Talk:Demographic history of Palestine (region)/Archive 1

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Archive 1

problematic content

There is a quote that criticize Mrs Peters work but the whole article have no reference to Mrs Peters work, this make the criticism not relevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.176.7.120 (talk) 10:58, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Very unclear terminology

"Up until the early Christian era the demographics are reasonable clear, based on the Bible and on recent regional archaeological studies. However, after the Bar Kochba revolt the make-up of the population of Palestine is debated due to data being sparse in the historical record" Just that - even by the Roman name of Palestine(which is the oldest), the bible era and bar kochba era, it was ONLY Israel. There were no Palestine at the time, at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.228.170.177 (talk) 20:31, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I think we should get

I think we should get a special Demography of the Palestinians page, since this page only refers to Palestinians within the Palestine/Israel territory. There's an additional four or so million Palestinians outside of these territories, in the refugee camps of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, or in the diaspora in other places (Europe, USA, Arab world, Latin America etc). I believe this population has interesting demographic characteristics, such as over-representation of Christians. Arre 09:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

The Big Map of the Empty Land

I found this article called: The Big Map of the Empty Land (originally publish in makor rishon Israeli newspaper) and was wondering where to put it into the article. I added it, please review to see it fits. Talgalili (talk) 09:33, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

It is some journalist's blog full of arrant nonsense, please don't put it anywhere. Zerotalk 01:44, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
So I suppose you know nothing about the then proposed Anglo-French railway project that was to link the Suez Canal with India? Hence the survey. There are supposed to be several more maps since the surveying went on until 1933 Koakhtzvigad (talk) 14:27, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

propagandistic quotations deleted

Thanks to books.google.com, it is now possible to check the 18th-19th century quotations that have been brought from the Irgun propagandist Shmuel Katz. For the following reasons, I am deleting them.

  • "By Volney's estimates in 1785, there were no more than 200,000 people in the country."[1]
-- This number does not anywhere appear in Volnoy's book. In fact Volnoy says the population of "Palestine" is 50,000! But in the same table, he gives 300,000 for the "Pachalic of Acre", 120,000 for the "country of the Druses", and 1,200,000 for the "Pachalic of Damascus". Each of the latter regions, especially the first, included large parts of what was later called Palestine. Volnoy also says that the estimation was "infinitely difficult" and was obtained by multiplying the area by a guess at the number of people per square league. There is thus no basis for bringing Katz's claim. Zerotalk 01:35, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
  • "Alphonse de Lamartine visited Palestine in 1835, "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound, we found the same void, the same silence ... as we should have expected before the entombed gates of Pompeii or Herculaneam a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, on the highways, in the country ... the tomb of a whole people."[2]
-- These words (including the last) are in reference only to Jerusalem so they don't say much about the country as a whole. The first thing to check with someone like Katz is to see what is in the ellipses (...). And sure enough, the original says "the same silence prevailed at the gates of a city containing a population of thirty thousand souls, during twelve daylight hours, as if we had passed the time before the deathly portals of Pompeii and Herculaneum". (Google can deliver the original French.) Volvoy was struck by how quiet such a large city could be; Katz of course wanted to suppress Volnoy's statement that Jerusalem was a city of 30,000 people, which for that time was quite populous. Zerotalk 01:35, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
  1. ^ Katz, 115 citing C.F.C Conte de Volney: Travels through Syria & Egypt in the years 1783, 1784, 1785 (London, 1798). Vol II p. 219
  2. ^ Katz, 114 citing Alphonse de Lamartine, Recollections of the East, Vol. I (London, 1845), pp. 268, 308.

Diaspora of Jews

A section on the connection of Jews to the land of Israel and an in-depth study of their sustained presence in the land since 2000 BCE is warranted. Further an analysis of the disapearance of Jews from a number of Arab states since the creation of the State of Israel is worthy of inclusion in the discussion of the Jewish population growth in the modern State of Israel from 1 million or so in 1949 to almost 3 million in 1973 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dbe2491 (talk • contribs) 06:06, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

19th century immigration

This issue should be included in this page, bringing the number of Jewish immigrants before Zionism and the Zionist Aliya waves. As well, the arctile should include the migration and settlement of Circassians in Galilee and other relevant issues of which influenced 19th century Palestine demographics. Hence, I am going to add a section on Immigration in 19th century. Suggestions and ideas are welcome.Greyshark09 (talk) 19:28, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

After learning the issue i withdraw my demand for the following reasons -
Palestine, here is related as geographic region, for Demographics of Palestinian territories there is a separate article, which is technically also applies as Demographics of the State of Palestine (disputed state, related currently as Palestinian territories). So, there is no need for another article for Palestinian territories.
This article is focusing mainly on demographics during the British Mandate for Palestine, little information on earlier Ottoman period and none about later Demographics of Israel, Jordan, Palestinian territories.
There are technically no (or almost none) articles on demographics of regions in wiki, like Demographics of America, Demographics of Caucasus, Demographics of Mesopotamia. Therefore, there is no reason for Palestine (region) having demography article.

Renaming to Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus.Greyshark09 (talk) 17:09, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Reasons -

  • Palestine is related as geographic region. For demographics of Palestinian territories there is a separate article, which technically also applies as Demographics of the State of Palestine (disputed state, related currently as Palestinian territories). So, there is no need for another article for Palestinian territories.
  • This article is focusing mainly on demographics during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. Little information on earlier Ottoman period and almost none about later Demographics of Israel, Jordan, Palestinian territories.
  • There are technically none (or almost none) articles on demographics of regions in wiki, like Demographics of America, Demographics of Caucasus, Demographics of Mesopotamia, Demographics of Levant, etc. Therefore, there is no reason for Palestine (region) to have a demography article, which overlaps the demographic sections of states (Jordan, Israel) and political entities (British Mandate for Palestine, Palestinian territories, Sanjak Jerusalem, Viayet of Aleppo, Vilayet of Beirut).

For the reasons stated above, I propose renaming this page Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine, please raise any relevant ideas and objections.Greyshark09 (talk) 16:46, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Very strong oppose - your proposal means deleting the first three sections of this article. This is a topic of significant scholarly interest - there are innumerable WP:RS which discuss this in light of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Oncenawhile (talk) 01:19, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
There is no meaning to delete any sections here - they would exist as Earlier demograhics section, since they are very relevant to the Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine.Greyshark09 (talk) 09:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Demographic history of Palestine → Demographic history of Palestine — More appropriate name given content of article. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
OK, understood, but as I see it the article would then look a little odd. How about changing the title to "Demographic History of Palestine"? Oncenawhile (talk) 11:42, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
See here[1] for a few examples re your third point: Demographic history of Bačka, Demographic history of Serbian Banat, Demographic history of Transnistria and Demographic history of Vojvodina. Oncenawhile (talk) 11:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Your examples do not really apply, since all those areas have clear borders - Transnistria is a self-declared state, Vojvodina is an autonomous political entity (existing), Bačka's article mostly deals with past Bačka districts of Serbia, and the same applies to Serbian Banat as an administative sector. Actually they only strenghten my case to link this article to the political district entity named British Mandate for Palestine, which borders were established in 1922. Let me remind you that for more than a millenia Palestine (former Byzantine Palaestina) was not a name used for local administrative districts, and the current article actually summirizes censuses of Beirut and Aleppo Vilayets combined with Sanjak Jerusalem figures during the Ottoman period and Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) figures in Mamluc period.Greyshark09 (talk) 12:07, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
There is no region quite like Israel/Palestine - these examples are the best that could possibly exist. Your issue seems to be that the boundaries have changed over time - that is true for the majority of historical regions in the world. There is a vast amount of scholarship covering the demographics of the region variously known as Palestine all of which take in to account the changing administrative divisions - to focus the name down on a single time period would be misleading. Oncenawhile (talk) 12:26, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
Any region has its own unique properties, but there are great many examples similar to Israel-Palestine issue, like North Korea-South Korea, Turkey-Kurdistan, Spain-Basque, Serbia-Kosovo, North Cyprus-Cyprus, Marocco-Western Sahara, South Sudan-Sudan, Yemen-South Yemen and so on.Greyshark09 (talk) 15:15, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
It is extremely difficult to accept this article's existence for the following reasons:
  • I am yet to be convinced that 'Palestine' is a geographic region. If it is a historical region, then its demographics should be discussed within the History of Palestine article (ethnology), and not as a separate article because quite obviously they will reflect the historical events that impacted on the populations there.
  • Its not possible to discuss demographics of the British Mandate Palestine without the general influence of the mandate administrations, British and French, on the region. From this perspective Palestine is definitely a historical region.
  • The reason that there is difficulty with demographics of the Ottoman era is because they only conducted a census when they collected taxes or went to war. The former was a failure among local Arab population even late in the 19th century (and later with the British), while the later can give a rough idea since there are records of sanjak contribution to Ottoman campaigns, and Palestine form most of the period was almost exclusively populated by nomadic Arabs that contributed camel-mounted troops mentioned separately to cavalry in Ottoman records.
I would therefore suggest to merge into the History of Palestine articleKoakhtzvigad (talk) 14:40, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I think the suggestion raised by Onceinawhile is a good one. Renaming to Demographic history of Palestine is the best title for the content. There is pre-Mandate material not covered by Greyshark's proposal and while Koakhtzvigad may not like it, there is abundant scholarly literature on the demographics of Palestine covering many different historical periods. It is a subject of interest to RS and a notable enough topic to have a page dedicated to its discussion. Also, please note this article was originally part of the article on Palestine and was spun off here after concerns it was too long and gave undue focus to the subject in the main article. Merging it elsewhere would be equally as unwieldly. Tiamuttalk 14:49, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Going with Demographic history of Palestine is ok, but this vastly expands the article subject area by covering everything from first records of Egyptian Old Kingdom to the mandate territories. Koakhtzvigad (talk) 21:39, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
Done. Oncenawhile (talk) 22:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm reverting your edits, as a violation of WP:MOVE. Please do not perform such actions, without applying to the rules and ensuring consensus. This article was proposed to be changed to Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine and the proposal wasn't closed. You also didn't perform the full procedure of suggesting this page for raname-move according to WP:MOVE.Greyshark09 (talk) 20:06, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
OK - i'll put up the move notice and I have changed the name of this discussion as there is no sense in having two parallel discussions. Editors above have provided views already, i am happy to wait for more. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:09, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
Hmm - i added the one at the top of the article, and the one in the talk page as instructed, but the one here looks a little odd as it says it has already been carried out. Perhaps that's my fault for my overeagerness - sorry if so. Frankly, I don't believe that the name "Demographic history of Palestine" is at all controversial so I did not contravene WP:MOVE, but since Greyshark interpreted the action as riding roughshod over the previous proposal (which it wasn't intended to do - this move could well be an interim step), then i apologise. Oncenawhile (talk) 00:20, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
I restored the original thread structure, and i shall keep the discussion going, prolonged until January 26 (included), then summarizing the "support" and "oppose" votes, with relevant explanations. If no consensus is reached, you are welcome to post a new rename thread on January 27th.Greyshark09 (talk) 15:10, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the Requested move/dated|Demographic history of Palestine, obviously we can't move it from A to B when A and B are the same title. But it's an ongoing discussion... Where to from here? Andrewa (talk) 06:14, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm restoring the original debate over renaming Demographics of Palestine to Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine, which was unfortunately disrupted by Oncenawhile. We have reached an understanding now that the original debate over renaming shall continue, and if it is concluded without concensus, then Oncenawhile shall make his proposal, opening a new thread. You are welcome to agree to my original proposal by "support"ing it, or "oppose"ing it, providing a relevant reason.Greyshark09 (talk) 15:03, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
I think it's better that I remain uninvolved in the discussion for now, as there seem to be suggestions of at least mild misconduct in your post above. Hang in there, I know it can be frustrating.
But I also think your "restoring" was unhelpful. Refactoring by an involved party is inadvisable however correct it may (or may not) be. Similarly, please don't now revert these actions (and/or my response in full or part); It's all in the history anyway, you're just making it more difficult to sort it out. Andrewa (talk) 21:04, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Greyshark09 (talk) 17:09, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Jerusalem Demographic's Error

This article takes one source's Jerusalem statistics meanwhile almost all credible sources starting at least by 1840 put Jews as the largest plurality within Jerusalem. It seems like editor's are bias towards Palestinian propaganda opposed to actual historical facts. ChasteRoue

Your source is highly selective - there are many other sources which suggest exactly the opposite. Please take this discussion to Demographic history of Jerusalem where it belongs. Oncenawhile (talk) 14:38, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
I am also surprised at this strange figure. Jerusalem has maintained a Jewish majority since 1846 at least. The 1849 census by Montefiore lists 2,084 Jewish families living in Jerusalem, and all following censuses confirm a Jewish majority as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.181.14.248 (talk) 13:05, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Your information is not correct, both about Montefiore and about the trend. On Montefiore, he counted 3007 Jews, not 2084 families, while estimates of the total population around then are in the 10000–15000 range. (Parfitt: The Jews in Palestine 1800–1882, p34). On the trend, look at the graphic about the middle of Talk:Demographic history of Jerusalem. Zerotalk 13:17, 12 August 2014 (UTC)

Immigration page created

Some of the topics covered in this page are discussed or alluded to at Late Muslim immigration to Ottoman and British Palestine, a new page with multiple issues. On Talk:Late Muslim immigration to Ottoman and British Palestine there is a discussion about whether and where to merge that page. Please contribute your thoughts.--Carwil (talk) 14:24, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Early population

I have removed the following "Until about 200 AD, Jews formed a majority of the Palestinian population.[1] At the beginning of the Byzantine period, the Jews still formed the majority and were living alongside Samaritans, pagan Greco-Syrians and a small Christian community.[2]" as it contradicts the rest of the sources now in the section. The other sources suggest there is no reliable data, and that Jews were not the majority. The Cambridge History of Jerusalem source is of much higher quality than the two above, primarily because it explains how the conclusions were reached. Oncenawhile (talk) 07:55, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

A lot of serious scholars have tried to make estimates of the population in this period but their conclusions are all over the place. Estimates of the total size of the population differ by more than a factor of 2. The fraction belonging to one ethnic group (of which the Jews are most studied) is also debated over a large range. We shouldn't be making specific statements of fact but only reporting the various theories put forward and naming the authority for them (restricting it to scholars who actually studied the question and didn't just make a claim in passing). Zerotalk 09:50, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
  1. ^ Scholastic Library Publishing (May 2006). Encyclopedia Americana. Scholastic Library Pub. p. 305. ISBN 9780717201396. Retrieved 28 June 2011.
  2. ^ Élie Barnavi; Miriam Eliav-Feldon; Denis Charbit (2002). A historical atlas of the Jewish people: from the time of the patriarchs to the present. Schocken Books. p. 68. ISBN 9780805242263. Retrieved 28 June 2011.

Requested move

Demographics of Palestine → Demographic history of Palestine –

  • Hopefully an uncontroversial suggestion - the topic of the article is clearly historical demographics, and the new title would make it consistent with other similar articles. Oncenawhile (talk) 18:22, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
talk page title fixed to allow discussion
Note, there appears to be something awry with this auto-movenotice, since the talk page already has the new name but the article does not. Oncenawhile (talk) 18:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Would make it inconsistent, see Category:Demographics by country. Rennell435 (talk) 17:55, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
  • Strong Oppose. Would be inconsistent with other articles. I think it should be split into "Demographics of Ottoman Syria" and "Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine".Greyshark09 (talk) 16:20, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

GTBacchus(talk) 00:19, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Rename to Demographics of Israel

The majority of the land this article is talking about is currently the state of Israel and not Gaza strip or the West Bank therefore it should be changed to Israel. Also I think that calling it Palestine isn't neutral, maybe the articles name can be changed to Demographics of Israel/Palestine or Demographics of Israel and Palestine as a compromise--Someone35 (talk) 18:55, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I see what you mean - I would be happy with Demograpic history of Palestine and Israel Oncenawhile (talk) 09:32, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

"I" comes before "P" therefore it would be "Demographics of Israel and Palestine" otherwise that is being bias in favor of your preference for Palestinian narratives.DionysosElysees (talk) 19:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)DionysosElysees (talk)

Demographics of Israel exists. So long as the navigation/lead material makes it clear what is discussed where, I think the current title is just fine.--Carwil (talk) 23:52, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Contradictions in this article

1. It says in this article that there were 2393 people in Jerusalem in 1850, however in the article Demographic history of Jerusalem it says that there were ten times more people in Jerusalem a year later.

2. In the beginning it says for some reason that there were 157 people in Israel in 1533-1539, but in the article I mentioned above it says that there were 1630 people in Jerusalem alone, are there numbers in thousands? Because if yes then it should be mentioned in the article.--Someone35 (talk) 19:16, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

edit: seems like the new sections i made were somehow connected to the green section, i hope it doesn't disturb anybody

Massive oversight

This article does not mention anything about the 1948 war and its impact on the demographics of Palestine. This demographic shift of historical proportions is simply omitted. The Palestinian people who ended up outside Palestine but who are still considered to form part of Palestine, defined by the PLO as the state of the Palestinian people wherever they may be, also need to be mentioned (some figures on how many and where they are). Anyone want to work on this? Tiamuttalk 23:09, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Synth tag

The editor who added the synth tag is invited to lay out the rationale for their edit here. Tiamuttalk 21:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, i did read DellaPergola yesterday once again - apparently he is relating "Palestine" to two territorial entities:
  • Palestinian territories (after 1994)/ West Bank+Gaza strip
  • Mandate Palestine (1918/1922-1948) and "total Palestine" (former territory of the Mandate, relating to Israel+Palestinian territories today).
Then DellaPergola makes the famous table comparison of how many peoples lived there through different ages, treating it as "population in Palestine west of Jordan river" (meaning geographic region); but actually making a mash of various territorial entities including "Israel", "Palestinian territories", "West Bank and Gaza", "Mandate Palestine", "Ottoman Syria" districts: "district of Jerusalem" and "Elayet of Beirut", "Mamluc Sultanate", "Kingdom of Jerusalem", "Judaea Province" etc. The problem is that this table had then been transformed into an article, while it is clear the borders of all those entities have extremely varied through the ages. Thus, "Palestinian territories" and "Israel" (combined - roughly based on borders of Mandate Palestine) are an extremely different territorial formation than "Ottoman Syria", Arab province "Bilad ash-Sham" (including districts "Jund al-Urdun" and "Jund Falastin"), Byzantine "Palaestina Prima" and Roman "Syria Palaestina". It takes an expert to make such delicate comparisons over the ages, and i have no doubt DellaPergola did his best, but then come all of us - the wikipedia editors (including me by the way) and begin creating an article and adding all the info from different ages on completely different polities and territories (take Syria-Palaestina for example) - the results are a complete synthesis.
In my opinion, this article certainly deals with Mandate Palestine, Palestinian territories, Israel, and to lesser degree Jordan and Ottoman Syria. Because there are already articles on Demographics of the Palestinian territories, Demographics of Israel and Demographics of Jordan, I have already proposed to rename this article to "Demographics of the British Mandate of Palestine" and split a section of it into "Demographics of Ottoman Syria" (if some editors want and find enough info we can also make "Demographics of Syria-Palaestina") to solve this issue. However there was no consensus.
Another person recently proposed to rename it "Demographics of Mandate Palestine" (claimed to be more accurate than "Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine"), which would include most of the topics of this article and can hold the "19 century impressions" as a background section (or merging it into "Demographics of Ottoman Syria"). Anyway, for now i see this article a complete mess, claimed to be based on "Palestine (region)"; but actually the "region of Palestine" only as defined in 1922, which is highly inaccurate for other periods.Greyshark09 (talk) 16:56, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi both,
The historical demographics of the region of Palestine have been an area of academic focus since the 19th century. On this basis, the contents of the article are entirely appropriate. Readers who come here are likely to be interested to understand how the population changed over time, so splitting it up in to subsegments of its history would be unhelpful.
To the point raised by Greyshark, please see below many examples of other articles which give the demographic history of regions whose boundaries have changed over time:
Balkans / Southeast Europe
Others
All of these regions have been loosely defined at earlier points in their history. If these are appropriate, so is this article.
However, having said that, I believe there is real scope to improve the quality of the article, and would be happy to help implement improvements. Oncenawhile (talk) 20:34, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
Those are not "regions", but modern countries or provinces. If we follow that logic - "Demographics of Palestine" should be merged into "Demographics of Palestinian territories"(which might officially become state sometime soon). Your examples just emphasize the strange status and synthetic content of this page.Greyshark09 (talk) 20:51, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
That's not right. Most actually are regions, whose borders have changed over time. For example, look how Demographic history of Greece works, or how the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia or Romanian Old Kingdom are treated in their relevant articles above. Or how about other regions which were split up:
The only unusual thing in this article is exactly the same thing that is unusual in every article in the I/P space. It is not possible to write a credible demographic history of either Green Line (Israel) or the Palestinian territories pre 1948, because Palestine was a relatively homogenous region for over 2,000 years until 1948.
Much research has been carried out into the demographic history of the region of Palestine as a whole, and many readers are interested in it - on both sides of the political spectrum.
I respect that some editors are keen for Israel-related articles to be treated the same as every other country in the world, but unfortunately the history of the region is unique in many many ways. There there is meaningful WP:RS on the topic of this article, for exactly this reason. Oncenawhile (talk) 22:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
@Oncenawhile, I hope you realize you are describing original research and synthesis. Greece is not a region, but a state, consisting of 10-13 regions (depending on definition), spanning from Balkans to the Aegean - the largest of which is Attica (mainland) [2]. There is indeed an article named "Demographic history of Greece" (Demographic history of <state>) as an expansion of "history" section of "Demographics of Greece" (Demographics of <state/polity>), which is not entirely justfied for its size, but is still ok.
Followed by that example, I would have had no problem to rename this article "Demographic history of the Palestinian teritories", as an expansion of history section in "Demographics of Palestinian territories" or rename this article to "Demographics of Mandatory Palestine" with expanded history section. Yet, in a currently existing form of "Demographics of <region>" it is a complete synthesis and is not standing in line with other demography articles in wikipedia. Demographics of "region" are not even possible to assess, unless they are a province/state/polity, because population census will not be possible and available (and see my previous remarks on definition of "region of Palestine").Greyshark09 (talk) 16:27, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Greyshark09, you are correct when you say that population figures compiled in different periods are for somewhat different regions. This is a problem that all good sources are aware of. What it means for us is that we have to be open about the problem and where possible identify what each figure actually is. It doesn't mean that there is a problem with the name of the article, since "Palestine" is overwhelming what serious authors (in English) call the region through history in all its variations. "Palestinian territories" is no good because it is a modern phrase for WB+G. "Mandatory Palestine" explicitly refers to a particular time period. Zerotalk 10:07, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

The dangers of stealing from unreliable sources

Now-banned user JerryDavid89 copied the following quote of Bachi out of the unreliable article of Gottheil and added an introduction that is not supported by the quote.

Bachi further states the growth in the muslim population of mandate Palestine is not explained by natural population growth alone when compared with population growth of other similar "less developed countries":

"Between 1800 and 1914, the Muslim population had a yearly average increase in the order of magnitude of roughly 6-7 per thousand. This can be compared to the very crude estimate of about 4 per thousand for the "less developed countries" of the world (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America) between 1800 and 1910. It is possible that part of the growth of the Muslim population was due to immigration."

(ref)Bachi, Population of Israel, pp. 34-5.(/ref)

Bachi's very cautious "it is possible" is introduced with a definite "is not explained", this is not acceptable. Gottheil, and therefore JerryDavid89, omitted the word "some" that appears before "part" in the original. Maybe that was an accident. But a much bigger sin is the omission of the next sentence, which reads "However, it seems likely that the dominant determinant of this modest growth was the beginning of some natural increase." Then Bachi notes that the increase could be explained by a total fertility "somewhat higher than 5" and "a life expectation of around 30.5 years — still very low but somewhat higher than that which may have prevailed in previous centuries". Another sin is that the quote starts in the middle of Bachi's sentence, thereby omitting Bachi's caveat about the reliability of the data. Overall Bachi does not support what it is claimed he supports. This is a fine example of why Gottheil's article cannot be taken even as an accurate source of quotation from other authors. Zerotalk 02:34, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I added "some" back. The rest of your assertions are unfounded.

You are using double standards for sources. If they support your POV then they go in, even if they are something of dubious quality like a Mandatory Authority document (demographics whipped up in a London basement). But if it is a source that adds dialogue to a section that you don't like, then it goes.

No, the question of late Arab immigration to Palestine is necessary for the balance of the article. This man comparing birth rates in Palestine to other, similar environments is relevant. Modinyr (talk) 00:34, 10 September 2011 (UTC) (sock of topic-banned user)

It isn't possible to reply since you didn't make any substantive comment. I proved that the text was a false report of the source and you put it back in anyway without responding to the charges. Zerotalk 02:33, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I called your arguments unfounded. You didn't "prove" anything. I made an edit I liked after a brief explanation. I don't need to respond line to line to your original nit-picking. Modinyr (talk) 02:27, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

You do need to respond to Zeros assertions. Simply saying "your arguments unfounded" is not helpful. Calling other editors comment "nit-picking" should be avoided if you can't substantiate it. --Frederico1234 (talk) 08:48, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Nit-picking means he is making up problems. Minor problems. I don't need to address minor problems.

He hasn't responded to my charge of double-standard.

If an editor posts suggestions on a talk page, it is to gather concensus. I noted that I don't support his assertions. If noone responds it seems like they are right. So I said, "your wrong, Zero" and I stand by that statement. Modinyr (talk) 19:19, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Interesting that Fred Gottheil's article is simply dismissed as "unreliable," when he is an acknowledged authority on the subject and there is actually nothing dubious about his chief point, which is that McCarthy uses, in support of his strong statement that growth of the Arab population of Mandate Palestine was just about all by "natural increase," not by illegal immigration, only the British Census figures and tables which included explicit caveats that they only applied to legally registered citizens and immigrants; according to the Census documents, their figures and data could therefore not cover illegal and unregistered immigrants. Gottheil quotes those caveats verbatim. McCarthy is therefore unreliable, not Gottheil. Zero avoids even dealing with this "smoking gun," as Gottheil calls it, and Gottheil's entire contribution, by just quibbling over the probably inadvertent omission of a word in a quote. No reference is made, for example, to the entirely reliable quotations Gottheil provides from numerous British authorities of the period concerning the presence of illegal immigration. They appear nowhere in this Wikipedia article. The bias is evident and runs right through the article, making it merely a one-sided essay in Palestinian propaganda. E.g., it is not allowable to mention in the article that Porath, whose hostile attacks on Peters are quoted at great length in this article as if his assertions were unanswerable, had his own claims refuted at length not just by Pipes, but by others as well. For example Porath repeated his statistical and other claims in a letter in the October 1986 issue of Commentary Magazine, commenting on the devastating evaluation of Norman Finkelstein's criticisms of Peters' book by Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac in their article "Whose Palestine?" in the July 1986 issue of Commentary. Porath's assertions were taken apart by other letter writers in the October issue, including in the lengthy response by the Isaacs themselves. And I cannot forbear mentioning in this connection that in the quote from Porath, he says that Peters does not explain in her Appendix V and VI the demographic borders and full methodology she is applying to her allegedly unprofessionally determined immigration figures -- this is a manifest error in three respects. Firstly, the borders are explained, even with a map being provided in Appendix V (p. 427); secondly and contrary to Porath "Appendix VI: Methodology" is not by Peters at all so it is a false attribution, and thirdly, that Appendix is by the leading demographer in the United States at that time, Philip Hauser, former Acting Head of the U.S. Census Bureau, President of the American Statistical Association, and the most professional demographer possible. Why Porath would ignore that the figures he disputes are by a demographer far more professionally qualified than himself must remain a mystery. But it suggests that his whole contribution is similarly "unreliable" by Zero's standards. Other authorities that are not "reliable" by Zero's and Porath's standards, being those mere "Zionists" who as such are unreliable, are Arieh L. Avneri, The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1978-1948, translated from the Hebrew (Transaction Publishers, 1982), who devotes an entire chapter to evidence of forced settlement of whole Arab villages and tribes from Egypt, Arabia, Turkey and Syria during the 19th century, and who analyses the Ottoman and British Mandate figures and finds a high immigration rate, and Moshe Braver, "Immigration as a Factor in the growth of the Arab Village in Eretz-Israel," Economic Review: Problems of Aliya and Absorption (Tel Aviv) 28 (July-Sept. 1975) pp. 10-21, who concludes from his own geographic survey of hundreds of Arab villages in Israel in the 1970s that about 21 percent of Arab growth up to 1945 came from immigration, which would give a result of about 110,900 for the region that became Israel, confirming Peters. I must stop here. This article is mere propaganda.122.107.228.214 (talk) 04:26, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Gotthei is an economist and not an "acknowledged authority on the subject". Peters is even less of an authority, her book "From time immemorial" viewed as trash. Pipes is a political commentator and not a authority either. You don't have a case. --Frederico1234 (talk) 05:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
Economists are precisely the sort of specialists that are authorities on these subjects, Frederico. Their profession consists of analysing population data and drawing socio-economic conclusions from them; demographic statistics are their professional meat and drink. Gottheil, given that as the cited article shows he has thoroughly researched the subject of Arab participation in the Mandate Palestine region and economy, and read all the relevant documents, is therefore indeed a recognized authority on it. What evidence do you have that he is not? I will be interested in your answer. Porath, on the other hand, was at the time he attacked Peters a politically active, highly partisan leftist advocate for the Palestinians and in any case was not a statistician at all but, despite all his omissions, incorrect assertions, manifestly ideological substitutes for scholarly arguments, dodgy statistics and the rest (as pointed out by his critics: see above) you find him reliable for some reason. Why? And what about Avneri, Braver, and Hauser, all mentioned above but ignored in your claim that I don't have a case? What reasons can you give for ignoring and silencing their testimony?
Let me add to the list of those no doubt under the ban Rivka Shpak Lissak, "Are Palestinians the Indigenous People of Palestine?" at http://rslissak.com/content/are-palestinians-indigenous-people-palestine-drrivka-shpak-lissak She is an academic historian specializing in these questions. She concludes from her examination of the data that there was indeed significant Arab immigration to Mandate Palestine and in-migration to Jewish areas even within those borders. I am sure you can come up with creative reasons for ignoring her too.
Finally, to say that Peters' book is "viewed as trash" only underlines bias, since this begs the question "who counts as a 'viewer'?" - most viewers consider her book a major resource whose evidence has mostly not been challenged at all since it relies, quite reliably and accurately, on such a wide range of documentation; the chief objections have been to her statistics, but the objectors ignore that they are not done by her but by Hauser, a leading expert on the subject. No doubt her book could do with better editing, since there are some careless oversights as Pipes and the Isaacs have mentioned (not necessarily those claimed by Porath, Finkelstein, Blair, et al.!), but such a totally dismissive assessment is only held amongst militantly pro-Palestinian apologists, the sort of ironclad extremists that stand by Finkelstein the totally discredited critic of Peters. Daniel Pipes' and the Isaacs' assessments are far more academically responsible, measured and persuasive. By the way, Pipes is also far more than a "political commentator," as you dismissively claim. According to the Wikipedia article on him, he has a Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, specialises in Middle Eastern affairs, is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal, a respected and leading academic journal on the Middle East. I would say he is an authority on the subject. Your first reason for dismissing him out of hand having been proven wrong, perhaps you can offer another justification? I look forward to your answer.122.107.228.214 (talk) 07:10, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
  • Economists are not "precisely the sort of specialists that are authorities on these subjects". "analysing population data" is not their job. Experts on the subject are the demographers and the historians with knowledge of the subject.
  • The evidence for Gottheil not being an expert is this: 1) He's not a demographer. 2) He's not a historian 3) His work is not cited by such experts in peer-reviewed papers.
  • Porath is considered an expert due the fact that he is an historian and that his work is cited by such experts in peer-reviewed papers. --Frederico1234 (talk) 07:40, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
I notice that you are silent and have no excuses for your banning of Pipes, Avneri, Hauser, etc. And none of your objections to Gottheil carry any weight. Economists, to repeat, work with demographic statistics all the time, and are certainly able to write analyses of them which, in this case, completely refute McCarthy who is the usual "authoritative" source for pro-Palestinian population claims. Just for the heck of it, would you consider the firm assertions about Palestinian immigration from the Hamas Minister of Interior and National Security, Fathi Hammad, "authoritative"? He spoke about those he knows, including those in his own family, on Egyptian television, saying that half of his own family is from Egypt, as are half of the whole Gazan population, and the other half is from Arabia, adding: “Who are the Palestinians? We have many families named Al-Matzri, whose roots are Egyptian. Egyptians! They came from Alexandria, Cairo, Dumietta, the North, from Aswan and Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians. We are Arabs. We are Muslims. We are a part of you." Hammad reflects what Palestinians know and say amongst themselves, but here was emphasizing to his Egyptian listeners the real source of anti-Israel hatred: not any phoney outrage about being Palestinians "From Time Immemorial," but the call for jihad, in which Hamas acts for all Muslims in seeking the annihilation of the only non-Muslim state in the Middle East. See the entire video clip at http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3389.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.228.214 (talk) 08:39, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
  • "would you consider the firm assertions about Palestinian immigration from the Hamas Minister of Interior and National Security, Fathi Hammad, "authoritative"?". No, of cource not. Noone should.
  • You have written about 10KB of text. Please understand that that takes time to respond to. --Frederico1234 (talk) 09:31, 2 August 2012 (UTC)
"Rivka Shpak Lissak ... She is an academic historian specializing in these questions". Yes, PhD in American History. A good summary of anon's case. Zerotalk 12:27, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Revised text that contradicts its own source, and contradicts other historic sources

section 4.2 The question of late Arab immigration to Palestine...

This section says: "The official British Census data for Palestine, the reports made by the Mandatory Administration to the League of Nations [etc] ...concluded that Arab population growth was attributable to "natural increase", [sic] not to any substantial immigration"

but the sources I'll review after this paragraph tell us that this sentence from the WP article would be more accurate if it said: "The official British Census data for Palestine, the reports made by the Mandatory Administration to the League of Nations [etc]... conclude at some points [1] that Arab population growth was attributable to "natural increase," not to any substantial immigration, and the same sources conclude the opposite at other points.[1][2]

REASONS/PROOF that a Wikipedian is SELECTIVELY QUOTING THESE HISTORIC SOURCES (and the cited source, Capmag / Joan Peters), IN A WAY THAT ADVANCES A POV IN VIOLATION OF WIKIPEDIA'S NPOV POLICY:

[1] The link that the WP article already gives, to Capmag.com reviewing a book by Joan Peters, takes the position that Arab immigration WAS a significant factor in Arab population growth in Palestine. (http://www.capmag.com/articlePrint.asp?ID=2138 -- follow the link to see for yourself) Yet this WP article ironically says only the OPPOSITE of what their source, Peters/capmag, says, by selectively quoting ONE footnote from Peters/capmag whilst ignoring the larger body of what Peters/Capmag presented.

[2] In addition to contradictory "official" records that Capmag/Peters pointed out, note that the following are excerpts from the very same "reports made to the Mandatory Administration" (to quote the Wikipedia article): 2a. The Palestine Royal Commission Report (Peel Commission) 1937 report followed the Hope Simpson Commission, who found it noteworthy enough that they reported in 1930 that illegal Arab immigrants [which is different than "natural increase"] were displacing Jewish immigrants rather than vice-versa (Jews displacing Arabs, as some contend). Source: John Hope Simpson, Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement and Development; London, 1930; pg. 126. 2b. The UK's Governor of the Sinai also reported: "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". Source: Palestine Royal Commission Report; London: 1937; pg. 291. (It's interesting when you corroborate the last statement with a 1913 source: "The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna [Yavn: a Jewish village]...".) 24.155.23.75 (talk) 06:36, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

As usual, the amount of shouting is inversely proportion to the amount of information.
  • Paul Blair's article in Capitalism Magazine: The link doesn't work but I have the article and it does not say what you claim.
  • Hope Simpson Report, page 126: the reference is to Jewish illegal immigrants counted against the Labour Immigration Schedule, see pp122–123 for how the Schedule was managed.
  • The Palestine Royal Commission Report 1937, page 291: No such quotation appears, nor does it on any other page of the report.
  • Yibna was an Arab village.
If there is one thing we don't need around here, it is editors who lie about sources. Go away. Zerotalk 09:41, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

A source is no good if it contradicts other sources. Holy shit, how can you make an article if nothing can contradict anything else?

Balance. Modinyr (talk) 00:37, 10 September 2011 (UTC) (sock of topic-banned user)

None of what you say address the topic of this talk section. Please only use the talk page for discussing improvements to the article. See WP:TALK. --Frederico1234 (talk) 08:54, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Zero seems to be of the opinion that the demographics of Palestine article should have a single perspective. Perhaps he wants readers to think a certain way after reading it.

Balance. Did you see that word? That was my response and suggestion for improvement.Modinyr (talk) 19:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

The question of the question.

After my edit, the "Arab Immigration" section leads with two sources that say "yes they did immigrate to Palestine" (Gilbert and Gottheil)

...followed by three that say "no they didn't" (Bachi, McCarthy, Gilbar)

...then there is a short skirmish between Porath and Daniel Pipes.

Porath gets the last word.

Can we all live with that? Modinyr (talk) 19:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC) (sock of topic-banned user)

It isn't a competition on who can add the most rubbish to the article. So far you have not addressed the actual content of a single source or brought a single new fact to this discussion. This is unhelpful (to use the mildest word I can think of at the moment). Zerotalk 15:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Again, your assertions are unfounded. I was the first one to join the discussion you started under "The dangers of..." Plus I just removed some OR, a broken link, and restored balance to the article. This is called editting. Modinyr (talk) 19:20, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

No, it is called disruption. And your edit summary "The Anglo-American committee did not report in that way" is called rubbish. Quotation from the report of that committee:
"Meanwhile the Arabs, though their proportion of the total population was falling, had increased by an even greater number-the Moslems alone from 589,000 to 1,061,000. Of this Moslem growth by 472,000, only 19,000 was accounted for by immigration. The expansion of the Arab community by natural increase has been in fact one of the most striking features of Palestine's social history under the Mandate."
Did you not understand it, or not read it? Zerotalk 01:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Besides that quote not appearing in the reference, it doesn't support the statement made in the article. "The overall assessment of the many British royal commissions and the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was that the increase in the Arab population was primarily due to natural increase." Nope, that is OR to put those words in their mouth.

The committee said that "only 19,000 was accounted for" meaning the official record only had that number. The document is acknowledging that there could have been more. Than they say that a natural increase is "striking." But you are reading what you want to read if you think that asserts that natural increase was the cause.

I read that whole, stupid report. No where in it does it say, "we think natural increase is the primary cause of population growth." They speculate about this and that, but don't say what you made the article say.

I know you want to bash the section on Arab immigration and fill it with denial. But the readers of Wikipedia would be better served by an even-handed treatment of the information.Modinyr (talk) 22:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Who lived there before Islam?

The article states that no reliable figures indicate who used to live in this area prior to Islamic conquest. That is not exactly correct. Romans had an official census more than once, and enough writing survived from antiquity, including Julius Caesar last book I believe and Josephus to fill in this hole with figures which were available at the times being described. But to say that nobody knows who lived there before 600AD till the Muslim invasion enlightened the world as to the identity of the natives is a bit disingenuous. Cheers! Meishern (talk) 15:01, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

incorrect claim

An anon added

"To bracket this result, the Penguin edition of Atlas of World Population History (Atlas of World Population History by Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones, 1978 ISBN# 0 14 051.076 I) notes that the Ottoman census figures through 1918 lump together Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, so the figures described by Bachi are an aggregate for a region vastly larger than Palestine (McEvedy and Jones Page 144) and notes a Jewish Population of 70,000 in Palestine by the end of the 19th century. The conflation of regional population statistics potentially distorts the demographic figures by several orders of magnitude. Due to the politically contentious aspects of the demographic history of Palestine, these data sets potentially undermine the narrative of Jews as colonists. In addition, The Atlas of World Population History was written by two well known historical demographers (McEvedy being a scholar of global population history and Professor Jones an instructor at the Centre for Urban Studies, University College, London 1978) and therefore its data cannot be ignored even if it is inconvenient to various political causes."

This claim is entirely false, and the source doesn't say that either. Ottoman population figures were collected for individual villages and many of the original registers are now in the Israeli archives. Some of them have been published village by village (the 1596-1597 census is the best known), and others are published at the level of nahiya. The nahiya boundaries do not correspond precisely to the boundaries of "Palestine" but they are quite small areas so the adjustment to reasonable precision is not hard for an expert. Zerotalk 12:51, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested move to "Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine"

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. Jenks24 (talk) 12:54, 11 August 2014 (UTC)


Demographics of Palestine → Demographics of the British Mandate for Palestine – The current title is misleading. The word "Palestine" alone strongly associates with the modern day Palestinian people, state and territories. If the article's main interest is in a territory with a specific name, that specific name should be in the title. Even if the article discusses points that happened before the British Mandate. The article is analyzing the territory defined by the British Mandate. The British Mandate for Palestine is the core subject of the article, and thus it should be in the title. Ubershmekel (talk) 04:49, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

  • No. Palestine is a region and the article is about the demography of that region in different times, not only when it was covered by the mandate.Frederico1234 (talk) 08:10, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
  • The article at the moment is an awful mess due to past edit wars. Splitting it into two messes would not help the situation. Besides that, the rationale is not correct. The name "Palestine" is the most common one used in scholarly writing even for very ancient times. Zerotalk 08:28, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Travelers' impressions of 19th-century Palestine

I find the subsection "Travelers' impressions of 19th-century Palestine" an embarrassment. It only exists due to a past edit war. Can I delete it? Zerotalk 08:51, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Yes, please do. Frederico1234 (talk) 09:05, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
Hmm. I agree it doesn't fit here and it needs work to be better balanced, but i think the concept should be covered on wikipedia. Travelogues of pre-20th century Palestine are covered in some way in perhaps every major book on the subject of the history of the region. There were more than three thousand of books written on the subject, and a number of modern works discuss this, such as [3], [4] and [5]. How about splitting to a new article called "Travelogues of Palestine" or "Travel literature on Palestine"? Oncenawhile (talk) 10:28, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
That's not a bad idea. There are even some good meta-analyses of travel books on Palestine to draw from. What's in this article at the moment is basically Mark Twain plus the results of trying to put him in, and take him out, and put him in, etc.. Zerotalk 13:25, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
"Meta-analyses" - a very elegant way of saying what I was trying to say. Oncenawhile (talk) 20:38, 4 August 2014 (UTC)
 Done Oncenawhile (talk) 22:22, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Requested move October 2014

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 00:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Demographics of Palestine → Demographic history of Palestine – More accurate description of the article content, and to be consistent with other articles in Category:Demographic history by country or region. --Relisted. George Ho (talk) 19:57, 7 November 2014 (UTC) Oncenawhile (talk) 15:38, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

  • Question - Isn't the idea that the topic covers more than just present day demographics sort of assumed from this title too, just as "Culture of" or "Religion of" or "Infrastructure of" or "Politics of" would be assumed to include more than just what is happening at the current moment?--Yaksar (let's chat) 17:19, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
No, because we have the present-day articles Demographics of Israel and Demographics of the Palestinian territories. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:45, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Dalet

There are more than a dozen paragraphs on "the question of late Arab immigration". So why should we not have a paragraph on "the question of planned expulsion"? Oncenawhile (talk) 17:23, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Our article on Plan Dalet does not state that its goal was expulsion. This is a highly POV description of the plan, based on an activist source. Some mention of the plan may be appropriate, but not the current one. You can suggest an alternate version here, and get consensus for it. Here come the Suns (talk) 18:31, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
I see you are a WP:SLEEPER. Do you have another account? Oncenawhile (talk) 20:17, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

At the moment the article has nothing at all on the greatest demographic change in centuries, which is a bit of a joke. Obviously it must be included. I didn't like the way it was written before, though. Plan Dalet was not more than a fraction of the story. It should start with a description of the actual demographic change (who left, when, in what circumstances, who replaced them). The "question of late Arab immigration" section is a bit of an embarrassment. It is only there at all because of past attempts to fill the article with Joan Peters rubbish. Zerotalk 00:48, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

greatest demographic change in Palestine, obviously. Zerotalk 13:04, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
"the greatest demographic change"? Maybe you've never heard of the many other wars and conflicts which took place in the 20th century and their millions of refugees and population changes. And the Dalet section here was inaccurate and one-sided. Perhaps it can be replaced with a new section "post-1948" and a link to the Arab-Israeli War, or a few line on the wars' demographic results. Yuvn86 (talk) 11:20, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
OK great, sounds like we have agreement in principle here to add a section on this. Oncenawhile (talk) 12:38, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Ok but don't talk about the Plan D because the interpretation of Pappe is highly controversial and it goes too much into details. Starting 1948, there are :
Pluto2012 (talk) 15:06, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
Agreed. Oncenawhile (talk) 15:18, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Expanding Historical Content

This article would be greatly improved by inclusion of earlier data. As it stands now, little or no mention is made from prior to 100 BCE in the graph, and 1000 BCE in the text of the article. This omission was immediately noticeable. Surely there is data available that could be included. There does appear to be information about earlier peoples of Palestine at other Wiki pages; perhaps, if nothing else, a chapter with a brief overview and some links to those pages?Wilywascal (talk) 05:09, 24 August 2015 (UTC)Wilywascal

Precisely! The article is completely useless for information before 100 BCE. There must have been people living there before then.OrodesIII (talk) 10:15, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Data on Pre Modern Rural Galilee Questionable, IMHO

I admit to no expertise, but I question the data table showing 0 rural Jewish households in Galilee. Perhaps I am misinterpreting, but a basic reading of 18th century Galilean demographics and economic behavior seems to suggest some agricultural participation even at that time. I have a link to a book here:The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century

I admit I also find the article on Old Yishuv to have a questionable approach to their economic base, IMHO. I get the feeling the presence of a rural Jewish population in Galilee is being ignored in both cases. Is it simply the case that rural Jewish populations were non-existent? That would honestly surprise me, given the rather universal importance of agriculture prior to modernity. Anymouse (talk) 08:49, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Jewish history is quite fascinating, inasmuch as they went to urban oriented lives so much faster than other groups. It really does seem that Jewish agricultural presence in Israel was rare for a long time!Anymouse (talk) 03:58, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Factsheet: Demographics of Historic Palestine Prior to 1948

Some important figures can be found in the "Factsheet: Demographics of Historic Palestine Prior to 1948", (please check it in this link: http://www.cjpmo.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=18 ) The Ottoman census of 1878 is very important. --وسام زقوت (talk) 21:15, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. But that link is not WP:RS, so I have replaced it with another two WP:RS sources. Oncenawhile (talk) 23:27, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

The Question of Late Arab and Muslim immigration to Palestine

25 paragraphs on this is taking WP:UNDUE to its furthest extremes. Oncenawhile (talk) 13:07, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

The major conceptual flaw is the assumption that this demographic survey must record non-Jewish immigration or presences in Palestine, and Jewish expulsion. The latter is mentioned for 2 periods of antiquity, but down to the modern period, say the gradual flow through the early Ottoman period of Jewish immigration (following on expulsion from Spain) is not. Nachmanides found 2 Jewish families in Jerusalem in the 13th century. Obviously you cannot write a demographic history with this kind of assumption.Nishidani (talk) 14:56, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
The whole article needs rewriting, with each section strictly citing sources on demography. That would be a pared down article, and basically factual/estimational, but better than the narrative spin we have interweaved everywhere, with the usual clichés.(Eeveryone goes to Yavne after Jerusalem's sacking! as if the Galilee never existed, etc.,etc). One gets tired just noting things that need a fix. In any case, if you could 25 paras that's undue. There is a universal scholarly consensus that from 4th-BCE onwards southern Judea through to the Negev had a predominantly Arab population, for example, as one would expect from its geophysical structure. I.e. Arab inflow was fairly constant overtime, from the nature of transhumant pastoral lifestyles and shifts in power.Nishidani (talk) 13:59, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

An Example

</Three events caused the Jewish population dominance to change after AD 70 (in the Late Roman period). The first was the rise of Christianity. The second involved the Jewish Diasporas resulting from a series of Jewish rebellions against the Roman occupation, starting in AD 66 which resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple and of Jerusalem in AD 70 to the subsequent expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem, and followed by the rebellion against Hadrian in AD 132 – the Bar Kokhba revolt[12] – "The Judaean Jewish community never recovered from the Bar Kochba war. In its wake, Jews no longer formed the majority in Palestine, and the Jewish center moved to the Galilee." The third event was the 'ascension' of Constantine the Great in 312 and Christianity becoming the official state religion of Rome in 391.[13]

This is the meme history, not a demographic analysis. The expulsion of Jews from the tiny area of Jerusalem had arguably no impact on the demographics of Palestine, since they moved, mostly, north. A demographic analysis would show the effects of the devastation from 66 onwards, change in the agricultural base 70-130 which in part led to deep discontent; the devastation of the bar-Kochba war, all with, not population shifts, but the radical drop in, certainly, Judea, while extensive parts of Palestine appear to remain stable. There is no know diaspora effect for this period. Secondly, the Samaritan population, consisting of some 100-200,000 is not mentioned, though it was not Jewish. Then with trade, climatic and economic changes there is a drop in the late 2nd century onward demographically. The way all this is spun is that there were a series of foreign persecutions of one population over 2 centuries leading to dispersal, whereas the dominant effects in demographic change were not dispersal but economic migration and conversion. Nishidani (talk) 14:23, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Fully agreed. The article is poorly written and difficult to follow. It should be fact heavy, with numbers presented as clearly and comparably as possible. Oncenawhile (talk) 15:50, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Kressel and Aharoni were deleted by Zero0000 with the edit summary. “delete para that largely duplicates a previous para with the same main source” are Kressel and Aharoni unreliable or just disliked? The paragraph had some interesting details.Jonney2000 (talk) 18:49, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
That's not Zero's practice, Jonney. I've never seen him delete anything out of distaste. I took it as a follow-up to Oncenawhile's point that an extensive effort has been made to JoanPeterize the article by WP:Undue details re extra-Palestinian Arab immigration (not a word at the same time of Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian Jewish aliyah over the preceding 4 centuries. Arabs are viewed as an ethnos, and then broken down to 'nations' pouring in. Jews are an ethnos, but they and the various surrounding nations they made aliyah from are passed over in silence. Oner would expect that for Mandatory Palestine we would have a breakdown of Jews, by the same logic, into Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Germans, Ukrainians etc.). But in any case, above we have cited to Grossman.

to David Grossman, statistics show the number of Egyptian immigrants to Palestine between 1829 and 1841 exceeded 15,000, and he estimated that it was at least 23,000 and possibly up to 30,000.[36] In 1860, there was significant immigration to Safed by Moorish tribes from Algeria and a small number of Kurds, while some 6,000 Arabs from the Beni Sakhr tribe immigrated to Palestine from what is now Jordan to settle in Tiberias. In addition, considerable numbers of Turks stationed in Palestine to garrison the land settled there

What Zero removed was:

According to David Grossman and Reuven Aharoni, large numbers of Egyptians moved to Palestine in 1882, corresponding with the First Aliyah and the Anglo-Egyptian War, and Egyptian migration was high during the British Mandate era. Aharoni notes an increase in Egyptian migration after the completion of the Egypt-Palestine railway in March 1926, after which many young Egyptians moved to Palestine by rail to seek their fortune, and send for their families after establishing themselves there. They were attracted by the increase in living standards in Palestine that economic growth resulting from the Second and Third Aliyahs generated, along with an increased demand for labor by British forces building up in the region as World War II loomed. In the 1920s and more so in the 1930s and 1940s, Egyptian immigrants settled in large numbers along the coastal plain, and the areas between Gaza and Jaffa and between Gedera and Ness Ziona, Ramle and Lydda had large Egyptian migrant populations. During World War II, large numbers of Egyptian laborers came to Palestine to work on military construction projects, both legally and illegally. Some Syrian and Lebanese workers were also brought to Palestine. Many of the illegal immigrants were brought to work on projects as "temporary workers" by the military authorities without coordination with the civil authorities. According to Aharoni, the military authorities were lax in returning them once the projects were completed, and the laborers were then absorbed into the Palestinian Arab community. In addition, it was noted in 1946 that Egyptian and Sudanese migrants were among the Arab laborers working in Jewish settlements. Aharoni cites a 1968 survey of more than 200 Arab-Israeli villages by Moshe Braver of Tel Aviv University, who found traces of Egyptian immigrantion, and estimated that most population growth in Arab villages on the southern coastal plane was the result of Egyptian immigration.[1][2]

  1. ^ http://jcpa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Egypt2.pdf
  2. ^ Rural Arab Demography and Early Jewish Settlement in Palestine: Distribution By David Grossman, p. 60-61
I don't think anyone is denying anything. We have a huge section on late Egyptian Arab immigration but no expansion on the earlier section which notes that:

(1920)Jewish element of the population numbers 76,000. Almost all have entered Palestine during the last 40 years. Prior to 1850 there were in the country only a handful of Jews

By that token, one might open up a section (I wouldn't though) entitled 'late Jewish Arab and Jewish European immigration' into Palestine. By all means review this and if you can see something that would better to be retained, either reintroduce it on the article or propose it here. Oncenawhile's overall point is valid, I think.Nishidani (talk) 19:15, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Salt and Ajlun

It seems that the figures from Salt and Ajlun are from an Ottoman census, but does the source say that they are in "Palestine"? Makeandtoss (talk) 13:36, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

yes, they are from a source that provides them in an article titled "The Demographic Development of Palestine, 1850-1882" Epson Salts (talk) 20:01, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
"If we, moreover, exclude the two Qazas beyond the Jordan", the author clearly makes a distinction. Makeandtoss (talk) 20:16, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
He makes a distinction, sure -those two Qazas are to the east of the Jordan.. But never does he say they are not part of Palestine. Epson Salts (talk) 00:17, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
@Makeandtoss: Before the British mandate there was no official definition of "Palestine", so sources are inconsistent. Some sources definitely did include some regions east of the Jordan River. Schölch includes the Liva of Balqa in some of his tables, but in other tables he only includes the fraction of that Liva west of the Jordan River (basically the Qaza of Nablus). Overall it isn't clear what Schölch would say is the eastern boundary of "Palestine". I'm guessing he'd say it is a boring question whose answer doesn't matter. Zerotalk 06:13, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

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Incomplete chart

Can I add the populations between ca 1000 BCE to 100 CE, where the cart currently starts? Dank Chicken (talk) 19:43, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Article name

Can someone revert article name change? It has no consensus and was made by an unauthorized editor. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:08, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

I've done so. power~enwiki (π, ν) 21:26, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Contradictory information.

The sources used here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Palestine#Islamization_under_Abbasids_and_Fatimids claim that past the 9th century, after Palestine was conquered by the Arab Caliphate, the majority religion was Muslim due to the arabisation of the region. This contradicts the information provided by the table at the start of the page which claims they were a minority until several centuries later. Due to the better context of that article, it is worthwhile a note being made correcting those time periods despite it not matching the data given for the table, as otherwise the table provides noticable misleading information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.135.102.228 (talk) 01:18, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Excellent observation, thank you.
The source that article uses is Mark Tessler’s history of the conflict, a broad based book not specialized on this time period. It is in a sentence in the first page of chapter 2, giving an overview of the longer term history. His sources are set out in footnote 1 (p.768):
Does anyone have access to these chapters? Onceinawhile (talk) 17:36, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Icewhiz mass edit

@Icewhiz:, please explain this edit in its component parts. To my quick read, some is good and some is bad.

Note that the IP whose edit you repeated is almost certainly a sockpuppet of a blocked editor. Onceinawhile (talk) 12:52, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

This content was added by S regent59 on 7 January 2019 - who is not permitted to edit the article per WP:ARBPIA3#500/30. There's a long quote of the Anglo-American Committee Of Inquiry, 1946-47 - a WP:PRIMARY source of a mainly political nature, SYNTH in relation to Egypt, Damascus, and use of opinion pieces. Icewhiz (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Jordan's inclusion

@Sakiv: Explain the argument behind your revert, if you have any. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:08, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
In the specific case of Ajloun and Salt, which are added by a Schölch source, the author makes a clear distinction: "If we, moreover, exclude the two Qazas beyond the Jordan, the picture in table 4 emerges". The title is the "demographic development of Palestine" so it is clear that he doesn't believe that these Qazas belong to "Palestine". Makeandtoss (talk) 12:10, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
He means beyound the Jordan RIVER not today's country.--Sakiv (talk) 12:12, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, he means beyond the Jordan River. If the title says "demographic development of Palestine", and the author says if we exclude the Qazas beyond the Jordan River, what is the author implying? He is implying that the River is the Palestine region's eastern border. If not, then why would he exclude these Qazas from his table? Makeandtoss (talk) 12:20, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
In which country lies Balqa. Didn't you see Balqa?--Sakiv (talk) 12:24, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
What? Balqa is neither in the Wikipedia article nor is it in the source. It lies east of the River btw. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:31, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Nablus/Balqa in the first paragraph.--Sakiv (talk) 12:33, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
He is talking about Liwas which are Ottoman administrative units, there may have been a joint Nablus/Balqa Liwa, but then again he later admitted that the Jordan River was the defining eastern border of his analysis. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:42, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Sakiv, you can see from his words "Palestine and the Balqa" on p503 that he does not include Balqa proper in "Palestine". You can also see that the qazas of Aljun and Salt (which were part of the Balqa liwa) had very little population anyway. In Ottoman times there were no agreed borders of "Palestine", but modern scholars rarely include lands east of the river. Zerotalk 13:16, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
Removed references to Jordan. The arguments remain that the authors of the secondary source consider the Jordan River to be the borders of "Palestine" and that the "Nablus/Balqa" refers to the area because it was renamed. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:55, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

1931 birthplace census

@Zero0000: the table of contents of Volume II of the 1931 Census of Palestine includes a chapter X "Birthplace". It strikes me that the summary pages (166-167) would be a helpful addition to "Late Arab and Muslim immigration to Palestine" section of this page. Any chance you have access to that? Onceinawhile (talk) 22:45, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile: In principle, yes, though the virus makes it harder than usual. Meanwhile, take a look at the Movement of Population chapter of Volume I, especially pp. 57–77. Page 74 has a table by birthplace. Zerotalk 02:56, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Bad revert

To editor Sir Joseph: Let's leave aside the notorious inaccuracy of Martin Gilbert (which other historians have called embarrassing). How do you know the text you just reinserted was correct? I don't mean is the 50,000 correct, but is the "Martin Gilbert estimated" correct? After all, the source is not given in the article so you either didn't check it or you checked it but didn't bother adding it. So that part is unsourced. I identified the source before I removed the text and stand by my removal. Not only is "estimated" wrong (he just stated it without explanation) but the source itself is one of those little atlas things like can be found in school libraries. We should do better than that. Also, what is your excuse for silently removing my clarification of Galnor's words? Zerotalk 02:41, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Zero0000, Gilbert isn't a "no nothing" historian. You tell me we should do better. That's right, we should do better. Your edit summary was not a good edit summary. I will take a look at the Galnor edit. Sir Joseph (talk) 02:54, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Take off Gilbert unless you can identify the source and make a good case that it is the type of source that we should rely on. Zerotalk 03:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Take it to RS/N if you think an impeccable source isn't RS. As even Tom Segev points out, "Also, Tom Segev writes that, although Gilbert's book The Story of Israel is written with "encyclopedic clarity," it suffers by the absence of figures from Arab sources." That is the only negative reception in the Gilbert article on Wikipedia. The onus is on you to say why someone with such credentials as Gilbert should be excluded. Sir Joseph (talk) 03:06, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Take what to RS/N? The source is not "The Story of Israel" (which I can't check for this information; can you?). Bizarrely, amazon.com lists the editions of that book as 1600, 1717, 1852, 2009, 2011 and 2020; no wonder Gilbert had time to write so many books. The current state of the article is that the statement is unsourced and you know that is not acceptable. The statement never had a source in this article that I can see. Source it properly or take it out. Zerotalk 04:09, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Gilbert, Martin (2012). The Routledge atlas of the Arab-Israeli conflict. London: Routledge. p. 16. ISBN 978-0-415-69975-4. OCLC 742512523.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) François Robere (talk) 08:51, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Correct. As I said above, it is "one of those little atlas things like can be found in school libraries". It is a very weak tertiary source that we shouldn't be citing at all. Besides that, it doesn't support "Martin Gilbert estimated" but only "Martin Gilbert wrote" as there is nothing to suggest the number of 50,000 is Gilbert's own calculation and no sources of any sort appear in this "atlas". Zerotalk 10:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
So when you asked Sir Joseph Take what to RS/N? and stated that the statement is unsourced and never had a source in this article you already knew the answer, and opted to argue on a technicality instead of fixing the citation and arguing on the merits. François Robere (talk) 10:32, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
I wrote in my first posting here that I knew what the source was. And I am definitely not going to add a source to the article that I know to be substandard. That is the responsibility for someone wanting to add the material. It was unsourced then, and it is still inadequately sourced now. Zerotalk 10:57, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
And you didn't think to share? It makes your statements to SJ look like needless provocation. François Robere (talk) 20:00, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
PS "That little atlas thing" has more than 130 citations on GS. François Robere (talk) 10:37, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
So there are people out there with no standards. What is our excuse? Basically this is a Zionist coloring book. Literally so, since those maps are quite suitable for crayons. How about "Many Arabs were encouraged to leave by their own political leaders, who promised them that they would soon be able to return to their homes, once Israel had been destroyed" (p47)? That's Gilbert's sole explanation for the Palestinian refugees, and Gilbert was way too knowledgeable to not know he was lying. Zerotalk 10:52, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Whether or not he would be considered rs (personally I would not rely on him, he is not exactly an academic), his "estimate" is garbage and so is his reason for the growth, it is a simple matter to contradict this rubbish and if it ends up staying in, I will do so.Selfstudier (talk) 11:52, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@Zero0000 and Selfstudier: WP:NOTFORUM. Want to argue about it? Take it to WP:RSN. Oh, and please don't delete this source unless you have a really compelling reason to do so (WP:PROPORTION and all). François Robere (talk) 20:17, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

If I was going to delete, I would already have done so. I think it is better for crap like this to be seen to be debunked.Selfstudier (talk) 21:30, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
It's funny, the guy is a professor, historian, and author, yet he gets labeled as crap. Yet, in many of the other articles, we have ARIJ and "new-historians" just being dumped into articles. Sir Joseph (talk) 21:36, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Do either of you know that history and demography are different disciplines? That a historian actually doesn't have the qualifications to rule on demographic questions? Here we have a difficult issue that serious demographers have been unable to agree on, yet a comment by a historian in a Zionist coloring book is supposedly worth a mention. I will never apologize for having high standards. Zerotalk 02:07, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Unit for growth?

The article states that "One study of population growth from 1,000 BCE to 750 BCE estimated the Jewish population of Palestine (Judah and Israel) had an average natural growth of 0.4 per annum.".

0.4 what? Persons? Thousands of persons? Percent?

Joreberg (talk) 13:24, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

It's %. I fixed it in the article. Alaexis¿question? 12:54, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Error in attribution to Hope Simpson

The statement in the current text: "However, the Hope Simpson Enquiry did note that there was significant illegal immigration from the surrounding Arab territories,[54" does not have any support in the report. The closest is comes is "The Chief Immigration Officer has brought to notice that illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material." The report spends most of its pages on immigration talking of the Jewish immigration and the ways they evaded the laws. Strange how this wikipedia article has a section on Late Arab Immigration, but almost nothing on the Jewish immigration. Mcdruid (talk) 03:55, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Could you clarify what part of it doesn't have support in the report? Alaexis¿question? 05:16, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Hope-Simpson used "material," it is translated here to "significant," which has a different meaning. It is also not clear if H-S is talking just of Arab immigration as "material," or of all immigration including Jews. Mcdruid (talk) 07:35, 14 June 2021 (UTC)
Mcdruid is correct that Jewish immigration is poorly covered and illegal Jewish immigration (which is documented since the Jewish Agency later published figures) is only mentioned in relation to a book of Liebreich which cites Joan Peters. There is another problem here. It is commonly assumed that "illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine" is a reference only to Arab immigration, but the text doesn't say that. Much the same statement appears in the 1934 Report to the League of Nations in the section on Jewish immigration with only a caveat "illicit immigration is not confined to Jews". Zerotalk 14:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Further on this point, note this passage in the Peel Commission report a few years later: "Illegal entry by Jews was a feature of the years 1933-4. They crossed the land frontiers from Syria, Trans-Jordan, and occasionally from Egypt; they also arrived in Palestine waters in ships specially chartered and, in co-operation with Jewish residents in Palestine, landed on the shores after dark." The moral of the story is that if the source doesn't state that it is referring to immigration by Arabs, it cannot be merely assumed. Zerotalk 12:34, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Removal

Zero0000, I'm not sure I understand your reasons for this removal from the edit summary. Could you clarify it? Alaexis¿question? 12:56, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

@Alaexis: Thank you for asking. Blair wrote "The true total for immigration plus in-migration probably lies between 100,000 and 200,000." In demography "in-migration" usually means the amount of migration inwards minus the amount of migration outwards. However, Peters used it for Arabs who moved from one part of Palestine to another. So the amount of in-migration in Peters' sense is not relevant to the issue of immigration into Palestine from outside. It is well documented and not controversial that there was a substantial population movement from the rural interior to the coastal areas. Most readers will not understand that and will think that the large numbers are support for the claim of massive immigration. I also object to Blair being cited as a source without mentioning his main conclusions, such as "Peters' evidence of undocumented illegal immigration is full of distortions". Zerotalk 13:41, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
But I think that's the point that there was migration to the areas that later became Israel. We can explain what is referred to as in-migration to avoid misunderstanding. Alaexis¿question? 13:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
But it's not the point. This isn't an article on From Time Immemorial and that section is already way too long in proportion to the page. This is not an article about the demography of Israel either. Zerotalk 14:54, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
The section surely should be made shorter but there is no reason to remove specifically this paragraph. Both immigration from outside and internal migration is significant. Alaexis¿question? 16:50, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Who says? This issue is a Joan Peters gambit. If we were going to cover internal population movement, it should be a separate section and it would have to include Jewish movements and displacement of Arabs caused by Jewish settlement. It isn't reasonable to include only a book review which estimates the total of two different things without saying what fraction is each. Zerotalk 02:45, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Also, you need to study the rules. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. When content is disputed, it stays out until consensus is achieved. Clearly you lack consensus for this material at the moment. Zerotalk 03:39, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
I think you misunderstand the rules. If I were adding this information then it would be true. Here, on the other hand, existing content was removed, meaning that we are now at the Discuss stage of Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. Alaexis¿question? 06:06, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
ONUS is a policy like it says and BRD is optional like it says. So I am happy with my knowledge of the rules. Zerotalk
Okay, let's talk about policies if you wish. This is what Wikipedia:Consensus policy says:
Alaexis¿question? 12:10, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
commonly results in does not mean is required to. WP:ONUS however pretty clearly lays out where the onus for consensus to include material lies. I also object to an out-of-context citation that ignores the main point of the source. nableezy - 15:29, 7 June 2021 (UTC)
Besides this, consensus is based on quality of argument, not on votes. I can't see any argument for keeping this material presented here other than an assertion that it is important and a failed attempt at wikilawyering. Here is another argument: why is the author Paul Blair reliable for demographic conclusions? Who is Paul Blair, anyway? (I think he was a journalist who died in 2011 but I'm not sure.) In my opinion, Blair's investigation of From Time Immemorial is the best and most balanced that has been published, but demography is a highly skilled profession and I doubt if he would have claimed to be an expert. So, add "unreliable source" to the reasons for removing this sentence. Zerotalk 03:58, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
I agree with you, it might be that Blair's position is not notable enough to be included. The structure of the section is a mess but I don't see anywhere the discussion of the migration within Palestine to the Jewish-majority areas. This falls squarely within the scope of the article and is clearly notable as we see that multiple scholars discussed it. Can you suggest a different source that deals with this? Alaexis¿question? 09:34, 8 June 2021 (UTC)
Amazing, you reverted again without bothering to answer my question about the reliability of the source. That's called edit-warring. Now, identify Paul Blair and explain why he is a reliable source for demographic estimates. Consensus cannot override a policy violation. Zerotalk 08:58, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
As I wrote I'm not sure he's reliable but there is no reason to think he's not reliable either. You didn't answer my question if you can suggest a different source that deals with internal migration? Alaexis¿question? 09:02, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
If you are not sure about his reliability either, that would seem to suggest removing the material at least for the time being. Why are you so determined to retain it?Selfstudier (talk) 09:45, 9 June 2021 (UTC)
I think that the internal migration is important and I don't want to lose it entirely. Are Blair's numbers contradicted by other, better sources? If yes, I'd happy to replace them. Alaexis¿question? 11:23, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

Material pending verifiability

In a response to the work of Joan Peters, Paul Blair reviewed her work, as well as the work of scholars on Arab immigration and the Hope Simpson Enquiry. He concluded that "Peters' evidence of undocumented illegal immigration is full of distortions ... Her estimate for immigration is pulled out of the air and at least double that of others who have studied the question. Her study of migration within Palestine fails to include a figure that would diminish her results by over forty percent, without explanation."[1] Blair estimated that the actual number of Arab immigrants and in-migrants (internal migrants within Mandatory Palestine) during the British Mandate era was probably between 100,000 and 200,000.[1][better source needed]

References

  1. ^ a b "From Time Immemorial – Evidence of Unrecorded Arab Immigration (Part 5 of 6) - Capitalism Magazine". capitalismmagazine.com. 20 April 2002. Archived from the original on 2010-01-14.
Why do you believe it's not true? Does it contradict other scholarship? Is this magazine known for publishing lies? Alaexis¿question? 11:18, 10 June 2021 (UTC)
Is this addressed to me? I have no idea if it is true or not, I haven't even looked into it, I am just going by the doubts expressed by yourself and by Zero, we shouldn't have possibly dodgy material in WP. I will look into it when I get a chance (you can as well, right?), I just thought to keep it here so it doesn't get lost or forgotten in the meantime.Selfstudier (talk) 11:24, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

Merge?

Do you have suggestions as to how to summarise the whole Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)#British_Mandate_period,_1919–1948 section and maybe merge it with Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)#British_Mandate_era? Alaexis¿question? 06:08, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Liebreich source

I plan to remove the following paragraph.

It has been suggested that the British turned a blind eye to large-scale Arab illegal immigration, and instead disproportionately focused on Jewish illegal immigration. In particular, Freddy Liebreich claimed that significant undocumented Arab immigration, much of it from the Hauran region of Syria, did take place during the Mandate era, and that the British authorities largely ignored it. According to Liebreich: "Jewish illegal immigration was minutely detailed and meticulously recorded but all references to Arab illegal immigration were, perhaps deliberately, obscured." He claimed that one major example took place in 1934, when, according to him, approximately 35,000 Arabs illegally immigrated to Palestine from the Hauran, basing this estimate on a claim made by the Governor of the Hauran at the time, who estimated that 30,000-36,000 people from the Hauran had left to settle in Palestine in recent months. By contrast, the British estimated the number of illegal immigrants to Palestine in 1934, both Arab and non-Arab, at 3,000. Liebreich also wrote that many British documents from the beginning of the Mandate era to the 1940s contain references to Syrians from the Hauran being freely admitted into Palestine without a passport or visa, and noted that illegal immigration from the Hauran was mentioned in Parliament a year before the end of British rule in Palestine.
— Liebreich, Freddy: Britain's Naval and Political Reaction to the Illegal Immigration of Jews to Palestine, 1945-1949, pgs. 27-28

The first reason is that the section on Arab illegal immigration is much too long relative to its importance. The second reason is that Liebreich's pages on this subject largely violate the copyright of Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial. The collapsed text provides proof.

Extended content

Liebreich refers to Fritz Liebreich, Britain’s Naval and Political Reaction to the Illegal Immigration of Jews to Palestine, 1945–1948, Routledge 2005. Peters refers to Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial, Harper&Row 1984. Note that I have not included the several cases where Liebreich and Peters chose to quote the same sentences from an official report.

  • Liebreich p27: Illegal Jewish immigration was always fastidiously reported by successive British administrations, while the very considerable Arab illegal immigration was only addressed when their detection had become flagrant.
    — Hope Simpson report, p126.
Peters p226,229: The "illegal" Jewish immigration was fastidiously reported … while the Arabs who immigrated illegally were addressed only when their "detection" had become "flagrant."
— Hope Simpson report, p126.
Note that p126 of the Hope Simpson report uses the word "flagrant" only in a paragraph about Jewish illegal immigration.
  • Liebreich p27: The British Mandatory authorities, whose tasks included recording the comings and goings in Palestine, was occasionally forced to mention the illegal Arab immigration, but only when the traffic became too prevalent.
    —no source
Peters p229: But the British Government, which recorded comings and goings within Palestine, occasionally was forced by its prevalence to give mention to the "illegal Arab immigration."
—A list of reports without page numbers are given.
  • Liebreich p27: The movement was always underestimated, minimised and considered casual:
Peters p229: The movement, however, was underestimated and minimized, deemed "casual"…
In both cases these are followed by quotations in support.
  • Liebreich p27 (as quotation): Considerable Arab immigration was indeed proceeding without restriction or record from such areas as Syria, Egypt, Trans-Jordan and Lebanon.
    —ibid. pp.280–282, where the referent is the 1934 annual report to the League of Nations. It isn’t there. From Peters' version, pages 280–282 may instead refer to the Peel report, but it isn't there either. Let's see where it is from.]
Peters p230 (not as quotation): … "considerable" illegal Arab immigration was indeed proceeding without restriction or record from such areas as Syria, Egypt, Trans-Jordan and Lebanon, among others.
—Peel Report pp.280–282; Hope Simpson report p138
Peters places only the word "considerable" in quotes, and cites two sources that don't support her text. Liebreich has quoted Peters' original sentence and falsely presented it as a quotation from a British report.
  • Liebreich p27: Jewish illegal immigration was minutely detailed and meticulously recorded but all references to Arab illegal immigration were, perhaps deliberately, obscured. The preponderant concentration on the Jewish illegal immigration overwhelmed and negated all record of the parallel Arab traffic.
    —no source.
Peters p230: Although the Jewish "illegal" immigration … was meticulously recorded, minutely detailed, and later even admitted in advance and deducted from the government’s strict Jewish quota, the references to Arab “illegal immigration” were always presented ambiguously. Almost without exception, the matter was obscured, negated, and overwhelmed by preponderant concentration on Jewish immigration as the primary issue.
—Some quotations are provided that don't contain the text or support it.
  • Liebreich p28: In fact, there are many British files, dating from the beginning of the Mandate to the 1940s, which contain references to Syrians from the Hauran being admitted freely to Palestine without passport or visa.
    —no source
Peters p231: In "private" and "secret" British correspondence files, however, there were innumerable references to Syrians from the Hauran district "admitted" freely to "Palestine" "without passport or visa" from the beginning of the British Mandate after World War I and consistently into the 1940s.
—In support some quotations are given from the 1925–1926 period that refer to "refugees" (not immigrants). Most likely refugees from the Druze rebellion in Syria were under discussion.
  • Liebreich p28: The British authorities in Palestine tended to count the Arab illicit immigrants as indigenous deeply rooted Palestinians, while at the same time complaining that it was the Jews who were flooding the country beyond its ‘absorptive capacity’ and crowding out the Arabs.
    —Hope Simpson report, p138, which does not have this.
Peters p232: While counting the newly arrived Arab illicit immigrants as indigenous deeply rooted Palestinians, the British explained that it was the Jews who were flooding the country beyond its "absorptive capacity" and crowding out Arabs.
—no source
  • Liebreich p28: An Arab official's (Tewfik Bey) unequivocal report therefore indicates that more Arabs actually entered illegally and subsequently remained in Palestine, than the total number of Jews for twice that length of time in 1934, who were approved to immigrate into their designated Jewish national home.
    —no source
Peters p231: … an Arab official's unequivocal report indicated that more Arabs illegally entered and remained in Palestine than the total number of Jews for twice that length of time in 1934 who were "approved" to immigrate into their designated "Jewish National Home".
—Annual report for 1934, which does not contain this claim.
  • Liebreich p28: Yet the official British record of immigration to Palestine for the entire year of 1934 (Report for the year 1935, Colonial No. 112, p. 49, 214), reports a recorded immigration of just 1,784 non-Jews, with only about 3,000 travellers remaining illegally and these figures supposedly included Arab immigrants from all points into all of Palestine.
    —No source apart from the one in the text.
Peters p231: Yet the official British record of immigration to Palestine for the entire year of 1934 reports "recorded immigration" of just 1,784 "non-Jews," with only about 3,000 as "travelers remaining illegally," and those figures supposedly included Arab immigrants from all points into all of Palestine.
—Report…for the Year 1935, Colonial No. 112, p.49, 214. (Peters' ellipsis)

These are not the only examples, but I got tired of it. The point is proved beyond reasonable doubt. Zerotalk 13:45, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Sounds like looking for a reason to exclude. If you really want, you can always use Peters as a source and I don't think one paragraph is far too much on a topic like this. Sir Joseph (talk) 13:36, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
We aren't allowed to link to copyvios; end of argument. There is a large section on Arab immigration, not one paragraph. Zerotalk 13:43, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Wow this is embarrassing for Routledge. They should be catching these things. Any idea who Fritz Liebreich is? Onceinawhile (talk) 13:58, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
If he is still alive, he is 94. The forward says he left school at 14 to become a mechanic and resumed his studies after retirement. The book is based on his PhD thesis. I can't find anything else written by him. Zerotalk 14:50, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Shouldn't we replace the citation with Peters' book then? Alaexis¿question? 20:17, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

From Time Immemorial is not an RS "Reviewers from across the political spectrum subsequently endorsed Finkelstein's findings that Peters's statistical analysis was faulty, and by the time the book was released in Britain, the book was widely regarded as wrongheaded at best and a fraud at worst, including by historians that were politically conservative or supportive of Israel."Selfstudier (talk) 21:05, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

why this page focuses on the population of Palestine; but states no data about the number of its citizens? Especially between WWI & 1948

Hi all, this is my 1st contribution to Wikipedia; so please be patient with me

I am curious to know why this page focus on the population of Palestine; but states no data about the number of its citizens? For example, this page from Survey of Palestine states that almost 1/3rd of The Jewish population of Palestine as of 1947 were citizens!

Pay attention to paragraph 51 on page 208, here is a scanned page

https://www.palestineremembered.com/Articles/A-Survey-of-Palestine/Story6649.html

As is, you are leaving the reader with the impression that the numbers for population & citizens are the same; and clear that isn't the case. Palestine was forced to receive European Jewish refugees many of whom were not citizens

take care — Preceding unsigned comment added by PeterTheGreat194 (talk • contribs) 16:53, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

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