, about wealthy leaving first. This is what benni Morris said: some towns were desrted because the leaders ahve already left. I will try to find the exact citation. In the mean while I think this will eb of help:

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf14.html

Zeq, thanks for the link - but the link has 2 problems with it. First, I just realized that the entry I reverted in this article was cut and pasted from that website, which is copyrighted. So that is against Wikipedia policy, we cannot reproduce copyrighted materials without consent. Second, it is written by Mitchell Bard, an AIPAC official who is hardly a neutral source. I trust a source like Mitchell Bard the same way I would trust Ovadia Yosef or Bibi Netanyahu, very biased and twisting facts out of context for propaganda purposes. Here's a little piece of information: Palestinians are not refugees because of the manner in which they left, because almost all who left (whether kicked out, fleeing gunfire and shelling, or encouraged by foreign Arab leaders to leave) expected to return. Now they are refugees because they could not return to their homes. Just like the hurricane that struck New Orleans, many residents of New Orleans fled before the Hurricane came expecting to return afterwards. If Mexicans invaded New Orleans and took over the empty homes before the people of New Orleans returned, would that be acceptable? I think not. The Mexicans cannot say "well, most residents of New Orleans left willingly, so we have the right to take their property". But this is the heart of the refugee problem - inability to reclaim lost property because Palestinians are of the wrong religion. Ramallite (talk) 17:15, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Ramallite: Of course the Refugees are refugees. No one argue that they are not. Although there are many examples in this world that refugees who are 3 generations from the original refugees usually get citizenship and find a way to restore their lives. Most do it not in the original place that they have left. Migration, as you surly know, is a world wide story.

As for rejecting a source because of the fact he belongs to a specific group. Well, that is a problem. There is no way for us as editors to know what group you or I belong. Still everyone has a right to express his knowledge. So as long as there is support for such knowledge there is no reason why not to accept it.

There are many subjects that although there is plenty of data in form of web sites, yet this info is wrong. (How do I know: My original research tools: Eyes and ears:-) but still we in wikipedia bring both sides of the story and not reject anyone just because he/she belongs to a specific group. Zeq 17:48, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Zeq - I didn't say they can't be used - I just said that they were not helpful to me personally after you stated that " I think this will be of help". They describe a particular POV which I think is propaganda by taking facts out of context (like an example I gave somewhere else, if Ahmed says that he loves Coke, it is not factually true for Shlomo to say that Ahmed hates orange juice - but that's what propagandists do). If it were to be included in the article, it would be one POV that would need an opposing POV to be presented as well. I definitely am not rejecting anything because the author belongs to a particular group, all I'm saying is that such articles, if cited, would need to be balanced with the opposing POV.
As for refugees, yes it is a tragedy what happened to them, and it's also a tragedy that they were stuck in countries of Arab regimes instead of Europe or Australia. I've often said before that I'd rather be a stateless Palestinian then be a citizen of one of those other Arab dictatorships, but then again, I am a native of Ramallah, and I have no idea what it's like to live in a refugee camp denied of basic rights in a foreign country, I only know what it's like to be denied basic rights in my own country, so I can't speak for the Palestinian refugees that unfortunately got stuck in places like Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, etc.
By the way, we should be careful not to add too many propaganda sites, because if we add too many views, and then too many opposing views, the whole article will become too cluttered and unreadable. Ramallite (talk) 18:36, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


Jayjg: About numbers. There were those who came back after the UN report was issued. Also the UN report itself speaks of duplaicate refugee card (card gave the right to food rations) but over all I don't see any reason not to use the number of 711,000 only because this is not the main issue. off course there are good sources that show that the population at that time was higher than 600,000 so I agree with the coment being made about original research. It is just that it should have been explained not dismissed out of hand. See this for more info:

http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm

Zeq 17:01, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

The numbers who left after that report vastly outnumbered those who came back, and the 711,000 number was arrived at after weeding out as many of the duplicates etc. that the U.N. was able to do. Jayjg (talk) 17:05, 30 September 2005 (UTC)


I traced the source of the information about the leaders and rich who were the first to leave. It seems both Morris and Kaarsh both rely on a British intelligence report from Oct 23, 1947. I can not find their books on the web but I have them in front of me. BTW, the Karash book refute very specifically many of the points made by Morris but at least on that they agree.

EFRAIM KARSH is professor and head of Mediterranean studies at King’s College, University of London and the author of, among other books: Fabricating Israeli History: The New Historians and, most recently (with Inari Karsh), Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923.

Zeq 18:06, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

If you have the books, then you don't need a website. Just cite the books (author, publisher, year, page #). You can even type the relevant paragraph exactly as in the book if you cite it properly, just type <blockquote> before you write the text, and type </blockquote> after it. CAN ANBODY HELP User:Zeq learn how to insert footnote citations? Thanks Ramallite (talk) 18:36, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Aiden's revert

Aiden, you do not need to refer me to a Wikipedia policy page like WP:Point that is completely irrelevant to the reasons I reverted the page, because I did not disrupt Wikipedia to make any points. I merely reverted an entry for the reasons I stated in the edit summary at the time. There was also a discussion on this page about part of that entry regarding refugee numbers. I suggest you read my edit summary, this discussion page, as well as the Wikipedia policy against reproducing copyrighted materials without permission (which it looks to me like this entry was), and general guidelines about editing a page with text that is actually relevant to the article itself. Also note that the text itself is not written in an encyclopedic manner. The text about the number of refugees has been addressed in the discussion section above, and the text about Jewish refugees is absolutely irrelevant to this article; there is a separate article for Jewish refugees who fled or were expelled from Arab countries and who have nothing to do with Palestinian refugees. The quotation towards the end of the article is just dropped there without context or introduction. If you'd like to add it, please provide it as an encyclopedic entry. Ramallite (talk) 03:01, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Dajudem's edits

OK, well I haven't read the whole dicussion page. I will tomorrow. However I did some editing by adding some Israeli position, a few extra facts and some documentation. The quote from Herzl was taken out of context. I added the complete quote. There is much on here that is totally undocumented. I commented out a few things that really require documentation. There is much written that Morris and others have completely got wrong. Read: http://www.meforum.org/article/711#_ftn16. I made a few changes in facts. The article is highly biased so I added the DISPUTE flag. Juanita 04:41, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Cleaned up some un-uncyclopedic language such as "of course" and restored some text for which there are sources. There were attacks on both sides during the 20s-40s. Again, thanks for pointing out some of the imbalance. Ramallite (talk) 17:34, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi - unless I'm misreading it, this source that you linked to does not say anything about there being Zionists at the 1937 convention who were against the transfer plan. There was only a dispute about border. Are you sure you used the correct citation? Ramallite (talk) 20:40, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Rammallite-- pleasure to make your acquaintance. I can tell by your question that you are on the other side of the fence on this issue. That is just the point I am trying to make. The idea of 'transfer' is rolled right in with the 2 state solution that was discussed by the Peel commission. It was not just an issue of borders... it was the issue of population exchange that was inherent in the 2-state solution. As the Peel Commission says: " In view of the present antagonism between the races and of the manifest advantage to both of them for reducing the opportunities of future friction to the utmost, it is to be hoped that the Arab and the Jewish leaders might show the same high statesmanship as that of the Turks and the Greeks and make the same bold decision for the sake of peace." The idea was hopefully to develop a peaceful solution... not to march off the Arabs to some piece of desert somewhere and leave them.

The cost of the proposed irrigation and development scheme would be heavier than the Arab State could be expected to bear. Here again the British people it is suggested, would be willing to help to bring about a settlement; and if an arrangement could be made for the transfer, voluntary or otherwise, of land and population, Parliament should be asked to make a grant to meet the cost of the aforesaid scheme. [6]

It was a British idea, and it died on the vine. Weisman was not against implementing it, I don't think but he did not want to be responsible for it because he was sure it would be held against the Jewish state forever. At the Zionist Convention, Weisman said: " I said that the whole success of the scheme depended on whether the government genuinely did wish to carry out this recommendation. The transfer could be carried out only by the British government, and not by the Jews." [7] He was right of course. Even though the transfer was never carried out, we have people like Benny Morris who have tried to slant the truth into a major "Zionist" conspiracy to ethnically cleanse the Arabs. Frankly, I hope to show, a little later, that Ben_Gurion and the Jews were AGAINST the idea of transfer of Arabs EXCEPT in certain cases.. ie in war, when the Arabs held land that was vital to Jews... then the Jews fought for that land and expelled or killed the Arabs that were there, as in the case of the battle over Jerusalem. But perhaps I digress... Do try to remember that roughly 20% of Israel today is Arab and they enjoy a fairly decent standard of living and democratic opportunities and freedom of religion etc compared to the rest of the region. More later Juanita 21:48, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, and you have no idea how right you are about being "on the other side of the fence", quite literally as a matter of fact :) In any case, I didn't remove your actual sentence because I don't dispute it, just the relevance of the citation attached to it. Perhaps if you can attach the source where you got Weizmann's quotation above, that would make more sense. As for today's Israeli Arabs, I'm not sure that topic is relevant to the rest of the discussion here, but there apparently are some forms of official discrimination against them according to this article. Don't forget, Israel still has to ensure that a particular group of its citizens maintain a solid majority. Ramallite (talk) 22:12, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Ramallite -- does that mean you are from Ramallah, then? I added my source above-- I was sort of rushing there for a bit... I agree that there is no doubt some discrimination against Israeli Arabs! Discrimination is a fact of life everywhere, and Israel is no different. There is even probably some 'official' discrimination. I will read the article more carefully later. Further I agree with your point that Israel must maintain a solid majority of Jews in Israel. That should be something that the Arabs/Muslims should understand though -- as without a doubt they are the majority in the rest of the middle east -- and Jews are discriminated against in Arab/Muslim countries as well... Interestingly, the Iraqi constitution hung on just that same issue for awhile, where the Arabs wanted identification with Arabs and Muslims, while some of the other citizens, ie Kurds and the teensy minority of Christians did not want to opt for an all-Arab, all-Muslim identification in the constitution. Somehow I feel that that is part of the problem, ie that diversity must be accepted and actually encouraged and celebrated, rather than we should all be clones of one another. Cheers! Juanita 23:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Jewish Exodus

See article history; as this has been stated before in edit summaries. The Jewish exodus is somewhat contemporary but quite unrelated to the Palestinian Nakba, and was caused separately by Arab regimes that are not Palestinian, for their own reasons (or probably without any). Although completely noteworthy and significant, it does not belong in this article, especially not in the introduction where it takes on the resemblance of a related or even balancing event to the Palestinian Nakba, which it wasn't as there is no relation. Jewish persecution in Arab countries is discussed in other articles, but the Palestinian flight/expulsion has almost nothing to do with the reasons or the logistics for the Jewish exodus from Arab countries. I'd be happy to discuss it further, but if it must be included, maybe as a footnote and without so much weight (and definitely not in the first paragraph in my opinion), for the same reason the pogroms of Russia are not discussed in this specific article. Ramallite (talk) 03:29, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, the reasons for it weren't completely unrelated. Certainly a number of Arab countries and many individuals within those countries used the creation of Israel as a pretext for persecution of Jews. Jayjg (talk) 21:54, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Completely agree as far as the "creation of Israel" part, but was that out of any sympathy for Palestinians who were welcomed into their lands with open tent.. uh I mean arms? Or some other reason having to do with hatred? Ramallite (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
The question of "Jewish exodus is unrelated to the Palestinian Nakba" or ""Jewish exodus is related to the Palestinian Nakba" is a matter for historians so anyone talking sides in this discussion is preforming an (exclent by itself) original research.
We here in wiki have two (or 3) options:
  • If I am a mad zionist I would like the Nakba article to dispear or be hideen or be such that as less people can find it. Since I am not (a mad zionist) I want this article to remain.
  • If I am a Palestinian propeganda officer working for NAD I would want the facts about the jewish exodus from Arab lands to be hiden as well.
  • If I am a student coming to this article to look for an historical event effecting middle east conflict: Would I like to know about an event that took place in paralel and may (or maynot) be 100% related ? I think we in wikipedia should have such reader in mind when deciding. Zeq 13:54, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
BTW< can someone really think that there are no ways in which (even not in 48 itself) these events did not became related over time ? if you really think this way I suggest you look at the first arab league meeting in which decisions about the fate of the palestinian refugees were taken. (just my 2 cents original research on the issue) Zeq 14:00, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
You are performing OR by tying the two together in the first paragraph of this article. The Nakba was an event that took place mostly over a short period of time (war), while the Jewish exodus probably still occurs today. You discussion about "mad zionists" and the NAD (oooff, AGAIN!) doesn't make much sense. As Jayjg said above, the Palestinian exodus may have been used as a pretext (although there needs to be a source for this assertion), but pretexts are not the same as the actual causes and the events. By the way, there is no reason for Palestinians to want to "hide" the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, because this is an Arab problem and not a Palestinian problem. Your logic above is flawed. There is already a link to the Jewish exodus article under "See also" in this article. Ramallite (talk) 14:06, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
So you are saying "let's hide it from any student who come to wikipedia to look for historical data about the conflict" - which means you look at wikipedis as means to distribute one sided propeganda without giving the balancing and relvany facts. to top that you call my logic "flawed" (not civil) Zeq 14:18, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
If I were you, I wouldn't accuse anybody else of being "not civil". By your logic, this article should then include everything about the conflict - the 1948 war, the Zionist Congress, the First through Fifth Aliyas, the 1967 war, and maybe even Golda Meir's secret love affair with Yasser Arafat! There is already a link to the Jewish exodus in the "See also" section (along with other links as well). But to put your paragraph into this article where it has nothing to do with the Palestinian Nakba is just inappropriate. It is not putting things "in context" because "in context" means that the two are related or balance each other - they do not. They are each different tragedies that occurred in the same area of the world but for very different reasons. Ramallite (talk) 14:25, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Don't put words in my mouth. I explained why and what should be included. You never answered the main issue:
  • To a potenital reader this is of interst.
Zeq 15:34, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
As usual, I answered but you failed to read (or understand) my answer. "To a potential reader, this is of interest" - that is why there is a "See also" section for unrelated articles that may be of interest. That is why the "See also" section exists. Ramallite (talk) 15:41, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
The 'see also' section is not enough. Jewish refugees were sometimes settled into abandaned homes of Palstinian who left at the exodus and history had made the two events related. you can not bury the facts that don't fit your narritive at the 'see also' section. The two issues has relevancy to each other. One can not make informed judgment about what to do today with respect to palestinian refugees without having the mirror issue be in front of him ina clear way. I would argge the same about including the palestinian nakba into the jewish exodus article (it is already mentioned there and you are welcome to expeand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_lands#Jews_flee_Arab_states_.281948-.29
  • let me remind you that althpough you are aplestinian you do not own wikipedia articles about Palestinian suffering. Zeq 15:46, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


  • You say "without having the mirror issue be in front of him ina clear way". Show me a source that says it is a mirror issue.
  • I know that this issue is the core of palestinians concerns and propeganda. side by side to your version of the issue (your narative) there is an alternatives like in here who see it as a mirror issue : [8] [9] [10] or this source which shows it as visual miror issue  :[11]. Is this enough or is your original research shows it is different ? Zeq 17:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • In the "Jewish exodus" article, the only mention of the Palestinian exodus is "After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Palestinian exodus, the creation of the state of Israel, and the independence of Arab countries from European control, conditions for Jews in the Arab world deteriorated." That's it. It is not implying a "mirror situation", it is prefacing the events that happened before the conditions for Jews deteriorated. The Jewish exodus from Arab lands had nothing to do with the situation that led to the Palestinian Nakba. And no, I will not expand that section in the "Jewish exodus" article because it is not relevant.
  • you are welcome to add there. I don't own articles on jewish suffering in the same way that you don't own articles on Palestinian suffering. Zeq 17:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • Do not "remind" me (or Palmiro or Huldra or YNhockey) about WP policies, just try to abide by them yourself.
Ramallite (talk) 16:25, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
  • I always edit according to policy. When one of your edit tag team violate policy I will remind you of it. Zeq 17:27, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
Not a single one of the propaganda articles you refer to above claims the two events are related, they only complain about the Jewish refugee problem not getting as much coverage as the Palestinian refugee problem. They also "try" to argue that the solution to the two problems should be reciprocal, without actually stating how the two are related. This is not an article about solutions to the conflict, this is a history of the Nakba only, not an opinion about it. I don't see your sources stating as fact what you are trying to state as fact here. Your sources say "Everybody complains about the Palestinian refugee problem, and nobody talks about the Jewish refugees" while you are saying (I think) "The Palestinian refugee problem is directly related to the Jewish refugee problem and any article that talks about one should also talk about the other for balance". Like you have been told before, you should try to address the issue directly instead of jumping around on unrelated propaganda sites and always avoiding a straight answer. Both Palestinians and Jews were expelled in that they were not allowed to return to their homes. The two events did not happen in parallel, but within a certain historical context. This context does not tie the two events together the way you want them, and they do not "balance" each other out. Do you know of any reputable historian who claims that the two events balance each other? In other words, it is original research to say that the Palestinian problem is balanced by the Jewish refugee problem, because they are not the same thing. Furthermore, to say that they balance each other out as a fact on Wikipedia like you claim is strong POV. Finally, you should be aware that I consider your threats in boldface that you will remind me of something that you should rather be reminding yourself as extremely rude, but I have no hopes that you will try to be more civil. Ramallite (talk) 19:00, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that you review this before we continue:

Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Giving_.22equal_validity.22

Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Avoiding_constant_disputes

Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Religion

I have done my best to reason with you and show you that many sources (even if they are a mnority) consider the two issues related and present them as such. You on the other hand want a monopoly on suffering. "only palestinian suffering should be mentioned in this article. This is the controversy and it will be described in this article. The "nakba" is not just an historical event it is a narritive, the core palestinian narritive. As a narritive it is on going and is a subject of an on-going controversy. Wikipedia can not just describe one side of the issue. Review the ploicies. then ww will talk more. If you can not see it cause you are too close to the subject seeq guidence from others.

please see the footnotes in [12] in which description of prescution of jews is described as early as 1947. as well as this [13] . clearly to argue that two events are "not" related although they occur at about the same time and they are mentioned in many places together is not a very factual non oroginal research conclusion. Can show me a source saying they are "not related" ?

PS I did not mean to be rude when I wrote that I will remind of wikipedia policy. sory that such reminders are accepted this way. I appologize for causing you distress over it. Zeq 19:26, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


Don't worry, you are not distressing me. The "giving equal validity" link you just gave me supports my argument, not yours, because it states that "the Wikipedia neutrality policy certainly does not state, or imply, that we must "give equal validity" to minority views." You said that it was a minority view. Second, I have absolutely no idea why you brought in the religion reference above, since that is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Third, I am not too close to the issue, I am not a refugee. Fourth, I think I know the policy pretty well thank you. Do you? Fifth, I do not care to have a "monopoly" on suffering. Unlike you, I do not make it a point to describe only the bad things about the opposite side and glorify my own side. Sixth, again, the Jewish refugee problem is not "the other side" of the Palestinian refugee issue. The Nakba is part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Jewish refugees are part of the Arab-Israeli conflict (and not really Palestinian since we didn't kick any Jews out, in fact we lived well together until the wars then they kicked us out, or didn't allow us back in, or whatever). Instead of arguing about ideology, I suggest you simply add what you want to the article based on reputable sources and not try to create a balance where there is none. If you want to say that some people think there is a balance, you can add a separate section about that (and source it), that would be fine. But don't state it as fact, because that is POV. Ramallite (talk) 19:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


Zeq, please stop making silly and offensive remarks to other editors along the lines of "you want a monopoly on suffering". Nothing Ramallite has ever written gives you a right to say that. Also, your snide reminders of Wikipedia policies you yourself are incapable of adhering to does not help your position. Have you ever wondered why editors who in all likelihood have opinions similiar to yours don't defend you or support your positions? If you were more careful about what you said on talk pages, and more logical and systematic in your edits and in explaining them, you could get on a lot better with people here, whether you agree or disagree with them.
As for your pseudo-apology, try and put yourself in the position of someone reading it and think how you would feel. Palmiro | Talk 19:51, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


Sorry if you take striaght talk as offensive. You (the two of you) behave as if you "own" this article. I suggest that you seeq help from others for example on your last revert Palmiro. Clearly may15 is the day israel gain independence but you removed it . Why ? because it too is "not relevent".

The exoduse is your narritive. there are conflicting narritive of the same events and both desrve to be on the article. The attempt to seprate the "arab israeli conflict" from the Palestinian Israeli conflict" is just your POV. For Israelis (and others) it is the same conflict. even if somewhat seprated they are related. Zeq 21:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Ha ha - I didn't separate the conflicts, just the context. You just said that my "attempt to separate the conflicts is just my POV even if somewhat separated". Sorry that's really funny ! :) Ramallite (talk) 21:55, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
You can laugh as much as you want but this is a quote from "The Nakba is part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Jewish refugees are part of the Arab-Israeli conflict (and not really Palestinian since we didn't kick any Jews out" Zeq 05:11, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
Zeq, why exactly do you think I should seeq help from others on my last (and only, I think, which I admit shows a serious lack of concern for my property) edit? Palmiro | Talk 15:05, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
I think you are too emotinal about this subject. Others may be able to give you more prespective. This subject is a 'religious" issues for supporters of the Palestinian side. I do not deny the palestinian narritive and all that is associated with it, but side by side to that there are othger way of looking at the issue. This other version and the controversy is not manifasted in the current article. This is in clear contradiction to policy. Zeq 18:26, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Reasoning

In the interest of trying to reason with each other, let's try to agree on a few points:

  • Let's not make uninformed (and erroneous) judgments about each other (like saying "I think you are too emotional about this subject").
  • Let's not make non-intellectual statements like "This subject is a 'religious' issue for supporters of the Palestinian side." What on earth does that mean anyway?
  • Let's acknowledge what the issue is instead of trying to dance around it. The issue is not whether "the other version" is justified, for I happen to be a very strong supporter of forcing Arab states to apologize and compensate Jewish refugees who were either expelled from their property or intimidated/persecuted so that they'll leave. But I disagree with what you are saying that the two issues "balance" each other. Being forced out of your property (by either forced expulsion or forced denial of re-entry, for any reason) is a crime. It would be a balance (as you say) if Jews were responsible for the Palestinian 'exodus' AND Palestinians were responsible for the Jewish exodus from Arab lands. But Palestinians were not responsible for that, they had no power and were in refugee camps themselves. Only people who are both right-wing and propagandists try to argue that the two should be linked, and even they don't say that the two are related, they actually complain that it isn't tied together.
  • Let's try to remain civil and refrain from attacking or insinuating falsehoods about each other. It is not appropriate for Zeq to throw out statements like "you don't agree with me, so you must be too close to the subject" or "you must work for the NAD" or "you are denying the other side because you only want your narrative" or "you hate Matzo balls because your grandmother forced you to eat lettuce at 2 am every Thursday in your underwear" or whatever.

Ramallite (talk) 18:48, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Since you and I can not reason this with each other I have left messages to several people who may be able to help mediate this issue. I think this is a better approch than another edit war. so just keep this in mind when we wiill get to resolve this (and I am sure one way or another we will): Although this article is about your people you do not own it. At some point you will have to let even a minority view apear on this article. I don't recall ever claiming that the two issues balance each other (if I did please point it out) Clearly number wise they almost do but that is not the issue. Wikipedia is not the place to resolve conflicting narritrive. When an historical event become part of the main narritive of a people and justify refusing peace deals based on the argument "no return = No peace" it become an ongoing issue, as such the controversy and the current discussions about it, how it is viewed by both sides is part of the info one wants to find when looking for encyclopedic article about this subject. Clearly, if I am a jewish kid looking about "palestinian Nkaba" I get to this article and I want to know about what (similar but diffrent) related issue took place at the same time to Jews who suffer from a (similar but different)exdus which is closly related to the evnts at that time. And plese i know that so far in this articl are BS about Hertzel role in the Nakba (although he died 44 years before it) so stop bring these nonsense arguments that i want to include Golad birthday or something. I am not the one who expanded the scope of this article. The scope is set now we just need to include all relavant facts and the role of those evnts in the narritives of the two people. Zeq 19:35, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

You have absolutely no reason to keep saying rubbish like "You do not own this article"; as Palmiro said, if you keep up your insinuations and bad faith remarks on talk pages, nobody is going to help you or listen to you. You also have no reason to say things like "you and I can not reason this with each other" because you have yet to try to be constructive, all you have been is accusatory and insinuating. If you are asked why you think the two should get equal footing in this article, you need to show with your own words what you are arguing for, instead of your usual tactic of referring to right-wing websites (that don't even support your claim), insulting other editors, accusing them of "monopolizing" or "ownership of suffering", and whatever other demeaning tactics you have been engaged in. If you are unable to do so, then by all means find another editor who can help illustrate your point more clearly than you can but without the insults. Your argument above still does not address the issue, because according to your reasoning, that a student would want to know about the whole narrative, you would need to add everything else about the conflict, including the 1967 war and the Camp David summit. What if you are a Jewish kid who comes across this article, then decides that you also want to know about the Holocaust since it is a relevant event to the creation of Israel (and thus the Nakba). Should we include the Holocaust here in a big paragraph in the introduction? If you didn't use the word "balance", you certainly used the words "for context" as if the Palestinian refugee problem has to be put "in context" to the Jewish refugee problem. You also inserted a long paragraph about the Jewish refugees right in the introduction of this article, which is very much trying to create some sort of "balance" or rather "equivalency" or "reciprocity" between the two. This is your own original research. As you would say, "please read Wikipedia policy". Ramallite (talk) 20:03, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

The reason I mention that you do not own this article is simple: You need to let other make changes to it as well. Even if you do not accept their view. This article need to be made NPOV and you will need to alloow this to take place. Zeq 20:07, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Also you wrote above "Wikipedia is not the place to resolve conflicting narritrive" - there is no "conflicting narrative". Both narratives are equally valid and equally important, they do not conflict. You are treating it as if the Palestinian refugees are one POV and the Jewish refugees are another POV so we should include both in order to get NPOV. This is nonsense. The two are equally important and each by itself is NPOV. You are attempting to tie together two events in the same article, and according to your reasoning, we would have to bring the entire 20th century history into this article in order to satisfy your logic. It is reasonable to add a sentence, within context, such as "the Palestinian refugee problem created a pretext for Arab governments to persecute their Jewish population, which was a factor in the Jewish exodus from Arab lands" (and SOURCE it), this would be very acceptable. But what you are suggesting doesn't make sense from an encyclopedic standpoint. Finally, I am not in a position to "allow" or "not allow" editing to take place, I only try to make sure the article stays well-written, encyclopedic, and relevant. Ramallite (talk) 20:14, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Good, we are making progress. I think we will leave at that for tonight. You too see the relevancy of the two exodus to each other. Both in History and off course now as part of the narritive of the two people. Just to be clear about narritive:
It is not an issue of this exdus Vs. that exdus. It is an issue of how these evnts are used to justify present positions. To many Israelis the creation of two nation states (one israel: The jewish homeland, One palestinian: The palestinian homeland) is an important goal. Like wise to Palestinian the subject of the nakba is a focus point that justify many things in the eyes of Palestinians (and the arab world) among which was maintaing millions of people in a refugee status over 50 years. (and calling complete areas to twons like Jenin -even areas that are now nicly built - a "refugee camp") mentioning all that without mantioning that in the eys of the other side the movment of hundreds of thousands of people from arab countries into (in some cases the homes of) the land of thiose who indeed in 1948 were refugees is IMHO creation of a POV article. This is what we should strive to avoid. Zeq 20:25, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

What you wrote above, from "To many Israelis the creation of..." until "...that are now nicly built - a "refugee camp."", while really original research, would probably find agreement from many editors. However, I am even more confused now as to what the last line in the paragraph above has anything to do with what you wrote before it. It just doesn't make sense to me. Sorry. Ramallite (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


PS see this [14] which wouldshow that as early as Nov 1948 the refugee issue was reguees from two sides: Arabs leaving Palestine and jews leaving Arab lands. Zeq 20:38, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

This article says "There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, since 1933, and since 1937 (Anschluss of Austria), since 1939, and since V-E Day in 1945. Jewish organizations have taken care of them as well as they could. They were not among their own people as the Arabs are, but among hostile, anti-Semitic populations." Given the text before and after this sentence, I fail to see the connection with your argument. Ramallite (talk) 20:42, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

It also talks about "Jewish refugees from pogroms in Cairo and Bagdad?" or you missed that part ? Zeq 05:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


Huh??? The sentence is as follows:

To lend a neutral character to the appeal (for aid), 7,000 Jewish refugees are included with the 300,000 Arab refugees.(this refers to recipients of foreign aid) On this point I have my doubts. Are these Jewish refugees from pogroms in Cairo and Bagdad? There are no Jewish refugees in Israel who would accept help from international organizations.

How in Shiva's name does this make this obscure article proof of a connection between the Nakba and the Jewish exodus from Arab lands? I knew it - you must work for the NAD! Ramallite (talk) 06:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

How in Shiva's name can I convince you ? Zeq 06:35, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Zeq, perhaps you can convince us all by suggesting how your paragraph can be rewritten so that it is relevant to the article. As it was written, the only connection between the paragraph and the Palestinian exodus appeared to be that they had happened "at the same time" (which is, by the way, inaccurate at the very least). Nothing else, except for the contemporariness, is on the subject of this article. Surely you'd agree that this is hardly enough to justify the inclusion of this paragraph. Whatever text you wish to add to the article, it should be clear how it is relevant from the text itself.--Doron 08:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Clearly Doron, that was never the argument I used. How did you came up with this ? Zeq 10:49, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
What argument? Aren't you trying to convince us that the Jewish exodus from Arab lands is relevant to this article?--Doron 12:58, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Read what I said before You are responding to an argument I never used as the main reason. it was you who put these words in my mouth by fabricating this quote (which I never used) "the only connection between the paragraph and the Palestinian exodus appeared to be that they had happened "at the same time"" - I never used the word "only" which you seem to respond too in your blurb. Zeq 13:00, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Where did I put words in your mouth? The only quote of you I gave was "at the same time", which was the beginning of your paragraph. Since I have been misunderstood, I'll repeat my point: the text you added contains no reference to the subject of the article, except for the two happening at the same time. If you want to add a piece of text to the article, it should be clear how it is relevant.--Doron 13:19, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Link

Removed: Palestinian refugees confirm that in some cases it was Arab leaders who requested them to leave
This is an outrageous summary. What it actually says is: "They asked people in Salameh to leave, because a war was going to happen there," he said. "They said, 'Go for a week, or a month -- then come back.' "So they left. And when they tried to come back, the Jews prevented them, ". Apparently civilians have to stay in a war zone in order to not be deemed to have abandoned their homes. --Zero 13:05, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Read the article and you will see why it is the most important issue to this article (and this is why it was written this way in the link description which was not intended a a summary of the whole article just the relevant parts.) It seems that any information which does not fit one side POV can not be placed on this page. The Pro-Palestinian gang "own" this page. you can revert all you want since you are the majority here and I can not edit this page according to Wikipedia policy of NPOV. Maybe others would like to join in if they care about Wikipedia article being NPOV. Zeq 13:11, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

External links

We now have a highly biased selection of highly biased external links. This hardly helps. However, as one of the owners of the article, I feel that it would be unfair were I to start pruning them. Perhaps someone else would like to try. Palmiro | Talk 13:20, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I see I got an edit conflict with no warning and Zero has also raised this point. However, that isn't the only problematic link and Zeq has kindly confirmed my point that I shouldn't get involved. Palmiro | Talk 13:22, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

"ownership" of this article

It seems this article has "owners" who do not "allow" anyone else to contribute.

I placed a section, a relavnt, accurate and sourced about the fact that during the waer not only Arabs were expelled but jews as well. (it is not that I have abanded the more comprehaenisve issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands but just made an attempt with a fact that is more relavant)

It was quickly reverted, same applied to links that were put into the external link section. These were links that should have survived the high bar of academic sources (Karash is a well known proffesor in London) but that too was removed along with an older link that was here before about an interview with two of the original refugees of the exodus.

Clearly, this article is controlled by a gang that does not obey any Wikipedia standards. It is not up to me alone to make this article NPOV. Slim Jayjg and others I will give you a chance at it. This article, as it now stands include only one narrative - the Palestinian one. Zeq 14:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I think we should be concentrating on facts - and that means relevant facts - in preference to narratives. We aren't, as far as I know, trying to write the first postmodern encyclopaedia. Palmiro | Talk 14:42, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I garee with you. It is a fact that what is writen here now is part of the Palestinian narritive.
let me agin refer you to:
Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Giving_.22equal_validity.22
Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Avoiding_constant_disputes
Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Religion - read it and try to understand it's aplicability to what goes on here.
[User:Zeq|Zeq]] 15:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
"Clearly, this article is controlled by a gang that does not obey any Wikipedia standards." No, Wikipedia is contributed to by editors who care about accuracy, relevance, and lack of disruption. As for your latest insertion, that may belong in the '1948 War' article and not in this one, because it describes a battle during the war but not anything related to the Palestinian exodus. As far as I know there was no Jewish exodus out of Israel after 1948 (although I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Jews were not kicked out of Israel). Zeq, let me ask you this, and I hope you can answer me directly (without jumping around and without propaganda pages): If this page is the "Palestinian narrative" of the Palestinian exodus, what is the "Israeli narrative" of the Palestinian exodus? Ramallite (talk) 15:17, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll be brief:

The israli narritive is that there was a war. many lost their homes (both jews and arabs) . It was not a plan to kick all the Palestinian out (israel clearly in it's declaration of independence and later in ben Gourion speeches talked about non jews who will live in israel) I suggest you read Karsh, in many cases he expose the lies of benny Morris. Clearly the Palestinians had lost more and that loss continued . Both the loss itself and it's contiuation is much the blame of Arab leaders than of Israel. I also did not see any mention in tghis article (maybe I missed it) that Palestinians efendi class , about 30,000 of them were the first to leave (like the wealthy always do) and that caused other to leave after them. Further more since Israel was poor some of the jews who fled from Arab countries (starting in 1947) were placed into former Palestinian homes (like in Lod and Ramle) Zeq 15:59, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll ask you a question:

Do you think other POV can be represented on this article.

Answer: all POV having to do with the Palestinian exodus should be discussed here, and that is what the person you quote below is talking about. However, if Morris is one POV, then the opposing POV would be somebody who refutes what Morris is saying.
Karsh wrote a complete book in which he disprove Morris's claims one by one. It is an answer to Morris. Yet in 3 years not a single of karsh's claims found it's way into this article. (although he is a VERY respected academic head of a London based universty department. The NPOV policy have failed in this article. Zeq 19:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

The Jewish exodus from Arab lands is not an opposing POV, it is a separate issue altogether that does not conflict with this one. This is an encyclopedic article about the Palestinian exodus.

It is your POV that those are separte issues. There are others who think these issues are related . Surly they becmae related once the Palestinians are using the exodus as an excuse for "right of Return" and a continued war aagainst israel. Under these facts the issue of a refugee swap (as was shown out by many of the sources I brought but were kicked out by the orgenized "revert gang" need to be on this article. Not every POV which I dislike should be removed and not every POV which you dislike should be removed. The controversy can be described. This is the wkipedia policy. (which failed here) Zeq 19:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

If you try to present the Jewish exodus as an opposing POV, not only is that original research, but this article stops looking like an encyclopedia article and becomes a page out of your Likud party's platform.

BS. It is sourced. I have never exprssed any Likud party's platform (The likud nearly dos not exist any more) just look at my user page to know what I think. Zeq 19:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

You have still not convinced anybody how the Jewish exodus is an opposing POV to the Palestinian exodus.

If you all decide to be be "convinced" than clearly I can't. Even adding links or events directly related from the war itself got deleted. The Wikipedai process have failed in this article so don't make an argument that claim that what occur here is based on a "due proces" cause it is not. Zeq 19:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

They are equally valid, and again, do not conflict with each other. Now if you want to mention that some Arab homes were taken over by Jews arriving from Arab countries, I see no problem with that. But to use this as an excuse to introduce the Jewish exodus as a major entry into this article "as an opposing POV" doesn't make much sense at all. For example, Ben Gurion Airport is built on previously Arab owned land, but does that mean we have to introduce a section about 'Israeli aviation' into this article?

We are not talking here about a neutral subject like "aviation" we are talking about the "root cause" of the continued conflict. As such the two opposing views: One presenting the Palestinian Nakba as unique and the other putting it into the wider context of the war and it's other consequesnces have to be on this article. This is the NPOV policy I did not invented it. Jimmy Wells did. Zeq 19:43, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Think about it. Nobody is trying to hide the Jewish exodus narrative, it just is not an opposing POV to this article. Ramallite (talk) 17:17, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


So now this article is about "the root cause" of the continued conflict? No Zeq, it is about the Palestinian exodus (and that's a very mild term by the way, just to show you how NPOV this article really is). That it is the "root cause" is your original research. In fact, most of what you wrote in the preceding questions were your own original research. This article is not presenting the Nakba as "unique" as you say, it is merely presenting it - that's all. The wider context is beyond the scope of this article. As for the Likud, I meant "your" as in Israel, not you yourself. Your behavior and your sources are completely inconsistent with your user page, by the way. Ramallite (talk) 20:03, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
The palestinian exodus (redirect from nakba) has moer than one vesrion, has more than one way of looking at it in broad historical context. Zeq 20:39, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

___________________________


Look at this talk page. here is a person 6 month ago who observed what I am saying today:

"Only one historian's work (Benny Morris) is referenced for much of the article's body. There exists much controversy over the accuracy of Morris' work. Only one school of thought (New Historians) is represented for most of the body. Other historian Other viewpoints on the set of events listed in the article are neither given space nor is their existance mentioned. Loaded terminology is repeatedly used. Many of the quotes are not listed in the reference area, nor is cross-referencing provided for their sources. While this is not technically a POV issue, I feel that this exacerbates the underlying POV issue by not allowing the reader to read the source firsthand, and to see if the writer read the material firsthand or was relying on its reference elsewhere for information. " and this is a note mainly to slim who is an expert on NPOV:

  • NPOV is not just writing in NPOV words and style. It is also about making sure the opposing view point is represnted allowing the reader to form his own mind.
  • NPOV is not setting one yardstick (a bar) to disallow one POV but set a much lower bar in front of other POV. For example the idea by Ian that "sources such as web sites" are not accepted on this article is something that every wikipedia editor with an intelectual honesty should have objected to (and revert his revert) Zeq 16:07, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Morris argues that there was no master plan to expel the Palestinians and that no such plan was actually implemented, but that "expulsion was in the air". However, he argues that there were random local Haganah and IDF orders to expel the populations of certain areas and that atrocities were one of the methods used to encourage people to leave. However, Laila Parsons disputes this conclusion of randomness and argues that there was a more systematic approach because the Druze, who were in alliance with the Israelis, were not expelled, even when they fought against the IDF, whereas the populations of Arab Christian and Moslem villages which did not resist were expelled. --Ian Pitchford 16:44, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
This is a very lame argument because if there was some such local initiave it can very well be that is was applied in some places and not in others and as such the Druze were part of where it was applied. But the Druze (rarly if at all) faught aginst the IDF and the truth is simple: It was a war, when Arabs won jews ran away or were massacred, where jews won Arabs ran away and in some cases there were massacres in some cases the jews tried to get the arabs to stay (such as the haifa link that I added and was removed. I do not plan to continue and re-enact the controversy here in wkipedia talk page. The opposing views desrve both to be on the page and it is not my responsibility alone to make this article NPOV Zeq 17:30, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
In random actions some Druze would have been expelled. Parsons' argument is compelling. The Jewish Agency/Israel was not responsible for the situation the Palestinians ended up in. That was achieved by a coalition involving Great Britain, Transjordan, Iraq and even the Arab Liberation Army. --Ian Pitchford 18:46, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Nonsense. This is not a "pure" statistics lab that choose out of 1000 vialges 200 in random and if 3% are Druze you would expect that in Normal distribution 4-8 Druze vialges would be exppled. This is war a very chaotic situation and your arguments are so shallow that I will stop arguing with you. Zeq 19:32, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Obviously it's not a chaotic situation when no Druze are expelled even after attacking Israeli forces. It's something systematic and I'm not making an argument, Parsons is using appropriate evidence. --Ian Pitchford 21:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

A suggestion

The following editors seem to have the same POV: Ian P, Zero, Doron, Palmiro, Ramallite.

Why don't you nominate one person from your group to be the only one to do the reverts. Other wise the 3RR rule (where you have 15 reverts and I got only 3) prevents me from making progress here. Zeq 17:34, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

If we would have equal number of reverts I might revert this artyicle to this:

[15] - just kidding but it is intersting to see how in 3 years this article moved from being anti-Palestinian to pro-Palestinian. In 3 years no one in wikipedia was able to get the NPOV policy applied. maybe it should just be deleted. Zeq 17:39, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Zeq, no one should revert anything that is well-sourced and relevant because that's against Wikipedia policy and not in the best interests of the project's declared intention to be "an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." --Ian Pitchford 18:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Ian, you of all people should not use this argument. Your work to make wikipedia articles propalestinian is clear. very Clear. You took part in making this article what it is now and you removed a well sourced relevant and accurate material (the only reason i did not reverted you is Ihave strike out on my 3 reverts for the day while you are pasrt of the orgenized revret comeette) Zeq 18:56, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
There Is No Cabal. Seriously, Zeq, the debate here seems to have become rather overheated. Perhaps it's best to cool down, stop revert warring, and continue the discussion to reach consensus. Jacoplane 19:05, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

External links again

I'm not sure the 3 external links zeq wants to add are being removed - can someone explain? Jayjg (talk) 18:10, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Good mornning Jay. The problem in this article is 1000 times bigger than these 3 links. This article represent a complete failure of Wikipedia NPOV policy. Nearly 3 years ago it was anti-Palestinian. Now not a shred of that POV remaind and it is completely biased to the other side. I have edited this article for a week, yet every single word i changed there got reverted by a coordinated revert gang which is able to circumvent in this way the 3RR rule. It seems that unless I am able to get a "gang" of my own:-) there is no point trying to get this article to be NPOV. slim and jayjg are involved yet they too do not make any contribution toward NPOV. This is not what Wikipedia is all about but it is what wikipedia has become.

I don't have the time or the organized manpower as the other side to go through the usual Wikipedia mechanism. These mechanisms have failed in this article. In 3 years not a single Wikipedia admin was able to make significant contribution to make this article NPOV. This is a symptom to other anti-Israel systematic bias that is spread all over wikipedia and I suggest you find a way to address it as I can't. Zeq 18:53, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I think the reason given for deleting the links is that they were 3 articles all by the same author and were redundant in content, but there is no reason not to keep one of the three. Zeq, if you think Wikipedia has an anti-Israel bias, I'm afraid you haven't yet read (or understood) enough articles. Ramallite (talk) 19:57, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I read many so I must be dumb. Zeq 20:40, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this article was by Karsh, and it doesn't appear to be particularly pro-Israel either. Jayjg (talk) 20:42, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I looked again - that one wasn't one of the three added by Zeq, it was there before - I think Zero objected to the summary of it as being inaccurate, but have no idea why the whole thing went. I'll add it back (along with one of the Karsh ones) when I get back online unless somebody else does it first. Ramallite (talk) 21:27, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
What is your point Jay ? that if it is pro-israel it can not be on a page "devoted" to the palestinian suffesring ands their vesrion of the events ? It is an article about the issue. Yet it wa sremoved and none of you the white knights of the NPOV and due process do anything to restore it. Use that revert button. Zeq 20:56, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Zeq - be civil.Ramallite (talk) 21:28, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
Rama: It is civil to expect people active on this page for months to make juist a tiny bitsy bit less POV. Zeq 04:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Most recent edits (25/11)

  • Some parts are indeed not too relevant, and I didn't restore.
  • "with some citing attempts by the surrounding Arab governments to evacuate women and children.... and others citing a score of the well-documented direct expulsion of the residents". To remove the first "some citing" but keep the second is clearly POV pushing. Please read NPOV.
" some citing" is weaslespeak for "claim". It is less NPOV as you have restored it. In any case this wordsmithing is not the real problem in this article. see below. Zeq 06:50, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
  • "UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants (including 3rd, 4th generation and more)". What's this adding of "3rd, 4th generation and more"? Again POV pushing. Plus, a generation is defined as 25 years I believe? So if the Nakba is less than 60 years old, that would be between 2-3 generations.
There are today 4th geneartion refugees and this is needed to explain the large number of those calling themself and mainting the staus of refugees. IMHO this whole section need to be deleted as it is about current situation not about the actual exodus. ~
  • Similarly, "this is how the number of people calling themself "Refugees" has subsequently grown" is POV language, and the paragraph is talking about UNRWA's definition, not Zeq's.
OK l'ets find another way to describe the situation in which peopela are kept as "refugees" for 60 years. Again this whole section is not really aboyt the exodus itself so I plan to remove it altogether, instead tried to make it NPOV but since you object it has to go. ~
  • "Interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris - which most of this page is based on his work]". Well it's an interview with Benny Morris, of course he will talk about his work. Who's work is he going to talk about? Santa Claus?
did not got the joke - please explain .
  • "and showing how he mislead and use partial quotes to arrive to his conclusions" You really need to learn what NPOV is. So now this article has four external links to Efraim Karsh's articles. I don't think other editors will be happy with this, since it's overkill.
We are desrbing Karsh work here in NPOV terms. If Karsh think Morris is "misleading and uses half quotes" that is what we should write. You can not varnish Karsh words by injecting your POV and calling it NPOV. This is original research which takes precident 9so i am told by slim) over NPOV. Please restore. ~
  • "and their momeries on the Arab leaders who called them to leave their village" - As Zero said, this is not what the article is about.
have you read it. This is the part that is relevant to this article.

If you want to describe this specific point out of context, you need to be accurate: "How Arab leaders called on them to leave their village temporarily for a week or a month, but then they were prevented from returning by Israel". Do you want to explain all of that? Ramallite (talk) 05:42, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually it wasn't even Arab leaders but "Arab soldiers". --Zero 06:02, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Planty of evidence that Arab leaders have participted in this as well. Zeq
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