Talk:Nakba

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Core sources[edit]

Works marked with an asterisk (*) are already cited in this Wikipedia article.

21st-century "classics"[edit]

Highly-cited (100s of cites) 21st-century books by highly-cited authors (and more-recent works by those same authors):

General[edit]

21st-century academically-reviewed books:

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

Nakba in culture[edit]

21st-century academically-reviewed books:

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

Nakba and genocide studies[edit]

21st-century academically-reviewed books:

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

Nakba denial / Nakba memory[edit]

21st-century well-cited academic papers/chapters:

Discussion (core sources)[edit]

Additions/subtractions? Levivich (talk) 03:15, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Levivich, happy to add here - could you explain the objective? There are many more relevant books in the article bibliography, and in google books. Not to mention the various sources in Arabic (e.g. Ma'na an-Nakba). Onceinawhile (talk) 17:01, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The objective is to identify the major books about Nakba -- the "best" sources. I had missed two books already in the article, which I just added to this list, but I think at this point all the books in the article are on this list. Did I miss any others? In addition to those, there are, listed above, books that should be cited in the article, but aren't. Are there any others? The article relies too much on not-the-best sources: newspaper articles, kind-of-obscure journal papers, etc., which can and ought to be replaced with better sources, like the major books by major scholars in the field. No doubt there are foreign-language books about Nakba as well, but I've only looked at English books. Levivich (talk) 18:14, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, your list - prioritizing Pappe and Morris - is incorrectly weighted. They are absolutely core to the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, which is the story of what the Israelis did to the Palestinians. But the Nakba is a wider topic, about the overall Palestinian collective trauma.
I can bring more sources, but we should iron this difference out first.
Onceinawhile (talk) 20:27, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't really intend this list to be weighted, except that the "classics" have like 10x or 100x the citations of other books on the list, so I separated them, and then I looked for any more-recent books by the same authors about Palestine, so we can see what if anything they changed or added in their writing about Nakba since they wrote their "classics." The classics, like all classics, are widely-cited, but relatively old. That's why I think it's important to look at newer sources and not just the classics.
I don't necessarily think classics should be given more weight than newer sources. In instances where newer sources say something different than the classics, we need to pay attention to that. We need to determine if the mainstream scholarly views have changed, or if new significant minority views have emerged, or what. One example: did Nakba start and end in 1948, or did it begin before 48, and/or continue after 48? My sense that scholarship has moved on those questions since Pappe 2006 and Masalha 2012, and I'd be keen on looking at how more recent sources describe the timeline of Nakba (and also what Pappe and Masalha have said in more recent writings on the topic, including papers and not just books).
I'm not entirely sure how to handle Morris. My gut instinct is that Morris represents a significant minority view on Nakba (or maybe more specifically, the causes of the Nakba). I see that other scholars discuss Morris's views, particularly in relation to Pappe's, and both Morris and Pappe discuss each other's views, and the Wikipedia article mentions them already. I was going to see how the most recent scholarship handled Morris. It may be one of those cases where Morris is talked about in the article more than used as a source for the article (and maybe same with Pappe).
For now, though, I'm just looking to collect the most in-depth, widely-cited, reputable works about Nakba... i.e., books by scholars reviewed in some academic journal, the more citations the better. That could obviously be expanded to book chapters and journal articles, but I think books is a good place to start because they will have the most depth. Levivich (talk) 21:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I added some papers that had decent cite counts, reorganized the list by topic, and clarified inclusion criteria. Levivich (talk) 16:08, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Outline[edit]

Outline

Full source citations at #Core sources

Discussion (outline)[edit]

A work in progress, but thoughts? Levivich (talk) 22:01, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

👍 Like nableezy - 23:19, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The current structure is nothing to particularly write home about, so yeah, like. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:49, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hired. ) Selfstudier (talk) 12:02, 25 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Levivich (talk) 01:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I'm adding to the outline links to other articles, and sub-topics (where I'm not aware of an article to link), that I think are WP:DUE per the sources listed in each outline section. Please speak up if you think anything should be added or removed. Also, as the outline will be changing, just note that folks' approval/disapproval at any given point in time may no longer apply to a later, changed version of the outline. Levivich (talk) 01:14, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think this outline is missing coverage of notable opposing narratives, namely the Israeli national narrative which is currently covered in the section 'Opposition to the notion of Nakba'. Marokwitz (talk) 10:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I expect that'll be covered in historiography and memory section; I haven't gotten to expanding those parts of the outline yet (and probably won't for a while, still on the history section right now). Levivich (talk) 22:45, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've added article links to the history section in the outline above. If anyone thinks there are other articles that should be linked in the history section of the Nakba article, or that we shouldn't be linking to something that is listed in the outline, please let me know. Levivich (talk) 20:53, 9 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a very small bare-bones start to the History section of the article, and struck through the links on the outline that are now in the article. My plan is to expand the history section until all the links in the outline are in the article, then move on to the other sections. I may move some links to other parts of the outline and reorganize the outline a bit as I go. Levivich (talk) 05:59, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Infiltrators (1949-1967)[edit]

Hi everyone. My last addition to the article was a few lines about "infiltrators" during the 1948 Nakba. I had gathered sources/quotes for additions about "infiltrators" after the war (1949-1967) but haven't had a chance to summarize these sources/quotes into a prose addition, and RL is getting the best of me and I might not get back to this for a month or more. So in case anyone wants to pick up where I left off and add some content about post-1948 "infiltrators," here is are my potential footnotes for that addition:

Extended content
INFILTRATORS 1949-1955

{{harvnb |Manna |2022 |ps=, pp. 3 ("The sword of expulsion was a constant threat over the heads of Palestinians in the Galilee and in other areas even after the end of the war when Israeli security forces conducted a fierce campaign against attempts by refugees to return to their own villages. Israel criminalized those returnees by labeling them as “infiltrators” in order to justify its iron fist policy, which included firing indiscriminately on any refugee seen trying to return to their home or village."), 130-145 ("[p. 130] Despite the massive effort expended by the army and police to halt the occurrence of refugees attempting to return to their homes, labeled “infiltrators” by Israel, Israel’s success was only partial, since thousands returned to their homes and remain there."), 151-162 ("[p. 161] Five years after the Galilee was completely occupied, official Israeli sources estimated that about 20,500 “infiltrators” had succeeded in gaining citizenship and thus the guarantee that they would spend their lives in the country. In the same period, Israel agreed to a family reunification program for about 3,000 people. These numbers confirm that most returnees succeeded in returning through their own capabilities, despite all the dangers and Israeli policies to stem that phenomenon. The returning “infiltrators” constituted about a quarter of the population of the Galilee after the Nakba."), and 290 n. 2 ("Israeli researchers, with Morris at their head, estimate that the number of Arabs who were killed in the “border wars” and labeled as “infiltrators” was between three and five thousand individuals.")}}; 

{{harvnb |Slater |2020 |p=94 |ps=, "At the end of the 1948 war Israel decided to set up some 350 settlements along its borders, “in many cases built on the ruins of abandoned villages,” to be populated largely by the newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Europe and the Arab world. For that reason, as well as its “transfer” ideology and security concerns, the Israeli government decided to block the return of the Palestinian refugees—the survivors of the Nakba who had fled into neighboring Arab states—by any means necessary. As Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary in the summer of 1948: the return of the refugees “must be prevented . . . at all costs.” Of course, the “costs” were overwhelmingly borne by the refugees seeking to return to their villages, farms, and properties. In the early years after 1948, most of the refugees were unarmed and nonviolent; dispossessed of their homes and property, poverty stricken and even hungry, they were desperately trying to harvest their crops from the fields and orchards that had been seized by Israel. To be sure, some of them were militants or terrorists—the predecessors of the more organized Palestinian resistance forces, the “Fedayeen” or guerrilla forces of the 1950s—who sought to kill the new owners of their previous properties, or merely any Jews they encountered. Even when the “infiltrators,” as Israel called them, posed no security threats, the government’s orders to its soldiers and border police were to shoot them on sight. As a result, in the early years after the war an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 Palestinians were killed."}}; 

{{harvnb |Rouhana |Sabbagh-Khoury |2017 |p=407 |ps=, "Under military rule, Palestinians lived in the shadow of the continuous fear of traumatic expulsion that befell the vast majority of their people, including families and friends, and in many cases themselves – as some of them sneaked back across the borders. They became aware of stories of those expelled and of those Palestinians who tried to “sneak” back to their homes and towns from across the borders, and the thousands who were shot and killed to stop their return. Indeed, Israel continued the ethnic cleansing well into the early 1950s (Masalha 1997b) and criminalized and securitized the return of refugees to their towns from across the borders. The Israeli authorities have coined a special term for this category of Palestinian refugees who tried to “sneak” back to their own homes: “infiltrators” (''mistaninim'' in Hebrew, ''mutasallileen'' in Arabic), a term carrying criminal and security connotations. This criminalization helped legitimize the immediate killing of “infiltrators” when Israeli soldiers discovered them at the borders. Sometimes these returnees were put on trucks and forced back across the borders. This criminalization was supposed to serve a triple purpose for the newly created Israeli state: deterring those who considered returning to their homes from across the borders; warning the Arab population against assisting their community members by hiding them in their houses; and increasing the fear of Palestinians among the Jewish population, thus justifying the extreme measures of simply killing these refugees."}}; 

{{harvnb |Rouhana |Sabbagh-Khoury |2014 |p=7 |ps=, "In conjunction with (and total contrast to) the Law of Return and the active and sometimes aggressive recruitment of Jewish citizens of other countries as immigrants (or even non-Jewish immigrants who have family relations to Jews), Palestinians who were expelled or who left under the duress of war were prohibited from returning to their homes or to any other place in the country (except for a few thousand cases of family reunification under strict conditions). Those who tried to return from across the borders after the ceasefire were considered ‘infiltrators’, and in thousands of cases, they were killed while en route to their homes. These steps guaranteed that the reversal of the demographic composition of the country by force of law was completed early in the military rule period."}}; 

{{harvnb |Manna |2013 |pp=92-93 |ps=, "Many Palestinian refugees did not give up the hope of going back to their homes and properties after the end of the war, and tried to return to their original localities. They crossed the new borders erected in the aftermath of 1948 in an attempt to go back to their homes and lands. About [p. 93] 20,000 succeeded in their mission, particularly in the Galilee, and thus spared their families the humiliation of exile in the refugee camps. However, many more failed to make it and a few thousand Palestinians paid dearly with their lives in their attempts to return to their homes. The Israeli policy was extremely harsh with respect to Palestinians who “infiltrated” the borders of the newly established Jewish state, which had a clear interest in preventing the enlargement of its Arab minority. The partial expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland was complemented by the Israeli policy of transfer ''ex post facto''. Hundreds of Arab villages in Israel were destroyed and on many of them new Jewish settlements were established. As a result of these measures, the stream of Palestinian returnees dried up from the mid-1950’s on. Since then, second and third Palestinian generation of refugees have been born in the camps of exile."}}; 

{{harvnb |Masalha |2012 |pp=230-231}}; 

{{harvnb |Davis |2011 |p=218 |ps=, "After 1948 and through the early 1950s, people found ways to go back to their villages. Not many attempted this, but some did, and the cost was high. Some succeeded in returning permanently to live inside Israel, but for most, their goals were to get the crops, provisions, and possessions they had left behind and to visit the family members who had remained. Many were killed on these cross-border infiltrations, which served to discourage all but the most daring, and these returns predated the military raids of the Palestinian resistance some years later."}}; 

{{harvnb |Shlaim |2009 |pp=85-90 |ps=, "[p. 85] The conventional (Israeli) view is that Palestinian infiltration into Israel was aided and abetted by the Arab governments, following the defeat of their regular armies on the battlefield; that it was a form of undeclared guerrilla warfare designed to weaken and even destroy the infant Jewish state; that Israel was thus the innocent victim of Arab provocation and Arab aggression; and that its military reprisals were legitimately undertaken in self-defence. The evidence gleaned by Morris from Israeli, British, American and UN archives - Arab governments do not, as a rule, open their archives to research - suggests that infiltration into Israel was a direct consequence of the displacement and dispossession of over 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the Palestine War, and that the motives behind it were [p. 86] largely economic and social rather than political. Many of the infiltrators were Palestinian refugees whose reasons for crossing the border included looking for relatives, returning to their homes, recovering possessions, tending their fields, harvesting and, occasionally, exacting revenge. Some of the infiltrators were thieves and smugglers; some were involved in the hashish convoys; others were nomadic Bedouins, more accustomed to grazing rights than to state borders. There were acts of terror and politically motivated raids, such as those organised by the ex-Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and financed by Saudi Arabia, but they did not amount to very much. In the period 1949-56 as a whole, 90 per cent or more of all infiltrations, in Morris’s estimate, were motivated by economic and social concerns. As the years went by, a certain overlap developed between economic infiltration and political infiltration geared to killing and injuring Israelis. The 'free-fire’ policy adopted by the Israeli army, border guard and police in dealing with suspects - a policy of shooting first and asking questions later - contributed to this overlap. Faced with trigger-happy Israeli soldiers, infiltrators started coming in organised bands and responding in kind."}}; 

{{harvnb |Shlaim |2009 |p=86 |ps=, "Altogether between 2,700 and 5,000 infiltrators were killed in the period 1949-56, the great majority of them unarmed."}}; 

{{harvnb |Shlaim |2009 |p=89 |ps=, "To cope with this threat Israel established new settlements along the borders and razed abandoned Arab villages. Israeli units began patrolling the borders, laying ambushes, sowing mines and setting booby-traps. The ‘free-fire’ policy towards infiltrators was adopted. Periodic search operations were also mounted in Arab villages inside Israel to weed out infiltrators. Intermittendy, the soldiers who carried out these operations committed acts of brutality, among them gang rape, the murder of civilians, and the dumping of 120 suspected infiltrators in the Arava desert without water."}}; 

{{harvnb |Humphries |Khalili |2007 |pp=219-220 |ps=, "In the early years, while the Lebanese–Galilee border remained fairly porous, the trip was fraught with dangers, as the Israelis fought ferociously against returning refugees. Those caught faced expulsion, detention, or even being killed as “infiltrators.”"}}; 

{{harvnb |Morris |2004 |p=508 |ps=, "As with other sites, so with Bir‘im, the authorities feared that, through infiltration, the village would soon fill up and cease to be ‘abandoned’.27 In June 1949, they removed the last Arabs from Bir‘im – the ten original guards and a handful who had joined them – and transferred them to Jish.28 At the same time, a group of Jews settled in Bir‘im’s houses (in August 1950 they moved to a permanent site, designated Kibbutz Bar‘am, on the village’s lands) – ‘and members of this kibbutz began to behave toward our property and our land as if they were the true owners’, the villagers later complained.29 On 27 April 1949, the government issued regulations, based on the Mandatory Emergency Regulations, empowering the defence minister to declare a border area a ‘security zone’, enabling him to bar anyone from entry. In September, the Lebanese border area was declared such a zone.30 This legalised the previous months’ operations. For decades thereafter, the refugees of Bir‘im (in Jish and Lebanon), Iqrit (in Rama) and Mansura (in Lebanon) pleaded with Israel to be [p. 509] permitted to return to their homes. They were supported by Shitrit and Ben-Zvi, president of Israel from 1952 to 1963. They also appealed to the High Court of Justice. On 31 July 1951, the High Court ruled in favour of the return of the Iqrit refugees to their village. But the IDF continued to obstruct a return."}}; 

{{harvnb |Morris |2004 |p=509 |ps=, "As to Bir‘im, in 25 February 1952 the High Court ruled in favour of the state, though it allowed that the initial eviction had not been completely legal. Here, too, the IDF continued to block a return and new settlements were established on the two villages’ lands. The settlements joined the IDF and GSS in lobbying against a return. The defense establishment argued that a return would harm border security, pave the way for infiltrators and serve as a precedent; the settlements, that a return, or an endorsement of the refugees’ claims to lands, would undermine their existence. During 1949–1953, natural erosion, the set- tlers and the IDF gradually levelled the villages. On 24 December 1951 – Christmas eve – the IDF razed what remained of Iqrit with explosives; on 16 and 17 September 1953, using fighter-bombers and sappers, the IDF leveled Bir‘im. In Iqrit, only the church was left standing, in Bir‘im, the ancient synagogue. Since then, no one has returned to the two sites."}}; 

{{harvnb |Morris |2004 |p=509 |ps=, "The case of Bir‘im, Iqrit and Mansura illustrates how deep was the IDF’s determination from November 1948 onward to create and main- tain a northern border ‘security belt’ clear of Arabs. That determina- tion quickly spread to the civilian institutions of state, particularly those concerned with immigrant absorption and settlement. Immediately after Hiram, Weitz and other executives began planning settlements in the border strip and exempted them from the ‘surplus lands’ requirement; indeed, in their planning, they tended to ‘widen’ the strip to a depth of 10–15 kilometres. However, Kaplan and Cisling, while accepting the IDF’s arguments, insisted that the evictees should be properly and comfortably resettled. Only Minority Affairs Ministry director general Machnes opposed the principle of an Arab-less border strip."}}; 

{{harvnb |Morris |2004 |ps=, pp. 510-517 ("[p. 510] But the military periodically raided the full and half-empty Galilee villages to weed out illegal returnees, dubbed ‘infiltrators’ ... In the course of 1949, the IDF repeatedly raided the villages, sorted out legal from illegal residents and, usually, expelled returnees ... [p. 513] Ben-Gurion personally authorised the expulsion of the infiltrating returnees at a meeting with General Avner at the beginning of 1949. Ben-Gurion was later to say that he viewed the infiltration problem ‘through the barrel of a gun’ ... [p. 514] But infiltrators continued to return ... [p. 515] After being shoved into the West Bank, many expellees infiltrated back ... Another officer thought he had a solution, after pointing out that ‘almost all’ those expelled – all adult males – from one village, ‘Ibillin, had since returned: ‘We have not yet heard of any case in which a whole family of expellees has returned. It is clear, therefore, that the expulsion of whole families better assures their non-return.’ ... [p. 517] The search and expulsion operations in the Galilee continued during the following months [after mid-February 1949].") and 535 ("But where politics did not interfere, the army’s desire for Arab-clear borders was generally decisive. Arab villages along the border meant problems in terms of infiltration, espionage and sabotage. When the villages were semi-abandoned, as was generally the case, it meant a continuous return and resettlement in the empty houses, thus consolidating the Arab presence in the area and increasing their numbers in the country. To this was added the interest of the Jewish agricultural and settlement bodies in more land and settlement sites and the interest of the various government ministries (health, finance, minorities) to be rid of the burden of economically problematic, desolate, semi-abandoned villages. These interests generally dovetailed."}}; 

{{harvnb |Morris |2004 |p=536 |ps=, "Excluding the Negev beduin, it is probable that the number of Arabs kicked out of, or persuaded to leave, the country in the border-clearing operations and in the internal anti-infiltration sweeps during 1948–1950 was around 20,000. If one includes expelled northern Negev beduin, the total may have been as high as 30,000–40,000."}};

INFILTRATORS 1956-1967

{{harvnb |Kimmerling |2008 |pp=162-164 |ps=, "[p. 162] The Doctrine of Preemptive War, 1956–1967[:] By refusing to deal with the problem of uprooted Palestinians concentrated in refugee camps in surrounding countries, Israel was exposed to [p. 163] increasing Palestinian infiltration activities. The infiltrations slowly devel- oped into a kind of guerrilla warfare and terrorist activity, mainly against civilians settled in frontier settlements established on “abandoned” Arab lands and filled with new immigrants. To Israel, the authorities of the Arab states from where the infiltrators came were responsible for the infiltra- tions, and Israel responded with an escalating series of retaliations and reprisals against military and civilian targets in Arab countries.37 This pe- riod, labeled by Benny Morris38 as the period of “Israel’s border wars” had several consequences."}}; 

{{harvnb |Shalhoub-Kevorkian |2017 |p=348 |ps=, "The newly established Israeli state ruled over the Palestinian citizens first through military rule and by instilling fear in people through a portrayal of the government as an “all seeing, all-knowing” (Korn 2000). Through a network of paid agents and informers, the state invoked a heavy sense of fear when and while rewarding those who cooperated and punishing those who did not. The surveillance of the military government imposed restrictions on movements and criminalized some Palestinians, resulting in the increase of conviction rates against them (ibid.). This machinery of surveillance also resulted in the creation of different segments of Palestinians and different categories of residents. They were, for example: “evacuees” – those who were evicted by the Israeli state from their homes, villages, and cities; “infiltrators” – those who “illegally” returned to within the newly established state’s borders in an effort to return to their homes; and “present absentees” – those who had the misfortune to be absent from their homes and lands during the population census carried out in 1948, and thus were banned from returning to their homes, but nonetheless remained in the country."}};

So if anybody wants to read all of that and summarize it, thanks :-) Levivich (talk) 23:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ethnic cleansing (2)[edit]

There is ongoing debate among historians and analysts regarding how to characterize what happened during the Nakba. Labeling it 'ethnic cleansing' is a loaded term risking bias. We're better off depicting it as a displacement event while fully sourcing the range of perspectives - to avoid inflaming this controversial topic. Our role is capturing views accurately, not taking sides. OliveTree39 (talk) 15:27, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personal opinions are irrelevant, in order to justify the tag, provide the sources disputing the characterization and sourcing given in the article. Selfstudier (talk) 15:36, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the NPOV tag applied to the entire article. If a tag is insisted on please use 'disputed inline'. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 16:59, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that this was discussed above [1]. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:24, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ethic cleansing is a straightforward description of events, as attested in scholarship. The debate is whether the characterization of "genocide" might also be readily applied. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:35, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"ethnic cleansing" = "capturing views accurately" per the sources cited. Levivich (talk) 22:11, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@OliveTree39: with reference the added disputed tag, please explain why this has been added and with reference to reliable sources, as you were asked for previously. Thank you. Selfstudier (talk) 12:19, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The term "ethnic cleansing" in regard to the Nakba is disputed by various scholars and commentators for several reasons. There is a Wikipedia article that discusses this exact controversy of the use of the term "ethnic cleansing" (see: Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight), including many relevant views.
It is a historical fact that in some cases Palestinians were expelled from the villages, but that's far from being the only reason for the events of 1948. Several historians, for example, say that the Palestinians were encouraged to remain and live as citizens within Israel. However, the Arab population decided to leave, motivated either by a reluctance to coexist with Jewish residents or by the anticipation of an Arab military triumph that would decisively defeat the Zionist forces.[1]
The article's intro, as it appears right now, gives undue weight to the views of scholars such as Nur Masalha and Walid Khalidi.[2] But, for example, Philip Mendes, an Australian professor, said that "... it was an absolute fact that the Palestinian Arabs departed in 1948 at the behest of their own leaders, and that Israel desperately attempted to persuade them to stay." [3] Historians Anita Shapira and Shabtai Teveth say that "the sporadic talk among Zionist leaders of ‘transfer’ was mere pipe-dreaming and was never undertaken systematically or seriously".[4]
To sum up, this controversy in versions is constantly discussed among among historians, journalists, and commentators, therefore making the term a disputed topic. OliveTree39 (talk) 15:37, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just because there is a lot of historical denialism regarding this topic doesn't mean there is a serious dispute among the WP:BESTSOURCES on this matter. A lot of what you've cited for example has been thoroughly debunked. For example the idea that "the sporadic talk among Zionist leaders of ‘transfer’ was mere pipe-dreaming and was never undertaken systematically or seriously" - see Transfer Committee. And the idea that "it was an absolute fact that the Palestinian Arabs departed in 1948 at the behest of their own leaders, and that Israel desperately attempted to persuade them to stay." is just nonsense. Levivich below gives a good explanation and I'd recommend you read this article by Ilan Pappé which goes into more detail over the various disputes and the state of recent scholarship. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 16:06, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I echo IOHANN's statement. It is just as likely to encounter Nakba revisionism and denialism as it is to encounter revisionisms of various historical tragedies. Regarding the Mendes claim: "The BBC monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a United States monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum. There was not a single order or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine, from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is a repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put" (Hadawi 1979, citing Childers). Abu-Sitta 2010 noted that only 5/530 communities were displaced due to precautions-- 0.9433962264150943% of Palestinian communities. Khalidi 2005 reviewed archival materials from the Arab League, and found that the AHC urged govts to deny entry to Palestinians, stop renewing residency to abroad Palestinians, and violently sending back refugees. Nakba denial is very easily debunked. GeraldWL 10:33, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Glazer, Steven (1980). "The Palestinian Exodus in 1948". Journal of Palestine Studies. 9 (4): 96–118. doi:10.2307/2536126. ISSN 0377-919X.
  2. ^ "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine". online.ucpress.edu. Retrieved 2024-04-04.
  3. ^ Mendes, Philip. "A HISTORICAL CONTROVERSY: THE CAUSES OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE PROBLEM by Philip Mendes, address to Melbourne Jewish Museum, 20/10/2000". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. ^ Morris (2004) 60.
That's barely half a point and largely based on the single quotation from Mendes. Please don't just come to this topic half-cocked and cherrypick some obscure no-name scholars in the field, because that isn't going to be the start of a productive conversation. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:54, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Let me copy over to this page what the body of the article currently says about "ethnic cleansing":

The Nakba is described as ethnic cleansing by many scholars,[1] including Palestinian scholars such as Rashid Khalidi,[2] Adel Manna,[3] Nur Masalha,[4] Nadim Rouhana,[5] Ahmad H. Sa'di,[6] and Areej Sabbagh-Khoury,[7] Israeli scholars such as Alon Confino,[8] Amos Goldberg,[9] Baruch Kimmerling,[10] Ronit Lentin,[11] Ilan Pappé,[12] and Yehouda Shenhav,[13] and foreign scholars such as Abigail Bakan,[14] Elias Khoury,[15] Mark Levene,[16] Derek Penslar,[17] and Patrick Wolfe,[18] among other scholars.[19]

Other scholars, such as Yoav Gelber,[20] Benny Morris,[21] and Seth J. Frantzman,[22] disagree that the Nakba constitutes an ethnic cleansing.

Sources

  1. ^ Auron 2017, pp. xxxv-xxxvii and 1-12; Al-Hardan 2016, pp. 47–48; Rashed, Short & Docker 2014, pp. 3–4, 8–12, 13 ("The University of Oxford’s first professor of Israel Studies Derek Penslar recently stated that pro-Israelis needed to catch up with the past 30 years of academic scholarship that has accepted the ‘vast bulk of findings’ by the New Historians regarding the Nakba. He said: ‘what happened to the Palestinians, the Nakba, was not a genocide. It was horrible, but it was not a genocide. Genocide means that you wipe out a people. It wasn’t a genocide. It was ethnic cleansing.' That Penslar mistakenly interprets the concept of genocide is perhaps not surprising."), and 14-18; Lentin 2010, p. 111, "Non-Zionist scholars operate a different timescale and highlight the continuities between wartime policies and post-1948 ethnic cleansing. They treat the Nakba as the beginning of an ongoing policy of expulsion and expropriation, rather than a fait accompli which ended a long time ago (e.g., Karmi and Cotran 1999; Pappe 2004a; Abu Lughod and Sa’di 2007)."; Milshtein 2009, p. 50 ("The majority of Palestinian writers"); Ram 2009, pp. 387–388 (Israeli historians); Shlaim 2009, pp. 55, 288 (New Historians)
  2. ^ Khalidi 2020, pp. 12, 73, 76, 231.
  3. ^ Manna 2022.
  4. ^ Masalha 2018, pp. 44, 52–54, 64, 319, 324, 376, 383; Masalha 2012.
  5. ^ Rouhana & Sabbagh-Khoury 2017, p. 393.
  6. ^ Sa'di 2007, pp. 291–293, 298, and 308.
  7. ^ Sabbagh-Khoury 2023, pp. 5, 11, 30, 65, 71, 81, 182, 193–194.
  8. ^ Confino 2018, p. 138.
  9. ^ Bashir & Goldberg 2018, pp. 20 and 32 n.2.
  10. ^ Kimmerling 2008, p. 280.
  11. ^ Lentin 2010, pp. 8, 20–23, 69, 90, 110–111, 114, and 155.
  12. ^ Pappe 2022, pp. 33, 120–122, 126–132, 137, 239; Pappe 2006.
  13. ^ Shenhav 2019, pp. 49–50, 54, and 61.
  14. ^ Abu-Laban & Bakan 2022, p. 511.
  15. ^ Khoury 2018, pp. xii–xiii; Khoury 2012, pp. 258 and 263–265.
  16. ^ Levene 2018, pp. 45–65.
  17. ^ Rashed, Short & Docker 2014, p. 13.
  18. ^ Wolfe 2012, pp. 153–154, 160–161.
  19. ^ Hasian Jr. 2020, pp. 77–109; Slater 2020, pp. 81–85; Nashef 2018, pp. 5–6, 52, and 76; Natour 2016, p. 82; Knopf-Newman 2011, pp. 4–5, 25–32, 109, and 180–182; Esmeir 2007, pp. 232, 242, and 249-250; Schulz 2003, pp. 24, 31–32.
  20. ^ Auron 2017, pp. xxxv-xxxvii and 1-12.
  21. ^ Ram 2009, pp. 387–388.
  22. ^ Bashir & Goldberg 2018, p. 32 n.2.

For those counting along, that's 24 different bona-fide scholars (17 wiki-notable), all 21st century peer-reviewed academic works. On top of those 24, there are 7 other scholars (in 21st c. peer-reviewed academic works) that don't use the term in their own voice, but recognize that the term is widely used by scholars. A total of 31 21st-century peer-reviewed academic works saying it's ethnic cleansing. And they come from Palestinian, Israeli and non-Palestinian, non-Israeli scholars.

OliveTree, what you have posted so far to rebut this is:

  • Morris, already covered, he's a famous outlier
  • 1980 Steven Glazer paper was written before the Israeli archives were opened -- that's not just outdated, it's obsolete
  • 2000 speech by Phillip Mendes, a professor of social work, which is not peer reviewed, is old, and obscure

These sources do not demonstrate any significant modern dispute among scholars about this. You'd need to bring like dozens of 21st century peer reviewed academic works in order to show that the 31 works cited in the Wikipedia article right now do not represent the mainstream view. Levivich (talk) 16:01, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Should we have an RFC on this to be thorough? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 16:40, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Unless there is an intractable dispute and no consensus, an RFC is a massive waste of community time. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:53, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, I don't see enough disagreement amongst editors to justify an RfC. Maybe a FAQ but idk how effective those are (other than to be able to say "see FAQ #2" in response to "why does the article say..." questions). Levivich (talk) 17:32, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hi,
Thanks for your reply. But i still don't fully understand, even the UN refers to the Nakba as a mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians (If fair or not) and not "ethnic cleansing", a very harsh and unequivocal claim.[1] Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral information platform, and to use the term "ethnic cleansing" as an opening line is un-neutral. I think it would respect Wikipedia viewers more if the opening line was neutral, representing all opinions and views, tell the story and the events and the term "ethnic cleansing" can be put in the articles body as a point of view, such as "some scholars view the events as....". OliveTree39 (talk) 08:10, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
RS classify it as that and more than that is not needed, personal opinions notwithstanding. Challenge the consensus here via an RFC if desired. Selfstudier (talk) 10:08, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The UN is not an RS for this because it's not scholarship. Levivich (talk) 13:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's worth remembering that "ethnic cleansing" is a relatively modern term, becoming popular in English only in the 1990s. The archetypal event was the Ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian War. Perhaps OliveTree39 could explain what is it about the Bosnian case that they consider more "harsh" than the Nakba. Onceinawhile (talk) 13:49, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"mass displacement and dispossession" is ethnic cleansing, almost by definition. Look at the quoted definitions in the ethnic cleansing article and tell me Im' wrong. (t · c) buidhe 04:04, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Buidhe: that's a blocked sock now, fyi. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:59, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Death toll recent edit[edit]

This recent edit added that "at least 15,000 Arabs had been killed."[2] [3]

References

  1. ^ VS. "About the Nakba". Question of Palestine. Retrieved 2024-04-07.
  2. ^ "Nakba Day: What happened in Palestine in 1948?". Al Jazeera. 15 May 2022.
  3. ^ "Nakba survivors in Gaza mark 75 years of ongoing refugeehood, settler-colonialism and apartheid amid Israel's renewed military assault on the Strip". reliefweb.int. 15 May 2023.

This information (the death toll) is much needed but I doubt these sources are sufficient. This should be discussed. @ThePaganUK. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:25, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@User:IOHANNVSVERVS Will do some digging and add more refs shortly. Cheers.ThePaganUK (talk) 11:16, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That would be great! Still need better ones but also the sources already provided are not as bad as I first thought. Thanks for your contribution(s). IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:30, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like the 15,000 number refers to total Arab dead in the 1948 Palestine war, including Arab League soldiers. See this discussion. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:15, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW the AJ articles says explicitly "About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres." The Relifweb source similarly says "During the Nakba, around 531 villages were totally destroyed, and some 15,000 Palestinians were killed by Zionist militias, who between 1947 and 1949 committed at least 70 massacres against Palestinians." Their source for that figure is this article published by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. It seems these are referring to massacre deaths and not combat casualties. Levivich (talk) 03:43, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm too busy to look into this now, but thanks for this info and I will say that I feel it's reasonable to restore this, though I'd personally like to see it attributed. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:42, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox dates and "is"/"was"[edit]

I don't think July 20, 1949 is the end date of the Nakba per the body of the article (or mainstream RS view). Maybe it should be "1947-present." Which also implicates whether the article says "The Nakba was" or "The Nakba is."

For that matter I'm not entirely sure about 1947 being the start date either. Maybe "early 20th c. to present." Maybe the infobox shouldn't have dates at all.

Thoughts? Levivich (talk) 01:17, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The infobox start date corresponds to the start date that is in the 1948 Palestine war article. I am not sure what the end date corresponds to. Nakba day is May 15, the same date of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. Maybe if they had picked a different date other than the same day as the Independence Day, there would be less of a Nakba denial and maybe the Israelis would be more receptive in acknowledging the Nakba and a Nakba day. In the U.S., there is the Indigenous Peoples' Day (United States) and the official day is not the same day as the U.S. Independence Day or Thanksgiving. Wafflefrites (talk) 03:36, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:NOTAFORUM: "Article talk pages exist solely to discuss how to improve articles; they are not for general discussion about the subject of the article". IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 05:52, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I came to this page to look at the infobox dates because I was wondering why Nakba day was May 15, but you are right about NOTAFORUM. Wafflefrites (talk) 14:22, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Correct me if I'm wrong but 'the Nakba' can refer to 'the Palestinian catastrophe' in general (from the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the present), and also very commonly to 'the Palestinian catastrophe' of the 1947-1949 Palestine war. So maybe we should present these varying definitions in the lead and infobox. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 05:58, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If WP:SOURCESDIFFER, we would represent “all majority and significant-minority viewpoints published by reliable sources, in rough proportion to the prominence of each view... If there is a disagreement between sources, use in-text attribution: "John Smith argues X, while Paul Jones maintains Y," followed by an inline citation.” Wafflefrites (talk) 14:25, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that initially the Nakba was identified with the Palestine war but that over time, it has become more of an Ongoing Nakba. Selfstudier (talk) 12:49, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The line "the ethnic cleansing of Palestine did not begin or end in 1948" (Shenhav 2019, p. 49) always stuck with me; I think it's an important point. Anyway, I removed the dates from the infobox (for now at least), and added quotes to the "ongoing Nakba" citation in the article. To my mind, it seems the sources are very clear that it is an ongoing process and not a historical event. Levivich (talk) 03:25, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say sources are mixed but modern/recent sources lean towards your interpretation so support having it say ongoing, maybe including original usage of the term being conflated with the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. LegalSmeagolian (talk) 00:03, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Media and what I'll casually call Palestinian-sympathetic sources (eg. [2] have currently been using the term Nakba (specifically "second Nakba") to describe current events. What level of media coverage (and general public terminology) is required for the page to mention this, and at what point would that warrant changing the infobox by removing an end date? Are the current news articles being published enough? Nyonyatwelve (talk) 02:20, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This Wikipedia article already mentions this, and the infobox's end date was removed a couple weeks ago. Not just newsmedia, but scholarship is now also publishing about it, see e.g. the Preface to the New Edition of After Zionism, or various articles in the Journal of Genocide Research like [3] and [4], all published in 2024. Levivich (talk) 03:15, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Typo[edit]

“The term is also used to described” should be “The term is also used to describe” but I can’t change it cuz page is protected 129.22.21.195 (talk) 03:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, thank you. Levivich (talk) 04:32, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 24 April 2024[edit]

This entire article solely describes the Palestinian narrative which at best contains half truths and totally disregards many facts such as how the 1948 war started and by whom, the genocidal attack on Jews, why were the Arabs in Gaza labeled as refugees by Egypt, and much more. People read this as comprehensive truth when it clearly isn’t. This entire topic should be re-edited to reflect full facts. Otherwise you need to clarify that this whole article is based on Palestinian narrative. ZZ1960 (talk) 08:50, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done This is a comment, not an edit request. Edit requests should ask for specific changes and provided sources. Zerotalk 09:32, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Palestinian vs. Israeli scholars?[edit]

The article says, "The Nakba is described as ethnic cleansing by many scholars, including Palestinian scholars .... Israeli scholars... " while I would agree to separate it based on citizenship status rather than by ethnicity (so we don't have Arab vs. Jewish scholars), by that standard some of the Palestinians are misclassified because they are Israeli citizens rather than citizens of Palestine. Perhaps this could be clarified by rewriting, such as separating Israeli-Jews from Palestinian or Palestinian descent—I think Khalidi is a US citizen for example. Or perhaps I'm just splitting hairs here. (t · c) buidhe 04:32, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those labels were arbitrarily chosen by me without a lot of thought or research. Basically, it's people whose Wikipedia pages identified them as "Palestinian" (including variations like Palestinian-American), people whose Wikipedia pages identified them as "Israeli," and "other". No objection from me to changing the organization or labeling, I'm sure it can be improved, except I'm not sure about assuming all the Israeli scholars are Jewish (maybe that's pedantic of me?). What I was going for was to take the long list of names and organize it by "one side," "the other side," and "neither side," so the reader would have an understanding that it's not all scholars from just one side or the other. Levivich (talk) 04:59, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can understand this approach but imo (especially when it comes to non-Zionist Jews—whether Israeli citizens or not—and Palestinian citizens of Israel) splitting it into different "sides" can be misleading or reductive. If someone supports equal rights for all people in Israel/Palestine under the framework of a one or two state solution which "side" are they on? (t · c) buidhe 05:06, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a good point about misleading or reductive, and reinforcing the stereotype that there are two sides. Maybe it would be better to put them in alphabetical order. Normally I don't like long list sentences like this, but I feel like in this particular instance do we need to spell out how many different scholars say the same thing? Note that when I added that list, the article didn't say in wikivoice that it was an ethnic cleansing. Now that it does, perhaps that list is no longer needed, or can be moved to a footnote or something? Levivich (talk) 05:51, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It might be better to say that the list includes both Israelis and Palestinians, and I agree that it might be better as a footnote. (t · c) buidhe 08:05, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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