Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight

You should include original documents from the Israeli Intelligence Service (Arab Section)

If you're going to document the expulsion of the Arabs from Mandatory Palestine, you really should consider including information from the Israeli Intelligence Service: https://www.haaretz.co.il/st/inter/Heng/1948.pdf] https://www.akevot.org.il/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/1948ISReport-Eng.pdf

In reviewing the factors that affected migration, we list the factors that had a definitive effect on population migration. Other factors, localized and smaller scale, are listed in the special reviews of migration movement in each district. The factors, in order of importance, are: 1. Direct Jewish hostile actions against Arab communities. 2. Impact of our hostile actions against communities neighboring where migrants lived (here – particularly – the fall of large neighboring communities). 3. Actions taken by the Dissidents [Irgun, Lehi]. 4. Orders and directives issued by Arab institutions and gangs. 5. Jewish Whispering operations [psychological warfare] intended to drive Arabs to flee. 6. Evacuation ultimatums. 7. Fear of Jewish retaliation upon a major Arab attack on Jews. 8. The appearance of gangs and foreign fighters near the village. 9. Fear of an Arab invasion and its consequences (mostly near the borders). 10. Arab villages isolated within purely Jewish areas. 11. Various local factors and general fear of what was to come. 2600:1700:EB40:4530:F9E1:6072:E3A8:499A (talk) 04:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

It is present in the "Opening of archives" section and now includes a link to the document. Zero^talk 06:08, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Should this article include plans to poison wells?

Apparently there were plans to use biological/chemical warfare against the native Palestinians, in part to make Palestinian villages unlivable. They, (Haganah I assume) called it operation "Cast thy Bread" apparently. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2022.2122448 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2022-10-14/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/documents-confirm-israelis-poisoned-arab-wells-in-1948/00000183-d2b2-d8cc-afc7-fefed64d0000 Fanccr (talk) 03:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Probably, and the development of those biological weapons by Zionist universities. DMH223344 (talk) 04:09, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Causes

I started a thread here at 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight regarding the statement that "the causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus are also a subject of fundamental disagreement among historians." This article says in its lead similarly that "The causes for this mass displacement is a matter of great controversy among historians, journalists, and commentators."

To the best of my knowledge there is only debate over the details of these expulsions and flights and not "fundamental disagreement". See for example this article by Ilan Pappé. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:11, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

This is correct. The disagreement is primarily about whether there was a policy of comprehensive expulsions. Of course, most relevant records are still classified. DMH223344 (talk) 04:08, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Wrong year

In "Master Plan" explanation > Planning by Ben-Gurion:

"... a group of eleven people, ... At a meeting on 10 March 1947, this group put the final touches on Plan Dalet ..."

I suspect that the correct date is 10 March 1948. What Google shows me of the cited source by Pappé lacks page numbers but includes this text:

"10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine."

The passages seem to refer to the same meeting, and the context makes more sense if the year was 1948. Johntobey (talk) 23:02, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, done. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 02:26, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 20 June 2024

The heavy use of the word Zionist or Zionism is unnecessary. Jewish and Israeli forces clashed with Arab and Palestinian forces, By using the word Zionist you are skewing the article because of the strong opinions right or wrong of Zionists and Zionism. 50.170.171.146 (talk) 20:36, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Not done - this is too vague of an edit request to be actionable. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 00:40, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Why is the first section on inaccurate historiography?

The discussion on inaccurate historiography should not be the first section since it is not core to the topic. Also, the discussion gives the traditionalist Israeli mythology way too much credit. DMH223344 (talk) 04:16, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

This article should be rewritten as the "Historiography of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion". IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 04:25, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Great point. The title is ridiculous in my opinion; what could be the cause of expulsion other than...... expulsion? DMH223344 (talk) 04:40, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree, particularly since expulsion was the cause of the expulsion as DMH points out, and expulsion was also the cause of the flight. I think this article suggests there is some kind of debate or something about the causes, which there isn't. Another option is to recast this as "causes of the Nakba" and include the debate about whether it was pre-planned or not and to what extent. But that, itself, could just be covered in a broader "historiography of the Nakba." But bottom line, I don't really think, per WP:NOPAGE etc., that this article should be a stand-alone as its currently titled/scoped. To use an analogy, "causes of the Holocaust" makes sense as an article, but "causes of the deaths in the gas chambers" does not make sense, because it's obvious what caused that. Levivich (talk) 15:51, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd be open to initiating a requested move. Would "Historigraphy of the Nakba" or "Historiography of the 1947-1949 Palestinian expulsion" be a better title? (or an alternative?) IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 16:00, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

The WP:SCOPE is usually the title + the opening sentence so atm, the second para is about the historiography and causes is not the same as historiography. (See Causes of WWI and Historiography of WW1 for example. Selfstudier (talk) 16:09, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

In keeping with WP:LEDE, I think the previous lede text was a better summary of the body. I think "flight" here means departure that was not directly forced, and much of the article is about different views on the main drivers of that flight. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:35, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

If the lede and the body don't match, is that always the fault of the lede? This article needs a lot of work, but the lead should say that "Most historians today agree that forceful expulsion was the primary driver of flight." IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 06:02, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused about your and DMH223344's position here. I understand "flight" to mean departures that are not directly forced. That seems consistent with how it's used in this article and the parent article. Do you agree with that definition?

If so, the sentence you mentioned and restored isn't really coherent - expulsion and flight are disjoint events, so one doesn't cause the other at all.

Is the idea to change the article to be about expulsion only? That would be a drastic change that should be discussed a lot more before being enacted.

I do also think that rewriting a lede to summarize a "hypothetical" overhauled body isn't really a good practice, since it breaks the consistency that WP:LEDE calls for, at least until the overhaul is complete (which might not really happen, depending on consensus about specific body changes later). — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 14:31, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

The flights were in response to and in anticipation of violence and expulsions. It's probably not necessary for either article to be titled "expulsion and flight", and this has likely been insisted on by those who promote the discredited (but still widely believed) idea that a significant number of refugees were not driven out but that they fled for other reasons and of their own volition. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 14:51, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

For some additional sources on the fact that the Palestinian exodus was the result of intentional expulsion, see @Levivich's recent comment on another thread here (One of which states "serious scholarship has left little debate about what happened in 1948"). IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 15:06, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying, but this view that flight had one clear (uncontroversial) primary cause seems to fly in the face of a lot of reliably sourced content in the body. If you think other views are fringe and should be removed or given far less weight, then it seems you're proposing a drastic change which should be discussed much more broadly.

I did read all the excerpts User:Levivich supplied; while they're related they're mostly about those departures that were directly forced, not about analyzing the causes of those that weren't. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 15:17, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

As I said above, this article should be rewritten as the "Historiography of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion", so yes I do believe it requires drastic change. But that change can be made incrementally. It's not sensible to retain the previous inaccurate statement of the lead that "there is significant debate over the causes...", the lead now reads that there "was" significant debate. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 15:34, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, the traditionalist Israeli history is now considered fringe. This article cites traditionalist historians on issues where their work has been widely discredited, especially by the opening of the archives.

flight had one clear (uncontroversial) primary cause seems to fly in the face of a lot of reliably sourced content in the body.

The body itself lists expulsions as the most important of the factors which caused the exodus. DMH223344 (talk) 15:45, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

There were no causes that were not the result of force. The causes were, in sum: physical violence (i.e., direct physical expulsion), and flight away from the threat of physical violence (i.e., indirect expulsion via threat of violence). That's the "expulsion and flight." If you're thinking of "the Arab states told them to leave" or "they decided to leave because they didn't want to live there," those are both debunked myths. To the extent they "fled" instead of being "expelled," they fled because somebody was coming to kill or expel them. Not like, "Oh, I'd rather go live in a refugee camp in Jordan" as an actual voluntary choice. Levivich (talk) 15:48, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

That is simply untrue, there are more than enough sources, including that of Benny Morris, that mention evacuation orders issued by Arab authorities. If we stick to just point of view, we create nothing but systemic bias. We should acknowledge the complexity of the topic, and making such sweeping claims is unfortuantely not very helpful for improving the article. ABHammad (talk) 17:13, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Where does Benny Morris say that? Levivich (talk) 04:45, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Fact is, by the way, that many stayed behind - those we call in Arabic, "the 48-Arabs", because, in many cases, nobody was coming to kill them or expel them. ABHammad (talk) 17:15, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Except those who are internal refugees; they were kicked out of elsewhere. And those who survived the massacres and other violence and stayed. And those who successfully returned. Of course there were some Arabs who were not killed or expelled, but I don't think there was any place in Mandatory Palestine where someone wasn't coming to kill or expel Arabs during the Nakba. I believe sources cover expulsions and deadly violence in literally every part of Israel and the occupied territories, even the desert. Levivich (talk) 04:50, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

In any case, what @IOHANNVSVERVSsays is correct, this article reads like a discussion of historiography rather than an overview of the causes.

Also I should note that the article really does try to spin the entirely debunked "endorsement of flight" story. DMH223344 (talk) 15:52, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I restored the last good version, nothing is "entirely debunked", it only depends of what you read. There are LOTS of causes debated throughout the years. Even if a few scholars say that X is right and Y is wrong, they may be wrong, and Y may be right. The debate was never settled, especially with the growing politicization of the topic in academic research. ABHammad (talk) 17:10, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

"nothing is "entirely debunked", it only depends of what you read." WP:CIR IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:15, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Aside from flight, I think it's also coherent to talk about causes of expulsion, as the discussion of Plan Dalet and other Zionist planning or decision making. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:46, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree, the lead should summarize the main debates and talking points, the various causes suggested throughout the history of the research of the topic, and the opposing view on each. That is, I am afraid, our only option to build a much needed, encyclopedic and balanced coverage of this extremely controversial topic. ABHammad (talk) 17:11, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

WP:FALSEBALANCE. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:14, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

could also be, Wikipedia:Systemic bias. All I'm saying is we all should try to be more critical of the sources and accept the simple fact that this subject is (a) controversial (b) hugely debated in RS, regardless of trends. When dealing with it, we have to be the best version of ourselves as editors. ABHammad (talk) 17:17, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

A very weak argument. If you read the page you linked, you'll quickly realize that it is very unlikely to apply here, other than in the *opposite* of what you claim. DMH223344 (talk) 17:20, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I don’t think that this devolving into which organisation has bias against what group will have a productive outcome.

Ignoring the issues caused by the title (likely due to the change from exodus to expulsion and flight, but I could be wrong), I think we need to figure out a clearer structure of the article, which may address the issues brought up by both sides? FortunateSons (talk) 17:44, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

break

We do have Causes of the Armenian genocide, which I started, although I'm thinking it could be renamed "Origins of the Armenian genocide". It might be possible to have Causes of the Nakba but I think historiography is likely to result in a better article. (t · c) buidhe 02:16, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Changes to lead

Recent changes to the lead have been undone by @ABHammad in this diff.

This needs to be discussed and obviously I strongly disagree with this reversion. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:12, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion is ongoing just one thread above this one. ABHammad (talk) 17:18, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

WP:STATUSQUOSTONEWALLING IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:20, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

You said you believe that the article requires drastic changes. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. The previous stability of this article, and of the closely related parent article, suggests a broad and long-standing consensus that the article was reasonably balanced.

These drastic changes were proposed less than 24 hours ago, and so far have been supported by three editors (one who was pinged) and opposed by two editors. There isn't much evidence yet that the broader consensus has actually changed; we should await such evidence before initiating drastic changes to an otherwise stable article. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:35, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

I would set about editing the article body with best and most recent sources and that will determine the lead in the end (and maybe the title too, but if it changes here, why not at the main?). Selfstudier (talk) 17:57, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Instead of head counting the editors in favour of each position, you might try counting the reliable sources which have been cited in favour of each position.

@ABHammad, why have you removed the citation to Abigail Bakan from the article? How is your heavy handed reverting -which has removed sourced content- in line with the requirement to edit "carefully and cautiously" in this contentious topic area? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:00, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

If you're thinking of the excerpts Levivich compiled, I'm not sure they're very applicable here. Are any of them concretely taking the view that flight was uncomplicated, that Arab leaders didn't play a real role, that analysis like that of Morris are without merit, etc? I haven't seen that. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 16:12, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

The operative parent of this page is the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. "Expulsion and flight" is the operative phrase. If you are uncomfortable with the use of the word "expulsion" here then you are uncomfortable with the scholarship, including that of Morris. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:22, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

I was never questioning whether expulsions occurred of anything of that sort, of course that's established fact. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:12, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

"I haven't seen that." Have you read any of the sources Levivich presented? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 03:02, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Proposed change to lead

This has been discussed above but here I propose again (with further sourcing; see the Slater citation which itself contains numerous references) that the lead be changed from:

The causes of this mass displacement are a matter of controversy among historians, journalists, and commentators.

to:

There has been significant historiographical debate as well as denialism regarding the causes of the Palestinian exodus, however today most historians agree that forceful expulsion was the primary driver of flight.

Note especially that these two sources are recent (2020 and 2022) and that they both say "There is no serious dispute among Israeli, Palestinian, or other historians about the central facts of the Nakba."(Slater) and "In light of the ever-growing historiography, serious scholarship has left little debate about what happened in 1948."(Abu-Laban & Bakan) It is simply not accurate to say that the debate about the cause(s) of the Palestinian expulsion is ongoing, as there is consensus among WP:BESTSOURCES that the vast majority of the Palestinians were directly expelled or fled from fear of violence/expulsion.

- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:29, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

These three authors have clear anti-Israeli stances, but setting aside any concerns of bias and taking the excepts (which do seem reasonable enough at first glance) at face value, I don't quite follow your interpretation of them. I don't see anything in the excerpts that seems similar to forceful expulsion was the primary driver of flight.

Both sources support that expulsions occurred, which I would say is an established fact. But that doesn't tell us that flight didn't also occur, or that they were largely in anticipation of expulsions, and didn't have other nontrivial causes. It seems like we would need other sources that make that more specific argument.

It's also not obvious to me why Nakba denial would be topical here; is the idea that the analyses of Morris etc. are downplaying the expulsions of the Nakba by focusing on other aspects of the exodus? I think we'd need an RS to make the connection, and putting it in the lede might still be a WP:WEIGHT issue.

Overall it feels like you (plural) are taking the article in an expected direction relative to the scope implied by the title, as well as the previous content. If you disagree with the fundamental premise of the article (that the exodus had nontrivial causes worth examining), maybe an AfD would be the best course of action, or an RM to explicitly modify the scope in some way. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 03:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

"These three authors have clear anti-Israeli stances" - You'll need reiable sources to support this claim.

"I don't see anything in the excerpts that seems similar to forceful expulsion was the primary driver of flight." - WP:IDHT; see my response to this in the discussion below.

- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 04:36, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Present scholarship

I added a section title "Present scholarship" in this edit stating that "Present day scholarship generally considers that violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces throughout both phases of the 1947-1949 Palestine war (both during the civil war phase and during the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli war) as the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians."

Obviously this needs to be reviewed.

- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 01:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Just to echo my concern from the previous talk thread - the sources don't appear to use language similar to primary cause of the displacement, and don't seem to discuss causes in general. My understanding is that you're viewing them as challenging the analyses of Morris, Pappe, etc, but those are the New Historians that seem more aligned with these sources, not their main target of criticism. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 03:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

"The sources don't appear to use language similar to primary cause of the displacement, and don't seem to discuss causes in general."

You've clearly not read the sources themselves and have either not read or misunderstood the quoted excerpts.

To repeat: "The work of the ‘new’ (or revisionist) Israeli historians from the late 1970s also challenged the official state narrative of a miraculous wartime victory through access to material in the Israeli archives. This has established what Ilan Pappé has summarised as the ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestine’, a process involving massacres and expulsions at gunpoint."

"Reviewing the evidence marshaled by Morris and others, Tom Segev concluded that "most of the Arabs in the country, approximately 400,000, were chased out and expelled during the first stage of the war." & "Even Israeli "Old Historians" now admit that during the 1948 war, the Israeli armed forces drove out many of the Palestinians".

Another quotation from Slater is "While a number of studies have found no evidence to support the Israeli claim of an Arab propaganda campaign to induce the Palestinians to flee, well before the Arab invasion some 300,000 to 400,000 Palestinians (out of a population of about 900,000 at the time of the UN partition) were either forcibly expelled—sometimes by forced marches with only the clothes on their backs—or fled as a result of Israeli psychological warfare, economic pressures, and violence, designed to empty the area that would become Israel of most of its Arab inhabitants.”

That the Palestinians were violently expelled or else fled from violence is what Slater is referring to when he speaks of the "the central facts of the Nakba", of which he says "There is no serious dispute among Israeli, Palestinian, or other historians".

I'm not sure how you can say the sources provided "don't seem to discuss causes in general". IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 04:33, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

There's a difference between leaving because of a direct expulsion (in the narrow sense Morris uses - an order to leave within a specific time period), fear of violence, psychological warfare, economic pressures, and yes, Arab influences. It seems like you're hand waving away these differences, suggesting that they aren't important since they're all broadly attributable to Zionist actions. That may be so, but the point of the article is to break down and examine these different causes. If you don't believe this is a useful exercise, then it seems you disagree with the fundamental premise of the article, and AfD would be the place to register your objections.

Regarding Arab influences in particular, I'm not talking about the Arab propaganda campaign Slater mentions. See e.g. Morris' Response to Finkelstein and Masalha: No one, including Finkelstein and Masalha, disputes the fact that much of the Arab middle and upper classes fled Palestine - as they had done during 1936-39 - between December 1947 and early April 1948. Local leaders, bankers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, shop-keepers and factory-owners, government officials, judges, pharmacists, land-owners - perhaps 75,000 souls in all-moved to the safer climes of Beirut, Nablus, Hebron, Cairo, Amman, to be out of harm's way. Did this flight of the privileged weaken Palestinian society economically, politically, and militarily? Did it undermine the staying power and self-confidence of those left behind, especially the increasingly unemployed masses in the towns and cities? Did it provide a model of escape for those who were to take to their heels in April-June? The evidence all points to the affirmative, and not too much imagination is required to understand the dynamics of the situation.

Broad statements about the central facts of the Nakba don't get into the substance of the topic at hand and aren't really relevant here. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:43, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Change article to become about the historiography

This was discussed above with multiple users expressing support for the idea. So I propose it here: This article should be changed to focus on the historiography rather than on the causes. As the article stands now it would require less changes to make it about the historiography than to make it a good article about the causes. By that I mean most of the material in this article is from pre-1980s and is wildly out of date and inaccurate. It would require a massive overhaul with massive removals of content to improve this article, or if we make it about the historiography almost all of the current content can remain. I think it would be better to change the article to focus on the historiography and to make this page inclusive of all views and historians' opinions/analyses. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:15, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Make a new article about the historiography. Then start setting it up using newer material as well as material from here. At some point, the new article can be summarized in this one and then we will see whether this one should be deleted or kept. This will save arguments. Selfstudier (talk) 18:25, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Single-sourced sections

There seem to be several very large single-sourced sections here – notably the sections expounding single works by Morris and Gelber. If this are lone works on a certain framework without secondary substance then they do not, by definition, establish much weight for themselves – and they therefore do not deserve such prodigious sections for themselves. Either some secondary analysis of these theories needs to be produced, or the sections should be trimmed. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:32, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

The situation is a bit unusual in that viewpoints like "Four Waves" are strongly tied to specific works which are secondary sources, so it seems we need to look to tertiary sources to gauge WP:BALANCE. Do you think things like citation counts can be reasonable proxies for coverage in tertiary sources? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 16:08, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

They are not secondary sources for their own exposition. A secondary source in the context would be sources other than Morris or Gelber discussing their perspectives. Sections should generally not be single sourced. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:35, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

We normally refer to sources as primary or secondary in relation to the topic of the article, not in relation to themselves. I can see how it gets a bit blurred though, since the topic is rather inseparable from a few particularly well-known works devoted to it, like The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (both versions). — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:49, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

And the whole "master plan" section is based on Khalidi (Glazer doesn't say anything about the existence of the plan). By this logic it should be trimmed as well. Alaexis_¿question? 20:08, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

So could also do with some further literature introducing it ... Now you're getting the hang of it. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:28, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

I think that this is way too vague. If there are good sources that can be used please propose them one-by-one. If we can find more relevant information in books by Morris or Khalidi, that's also fine, there are no rules against that. Alaexis_¿question? 20:33, 12 August 2024 (UTC)

Present scholarship (2)

This recently-added section feels rather lacking in substance. Statements like serious scholarship has left little debate about what happened in 1948 (one of the sources) aren't useful without more context. If we look at the context and read between the lines, the message of these sources seems to be that there is a consensus among modern historians that expulsions occurred (in significant numbers, at least ~250k).

Language like violent expulsions were the main factor and violence and direct expulsions ... were the primary cause of the displacement doesn't seem to be backed by sources in a sufficiently clear or explicit way. Even if we could find one or two sources clearly asserting that, it seems very questionable to characterize this as a view that is mainstream or has a consensus behind it, given all the modern historians who examine other causes. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 16:45, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Do have a go at rewriting settled history, I will watch with interest. Selfstudier (talk) 16:52, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

If you don't have anything constructive to add, such as sources which support the content, there's no need to comment. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:50, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't that apply to what you just said too? Selfstudier (talk) 21:52, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

This removal of sourced content [1] is totally unjustified and disruptive. @XDanielx, you have only vaguely objected to this content, that doesn't mean you can remove it unilaterally saying "Per talk thread". IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 18:58, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

You have not addressed the concern here at all. It's poor form to revert without engaging the discussion in any meaningful sense.

I've combed over the four references repeatedly, and can't find anything similar to violent expulsions were the main factor or violence and direct expulsions ... were the primary cause of the displacement. Can you point out even a single source which clearly says that?

WP:V says A source "directly supports" a given piece of material if the information is present explicitly in the source. We can't just take vague statements about the central facts of the Nakba or what happened in 1948 and treat them as sources for a more specific claim that isn't explicit in the source.

Taking Laban & Bakan as an example, their vague statement about what happened in 1948 is part of a rejection of several ideas, including plainly ahistorical ones like the land was empty or Palestinians did not exist. They also reject the idea that Arabs just up and left Palestine because their leaders told them to, but don't discuss other purported causes (fear of war, panic, upper class flight, etc), or say anything about a main factor or primary cause. They don't say much beyond that, but cite Blaming the Victims, a 1988 work which predates the analyses of Morris and Gelber.

So even after digging into the broader context around the source and reading between the lines (which WP:V told us not to do), it's still not clear that this supports the text in question. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:58, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

This content was added after much discussion (Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight#Causes, Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight#Why is the first section on inaccurate historiography?, Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight#Changes to lead, Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight#Proposed change to lead, Talk:Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight#Present scholarship).

@XDanielx, you keep repeating your argument that the sources provided don't support the content. I've already refuted that in the above discussions and your claim simply doesn't make sense — the content is well sourced with inline citations including quotations that show how the source supports the content.

@Alaexis, you state that the 'Present Scholarship' section is one-sided. What sources do you think have been excluded? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:32, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Having four sources doesn't mean the content is well-sourced, when none of them actually say what the content says. You didn't really address these discrepancies in previous discussions; in #Present scholarship you copy/pasted some excerpts which still don't say what the texet says.

I just explained in some detail why the Laban & Bakan source doesn't match the text, at least not in the clear and explicit manner that WP:V requires. Can you point to just a single source where the information is present explicitly in the source? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 00:10, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

The Abu-Laban and Bakan source very clearly supports the content. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 01:17, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

That's the one I discussed above? It would be good to know why you disagree with those points; we won't get anywhere if you merely express disagreement and leave it at that. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 03:42, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Added another citation: Khalidi, R. R. (1988). Revisionist Views of the Modern History of Palestine: 1948. Arab Studies Quarterly, 10(4), 425–432. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41857981 — "[...] mass expulsions of the Palestinians by the Zionist forces, before May 15, 1948, and in succeeding months by the Israeli army, were the main cause of their flight." IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:00, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

While this is more relevant than the other sources, it's not claiming that there's some kind of consensus on the matter. It's also a 1988 article and it's summarizing a 1985 book, so while it could have a place somewhere in the article, it doesn't belong in "Present scholarship" and doesn't help justify the existence of that section. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 21:18, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Per WP:ONUS you need to establish consensus for the content you're adding. In this case quite clearly there is no consensus.

The Present Scholarship section you've added is one-sided with only authors espousing a certain opinion are deemed worthy of inclusion, with a partial exception of Morris. One article does not establish a scholarly consensus. Alaexis_¿question? 21:44, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

@XDanielx just removed this content again [2]. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:38, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Re "the sourcing issues raised on talk page haven't been addressed, and [...] there was never a consensus for adding this" — I did address your concerns with sourcing issues and this content was added a month and a half ago after much discussion and revision. Please stop deleting sourced content. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:43, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

And you have reverted again, in clear violation of WP:ONUS, and without engaging the issues raised here at all. Content isn't "sourced" if the sources don't say what the content says. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:46, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Don't waste time arguing with the ONUS/noconsensus crowd, open an RFC and ask the question. Selfstudier (talk) 18:01, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Adding a section called Present Scholarship makes it seem like everything else is obsolete. Generally speaking, if the scholarly consensus changes we should simply update the article.

The added text (violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces [was] the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians.) is not supported by the provided sources.

This is the quote from Slater

“ There is no serious dispute among Israeli, Palestinian, or other historians about the central facts of the Nakba. All of the leading Israeli New Historians—particularly Morris, Shlaim, Pappé, and Flapan—extensively examined the issue and revealed the facts. Other accounts have reached the same conclusions. For example, see Ben-Ami, "A War to Start All Wars"; Rashid Khalidi, "The Palestinians and 1948"; Walid Khalidi, "Why Did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited"; Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians; Raz, Bride and the Dowry. Reviewing the evidence marshaled by Morris and others, Tom Segev concluded that "most of the Arabs in the country, approximately 400,000, were chased out and expelled during the first stage of the war. In other words, before the Arab armies invaded the country" (Haaretz, July 18, 2010). Other estimates have varied concerning the number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled before the May 1948 Arab state attack; Morris estimated the number to be 250,000–300,000 (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 262); Tessler puts it at 300,000 (A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 279); Pappé's estimate is 380,000 (The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 96). In another recent review of the evidence, the Israeli historian Daniel Blatman estimates the number to be about 500,000 (Blatman, "Netanyahu, This Is What Ethnic Cleansing Really Looks Like"). Whatever the exact number, even Israeli "Old Historians" now admit that during the 1948 war, the Israeli armed forces drove out many of the Palestinians, though they emphasized the action as a military "necessity." For example, see Anita Shapira, Israel: A History, 167–68. ”

(bold is mine)

Indeed there is no doubt that the Israeli armed forces drove out many of the Palestinians, but how does it follow from this that "violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces [was] the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians"? Slater uses the same formula (fled or were expelled) that we use in the article. u:xDanielx wrote about the problems with the second source. Alaexis_¿question? 20:55, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

No, he says chased out and expelled, and he is making a remark about how most of it happened in the first stage of the war. Not about how violent or non-violent it was. nableezy - 21:16, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Considering the broader context of his book review, Segev is arguing that Zionist expulsions during the civil war phase may have been motivated by demographic objectives rather than military ones. This isn't that relevant, since the content in question isn't about what motivated expulsions, but more about the significance (or insignificance) of other causes. Segev's book review doesn't focus on this - it doesn't elaborate on the meaning of "chased out", and doesn't discuss other purported causes. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 22:26, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I have Segev, and he is pretty explicit on the violent expulsions being carried out with the knowledge and sometimes direct order of the Yishuv leadership. nableezy - 22:28, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

And now @Alaexis has unilaterally removed all the content along with its sources. [3] —IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:37, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I rewrote this with quotes from Slater and Segev. If anybody would like further quotations here lmk, happy to provide them. nableezy - 22:27, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort to improve this, but don't feel expanding a "Present scholarship" section is the right direction. IOHANNVSVERVS' original section was an attempt to establish that there's a consensus among modern scholars around a certain viewpoint.

The content you added uses modern sources, but doesn't seem like an attempt to establish a consensus. It seems like normal viewpoints of individual scholars, which would fit in the usual sections like "Master Plan" explanation.

The idea of elevating certain select viewpoints, by placing them near the top and asserting that there is a consensus behind them, seems unusual and misguided IMO. A sort of rough consensus about expulsions occurring emerged in the 80s and 90s, but claims of a consensus beyond that seem very questionable. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 23:54, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

I really don't understand your objections nor what exactly you are disagreeing with. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:58, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

@IOHANNVSVERVS you are past one revert and should self-revert. nableezy - 00:07, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Slater is reviewing the work of modern scholars and coming to these conclusions on what the consensus is. And why wouldnt we be expanding such a section? If you feel there are some perspectives missing then add them. Thats how we include all significant views, not by removing obviously reliable sources. If some other source is disputing this then present it. Arguing against what is sourced to impeccable sources however is a non-starter. nableezy - 00:06, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't have easy access to Slater's book, but the conventional Zionist-Israeli mythology sounds like the historical Israeli view, which isn't represented much beyond that historical section. The current "Present scholarship" section seems to imply that views like Four Waves are similarly outdated, which I don't think is accurate. (Revisited was 2004, Morris' views haven't changed much since, and they roughly align with the views of quite a few other mainstream historians, such as Shapira.)

I do think it's appropriate to point out that the historical Zionist view is outdated, I just think it should be somewhere in the historical section.

The inaccuracy of that historical Zionist view is well-established, but if we cover a broader "meta" debate about how much the overall literature supports certain facts or viewpoints, there will be various claims about this in relation to various viewpoints, such as this claim from Morris: No one [...] disputes the fact that much of the Arab middle and upper classes fled Palestine - as they had done during 1936-39 - between December 1947 and early April 1948. Local leaders, bankers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, [...]. It seems like a rabbit hole that we shouldn't get into (as most articles don't). — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 01:12, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

A. that is going back to 1991, b. the rest of that sentence includes "perhaps 75,000 souls in all". But again, Im not opposed to adding additional viewpoints, but here we have Slater saying this is what modern scholarship says about the matter. If there are other source reviews on modern scholarship then of course we should include that. nableezy - 01:48, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Are you saying the Slater statement goes beyond the historical Israeli view and applies to more nuanced views like Four Waves (particularly Revisited)? If so, can you give an excerpt? If not, can we move this to the historical section? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 01:59, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

No, he does not really discuss Morris's four waves, but I dont even understand why that matters here. Morris himself has the large majority of Palestinian Arabs who somehow left as leaving as a result of expulsions and attacks on villages, and says, for that second wave, the orders for those attacks called for, "implicitly or explicitly", expulsion. Morris is part of the modern scholarship here, and Slater includes him in it. nableezy - 02:07, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

If the Slater source mainly pertains to the historical Zionist view, wouldn't it be most logical to include it in that section (or after it)?

It seemed like the original intention behind the "Present scholarship" section at the top was to undermine a broader swath of views, including those of Morris, which some editors seem to perceive as radical (e.g. one editor in the parent's talk called his work Nakba denialism).

It would be possible to have a more balanced "Present scholarship" section, without implying that Morris is radical or what not. But most of the article is about recent-enough scholarship (i.e. post-archival works whose authors' views haven't changed much since publication), so I don't think it would be useful. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 02:41, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I mean much of the understanding on what occurred to begin the Nakba comes from Morris so I don’t know why somebody would call him a denialist. Possible an apologist as his position was that this was a necessary thing to do, but not a denialist. I can add some more of morris there. But honestly I think this page needs a pretty thorough restructuring. We should be focused on what the best, and most recent is a factor in best, scholarship says, and only include what has been disproven as mythology as disproven mythology. This article, for much of it at least, contrasts different views from different eras as though they are all of equal weight, and they are not. So I’m not wed to any name or placement for this material, but I am of the view that stuff that has been basically accepted by everyone be given more weight than disproven propaganda. nableezy - 03:43, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

What kind of restructuring do you have in mind? We can brainstorm other organizations, but as long as there's a "historical debate" section containing the historical Israeli view, wouldn't the content you added be most fitting there? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 21:20, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Also while I cited Segev directly, Slater is citing that bit in the overview of modern scholarship and the dismantling of the Zionist-Israeli mythology that held the Palestinian Arabs responsible for their dispossession. nableezy - 00:28, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Merge, split, or re-scope?

I've long felt that this article exists to make it seem like the causes of the Nakba are in dispute, when they really aren't. I've also long felt that as written, this article is a WP:POVFORK of the many other articles on the topic (the conflict, the wars, the Nakba, the expulsion and flight, etc.). Anybody else think this should either be merged (probably to multiple articles), or else re-scoped as Historiography of the Nakba or Historiography of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Levivich (talk) 19:01, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree with the first premise (that having an article about X means that there is a dispute about X). Alaexis_¿question? 22:08, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

I think the way to avoid this article being a POVFORK would be if the sources are covering both the long-term and immediate causes, like you see at Causes of the Armenian genocide (which also discusses fringe views, but with accurate representation of their support). In the case of the Nakba, I imagine sources might say, for example, that long-term causes might include antisemitism in Europe, positive views on population transfer etc. I think the article focuses too much on the immediate cause, which it seems is not/no longer significantly disputed so there is less to say about it without going into fringe viewpoints. If sourcing on long term and root causes does not exist, then I would support re-scoping and/or merging the article as Levivich proposes. (t · c) buidhe 02:02, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't agree that the causes are not in dispute. As I said above, the historical Israeli view is broadly considered inaccurate today, and there's a consensus that significant expulsions occurred, but that's about all that most scholars agree on. The quantity of expulsions, the motivations behind expulsions, and the significance of causes other than expulsions are very much still a topic of controversy. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 02:49, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

These seven sources, at least, say that there is not scholarly disagreement about the quantity, motivations, or (immediate) causes:

Sources

[p. 290] ... the hard facts regarding the developments during 1947–48 that led to the Nakba are well known and documented ... [p. 294] Today, there is little or no academic controversy about the basic course of events that led to the Zionist victory and the almost complete destruction of Palestinian society. — Sa'di, Ahmad H. (2007). "Afterword: Reflections on Representations, History and Moral Accountability". In Sa'di, Ahmad H.; Abu-Lughod, Lila (eds.). Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. Columbia University Press. pp. 285–314. ISBN 978-0-231-13579-5. [p. 6] That the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel resulted in the devastation of Palestinian society and the expulsion of at least 80 per cent of the Palestinians who lived in the parts of Palestine upon which Israel was established is by now a recognised fact by all but diehard Zionist apologists. — Lentin, Ronit (2010). Co-memory and melancholia: Israelis memorialising the Palestinian Nakba. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-84779-768-1. [p. 350] It is no longer a matter of serious dispute that in the 1947–48 period—beginning well before the Arab invasion in May 1948—some 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled their villages and homes in Israel in fear of their lives—an entirely justifiable fear, in light of massacres carried out by Zionist forces. While Israeli historians still argue about whether the Nakba was the intended or explicit “policy” of the Israeli government, no one doubts that the indisputable desire of Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders to ensure a large Jewish majority in Israel had a great deal to do with it. * * * [p. 406 ] There is no serious dispute among Israeli, Palestinian, or other historians about the central facts of the Nakba. All of the leading Israeli New Historians—particularly Morris, Shlaim, Pappé, and Flapan—extensively examined the issue and revealed the facts. Other accounts have reached the same conclusions. For example, see Ben-Ami, “A War to Start All Wars”; Rashid Khalidi, “The Palestinians and 1948”; Walid Khalidi, “Why Did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited”; Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians; Raz, Bride and the Dowry. Reviewing the evidence marshaled by Morris and others, Tom Segev concluded that “most of the Arabs in the country, approximately 400,000, were chased out and expelled during the first stage of the war. In other words, before the Arab armies invaded the country” (Haaretz, July 18, 2010). Other estimates have varied concerning the number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled before the May 1948 Arab state attack; Morris estimated the number to be 250,000–300,000 (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 262); Tessler puts it at 300,000 (A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 279); Pappé’s estimate is 380,000 (The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 96). In another recent review of the evidence, the Israeli historian Daniel Blatman estimates the number to be about 500,000 (Blatman, “Netanyahu, This Is What Ethnic Cleansing Really Looks Like”). Whatever the exact number, even Israeli “Old Historians” now admit that during the 1948 war, the Israeli armed forces drove out many of the Palestinians, though they emphasized the action as a military “necessity.” For example, see Anita Shapira, Israel: A History, 167–68. — Slater, Jerome (2020). Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-045908-6. [p. 258] The realities of the nakba as an ethnic cleansing can no more be neglected or negated after the works of the Palestinian historian Walid Al Khalidy and the works of the Israeli New Historians. The ethnic cleansing as incarnated by Plan Dalet is no longer a matter of debate among historians, even when the new Zionist historians in Israel justify it as indispensable ... The facts about 1948 are no longer contested, but the meaning of what happened is still a big question. * * * [p. 263] We don’t need to prove what is now considered a historical fact. What two generations of Palestinian historians and their chronicles tried to prove became an accepted reality after the emergence of the Israeli new historians. There is no longer any point in negating the nuanced facts revealed by Morris in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (1987). These nuanced facts became solid ones through the works of other historians, mainly Pappé’s master work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), in which he proves that there was a master plan of expulsion, takes us to the Red House, and reveals the details of Plan Dalet. No one will argue about names like Operation Dani or Operations Hiram and Dekel. Many stories of massacres, rape, and expulsion are known, and many other stories are still to be revealed: Tantura, Safsaf, Ein al-Zeitun, Sa’sa’, Sha’ab, Kabri, Abou Shousha, Ai’laboun, and so on. — Khoury, Elias (January 2012). "Rethinking the Nakba". Critical Inquiry. 38 (2): 250–266. doi:10.1086/662741. S2CID 162316338. [pp. 133-134] The bare statistics of the Nakba are well enough established. Between late 1947 and early 1949, Jewish militias, subsequently regularised as the Israeli Defence Forces, forcibly expelled many thousands of Palestinians from their homes and prevented others who had fled the fighting from returning home. In the event, some three quarters of a million Palestinians were driven into exile, their homes being either destroyed or expropriated by Jewish immigrants. By the 1949 Armistice, the Jewish population – which two years earlier had constituted 26% of the population of Mandate Palestine and had owned around 7% of the total land – had seized 77% of the land and come to constitute 80% of the population. As settler takeovers go, this lightning dispossession dwarfs even the late-1830s seizure of Australia’s Port Phillip grasslands or the postbellum invasion of the US Plains. Whether in Palestinian memory, as the ‘Great Catastrophe’, or in Zionist memory, as the ‘War of Independence’, these events truly constitute a watershed. On this at least, there is no disagreement. — Wolfe, Patrick (January 2012). "Purchase by Other Means: The Palestine Nakba and Zionism's Conquest of Economics". Settler Colonial Studies. 2 (1): 133–171. doi:10.1080/2201473X.2012.10648830. S2CID 53367151. [p. 511] Palestinians have long known what happened to them in 1948 and its very human costs. However, the work of the ‘new’ (or revisionist) Israeli historians from the late 1970s also challenged the official state narrative of a miraculous wartime victory through access to material in the Israeli archives. This has established what Ilan Pappé has summarised as the ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestine’, a process involving massacres and expulsions at gunpoint. In light of the ever-growing historiography, serious scholarship has left little debate about what happened in 1948. In fact, scholars are currently fruitfully addressing issues such as the intersection of the Holocaust with its roots in European racism, and the Nakba with its roots in European colonisation. However, Nakba denial remains a political issue of the highest order, as a key element of racial gaslighting. — Abu-Laban, Yasmeen; Bakan, Abigail B. (July 2022). "Anti-Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting". The Political Quarterly. 93 (3): 508–516. doi:10.1111/1467-923X.13166. S2CID 250507449. [p. 60] What happened is, of course, now well known. By the summer of 1949, the Palestinian polity had been devastated and most of its society uprooted. Some 80 percent of the Arab population of the territory that at war’s end became the new state of Israel had been forced from their homes and lost their lands and property. At least 720,000 of the 1.3 million Palestinians were made refugees. Thanks to this violent transformation, Israel controlled 78 percent of the territory of former Mandatory Palestine, and now ruled over the 160,000 Palestinian Arabs who had been able to remain, barely one-fifth of the prewar Arab population. This seismic upheaval—the Nakba, or the Catastrophe, as Palestinians call it—grounded in the defeat of the Great Revolt in 1939 and willed by the Zionist state-in-waiting, was also caused by factors that were on vivid display in the story my father told me: foreign interference and fierce inter-Arab rivalries. These problems were compounded by intractable Palestinian internal differences that endured after the defeat of the revolt, and by the absence of modern Palestinian state institutions. The Nakba was only finally made possible, however, by massive global shifts during World War II. — Khalidi, Rashid (2020). The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. Metropolitan Books. ISBN 978-1-62779-854-9.

Wikipedia articles should convey the scholarly agreement reported in reliable sources. I agree with Buidhe's suggestion about expanding the scope from immediate causes to long-term/root causes. Levivich (talk) 04:57, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

This feels like a repeat of Talk:Nakba/Archive_5#Nakba, where you provided 32 sources, but very few of them (explicitly) backed the content in question. Similarly here, I'm not seeing anything that actually says there is not scholarly disagreement about the quantity, motivations, or (immediate) causes. Slater for example indicates disagreement about quantity, while Segev's book review in particular indicates disagreement about motives. Some of these were discussed in the previous section. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 06:32, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it also reminds me of that discussion, e.g. when you say that Slater 2020 ("It is no longer a matter of serious dispute that in the 1947–48 period—beginning well before the Arab invasion in May 1948—some 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled ...") "indicates disagreement about quantity." Levivich (talk) 13:53, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

That's not the Slater excerpt I referred to; it was Reviewing the evidence marshaled [...], which gives four different estimates ranging from 250k to 500k. He also seems to conflate some different things, but in any case, it's not evidence of a scholarly consensus about causes.

The 700-750k figure isn't a matter of much dispute, though that top-level number is irrelevant to the topic of causes. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 22:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

This article was created as a fork of 1948 Palestinian exodus, mostly in order to remove a lot of unsatisfactory material. There was years worth of argument over the standard set of Zionist "quotations", almost all of them fake or misleading. All very 2000s. It isn't clear that the article is needed now. Zero^talk 12:48, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

If there is nowadays general agreement in sources as to the causes, then merge it to the main article.Selfstudier (talk) 13:08, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

Look at the second paragraph of the lead:

Causes of the exodus include direct expulsions by Israeli forces, destruction of Arab villages, psychological warfare including terrorism, massacres ... crop burning, typhoid epidemics in some areas caused by Israeli well-poisoning, and the collapse of Palestinian leadership including the demoralizing impact of wealthier classes fleeing.

Those are not causes, those are methods, except the collapse of leadership, which is not a cause but an effect.

Look at the sections of the body:

• Modern scholarship
  • Modern scholarship generally considers that violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces throughout both phases of the 1947-1949 Palestine war (both during the civil war phase and during the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli war) were the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians.
  • That's it, that's basically the whole topic. What are the causes of the expulsion and flight? Zionist forces. We don't really need an entire article to say that, that can be said in articles about the expulsion and flight (and the Nakba, the war, the conflict, etc.)
• Outline of the historical debate - This is historiography, belongs in a historiography article, or a historiography section of another article.
• Concept of transfer in Zionism - This should be its own article
• "Master Plan" explanation - This section is a fork of Plan Dalet, presenting it as if it's just one of several theories, when nobody disputes that Plan Dalet existed
• Morris's Four Waves analysis - Contra to WP:NPOV, we give more space to the minority viewpoint of Morris than to the mainstream view; also, this isn't about causes, this is about history -- the four waves aren't four causes, they're four time periods -- the whole thing should be in the article about the expulsion/flight, or an article about the book (which is certainly notable)
• Gelber's two-stage analysis - Gelber is an even more obscure minority than Morris; this is even more out of line with NPOV; anyway, the two stages, like Morris's four waves, aren't about causality, they're time periods; it's about how it happened, not why; this should be in an article about Gelber
• Psychological warfare is a method, not a cause, and should probably be its own article (along with biological warfare)
• "Arab leaders' endorsement of flight" explanation - This is not a cause; should be in Nakba denial or its own article (it's a notable myth)

Put it together and this article is presenting "transfer" and "Plan Dalet"--which are undisputed--as just one theory amongst several, and it gives too much prominence to minority views like Morris's and Gelber's (why no sections on Pappe, Masalha, Shlaim, Flapan, Khalidi, and many others?). All of these sections would be better in other articles or as their own articles. I agree with Buidhe about a long-term causes article, but I'd think that would be called Causes of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It's kind of surprising that article doesn't exist, but this one does. Levivich (talk) 14:07, 17 August 2024 (UTC)

The lede needs work, but direct expulsions, the collapse of Palestinian leadership and the demoralizing impact of wealthier classes fleeing are all causes, as well as the obvious fear of being the in the proximity of fighting, and various lesser causes. Expulsions also have causes or motives, which is a large part of this topic.

If your argument is based on that recently-warred-in sentence in Modern scholarship, please explain in the section above how any of the sources actually back that statement.

Right, Outline of the historical debate is historiography; I'd be fine with trimming it since it's not exactly in the scope of the article (although it's related background).

The existence of Plan Dalet does not imply anything about the motives for expulsions, or the existence of a master plan.

The Morris and Gelber sections are a bit long and I wouldn't be opposed to some moderate trimming, though they are particularly well-known works at the center of the controversy, especially Morris'.

Arab evacuation orders is a gray area, since there is evidence they did exist, but the narrative that they were a central part of the exodus is outdated and belongs in historiography. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 17:15, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

Modern scholarship generally considers that violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces

This is not supported by your own source (Slater)

“ There is no serious dispute among Israeli, Palestinian, or other historians about the central facts of the Nakba. All of the leading Israeli New Historians—particularly Morris, Shlaim, Pappé, and Flapan—extensively examined the issue and revealed the facts. Other accounts have reached the same conclusions. For example, see Ben-Ami, "A War to Start All Wars"; Rashid Khalidi, "The Palestinians and 1948"; Walid Khalidi, "Why Did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited"; Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians; Raz, Bride and the Dowry. Reviewing the evidence marshaled by Morris and others, Tom Segev concluded that "most of the Arabs in the country, approximately 400,000, were chased out and expelled during the first stage of the war. In other words, before the Arab armies invaded the country" (Haaretz, July 18, 2010). Other estimates have varied concerning the number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled before the May 1948 Arab state attack; Morris estimated the number to be 250,000–300,000 (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 262); Tessler puts it at 300,000 (A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 279); Pappé's estimate is 380,000 (The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 96). In another recent review of the evidence, the Israeli historian Daniel Blatman estimates the number to be about 500,000 (Blatman, "Netanyahu, This Is What Ethnic Cleansing Really Looks Like"). Whatever the exact number, even Israeli "Old Historians" now admit that during the 1948 war, the Israeli armed forces drove out many of the Palestinians, though they emphasized the action as a military "necessity." For example, see Anita Shapira, Israel: A History, 167–68. ”

So what part of this quote supports the statement "violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces were the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians"? Only Segev's quote kinda sorta supports it but that one out of 6 sources mentioned here. Alaexis_¿question? 19:32, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

"were chased out or expelled during the first stages of the war" – what are you questioning here? Is it the word violence? ... As if people can be "chased out" by anything other than violence during a war? Iskandar323 (talk) 19:38, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Khalidi, R. R. (1988). Revisionist Views of the Modern History of Palestine: 1948. Arab Studies Quarterly, 10(4), 425–432. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41857981 — "[...] mass expulsions of the Palestinians by the Zionist forces, before May 15, 1948, and in succeeding months by the Israeli army, were the main cause of their flight."

Abu-Laban, Yasmeen; Bakan, Abigail B. (July 2022). "Anti-Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting". The Political Quarterly, Vol. 93, Issue 3, p. 511: "The work of the ‘new’ (or revisionist) Israeli historians from the late 1970s [...] has established what Ilan Pappé has summarised as the ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestine’, a process involving massacres and expulsions at gunpoint. In light of the ever-growing historiography, serious scholarship has left little debate about what happened in 1948."

Slater 2020, p. 350, "It is no longer a matter of serious dispute that in the 1947–48 period—beginning well before the Arab invasion in May 1948—some 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled their villages and homes in Israel in fear of their lives—an entirely justifiable fear, in light of massacres carried out by Zionist forces.". IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:40, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Petersen-Overton, Kristofer J.; Schmidt, Johannes D.; Hersh, Jacques (27 September 2010). "3. Retooling Peace Philosophy: A Critical Look at Israel's Separation Strategy". In Carter, Candice C.; Kumar, Ravindra (eds.). Peace Philosophy in Action. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 49. doi:10.1057/9780230112995. ISBN 978-0-230-11299-5. "As scores of historical documentation has since revealed, the Yishuv encouraged the flight or directly forced 750000 Palestinians (more than 80 percent of the population at the time) from their homeland in 1948 and destroyed 531 Palestinian villages." IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:01, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Do you doubt that "violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces were the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians"? Are there RS that say otherwise? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:48, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

The issue is with the phrase violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces were the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians. Out of all the sources cited above, only Khalidi says it in his 1988 article. We cannot say this is wikivoice based on this (rather dated) source alone. I can see how this can follow from Tom Segev's conclusion but it's still original research. Also, not all sources have equal weight. An article called Anti-Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting is not a study of the 1948 war and should not have the same weight as Morris, Slater et al.

Slater is a fine source but it doesn't mean that whatever he wrote embodies the scholarly consensus. We can use his conclusion (some 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled their villages and homes in Israel in fear of their lives but we shouldn't ignore other viewpoints, like Shapira's (from The War of Independence, 1947–1949 chapter: Even at this stage of the war, both the Palestinian leadership and the leaders of the Arab states tried to persuade the population to stay put and not flee the country. But the collapse of Palestinian society and its governance led to mass flight, which according to accepted estimates had reached about 300,000 before May 15, 1948.. Alaexis_¿question? 19:29, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I disagree that only one of the sources posted says this. Levivich (talk) 19:41, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, can you point out where another source says this (directly and explicitly as WP:V requires)? If it's one of the ones discussed above, can you reply there? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 19:48, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

This is one of the seven I posted above:

[p. 258] The realities of the nakba as an ethnic cleansing can no more be neglected or negated after the works of the Palestinian historian Walid Al Khalidy and the works of the Israeli New Historians. The ethnic cleansing as incarnated by Plan Dalet is no longer a matter of debate among historians, even when the new Zionist historians in Israel justify it as indispensable ... The facts about 1948 are no longer contested, but the meaning of what happened is still a big question.

* * *

[p. 263] We don’t need to prove what is now considered a historical fact. What two generations of Palestinian historians and their chronicles tried to prove became an accepted reality after the emergence of the Israeli new historians. There is no longer any point in negating the nuanced facts revealed by Morris in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (1987). These nuanced facts became solid ones through the works of other historians, mainly Pappé’s master work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), in which he proves that there was a master plan of expulsion, takes us to the Red House, and reveals the details of Plan Dalet. No one will argue about names like Operation Dani or Operations Hiram and Dekel. Many stories of massacres, rape, and expulsion are known, and many other stories are still to be revealed: Tantura, Safsaf, Ein al-Zeitun, Sa’sa’, Sha’ab, Kabri, Abou Shousha, Ai’laboun, and so on.
— Khoury, Elias (January 2012). "Rethinking the Nakba". Critical Inquiry. 38 (2): 250–266. doi:10.1086/662741. S2CID 162316338.

Note: this one isn't just saying it's a historical fact that Zionists were the primary cause, this is saying "master plan" theory is a historical fact, which goes much further than Wikipedia does. Levivich (talk) 20:26, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

I still don't see anything similar to violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces were the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians. The statements about ethnic cleansing and Plan Dalet both establish that expulsions occurred, which I think we all agree is uncontroversial (today), but don't say anything about flight.

It also doesn't say much about motives for expulsions. The master plan view does get at motives, but it still doesn't really say anything about flight, and in any case I don't think this source or any other is claiming a consensus around the master plan interpretation.

He also references Mossis' original BOTPRP, which is the sort of nuanced analysis of causes that the content in question tries to undermine. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 22:27, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Based on the above, Shapira doesn't really contradict the notion that violence was a cause so much as begs another question, i.e.: what caused "the collapse of Palestinian society and its governance"? That's more a vague handwave than a contradictory viewpoint. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:49, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

The war, the end of the mandate, the failed rebellion in the late 1930s all contributed to the collapse.

Anyway, you may think that she's wrong or that she doesn't get to the root cause but it's WP:OR. I can also criticise pretty much any sourced mentioned above and it would also be WP:OR, so we need to follow what RS say. Alaexis_¿question? 18:50, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Did the source say that, or is that your explanation? And no, it's not OR to point out where a source stops short of an explanation. If a source is being presented as a contrasting narrative, that narrative has to lead somewhere. Shapira didn't say it "spontaneously collapsed"; she introduced a mysterious "collapse" while in the same breath failing to explain what that means here. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:27, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

I just looked up that Shapira quote and I'm disappointed. Here's the full quote, from page 162:

Another explanation circulated among the Jews, which in time became part of the Israeli narrative: that the Palestinians were ordered to leave Palestine by their leaders in order to facilitate Arab military operations against the Jews. This explanation, based on isolated Arab sources, is baseless. Even at this stage of the war, both the Palestinian leadership and the leaders of the Arab states tried to persuade the population to stay put and not flee the country ...

Of course, the key words there are at this stage of the war. Shapira continues on pp. 174-175:

By the war's end about 700,000 Palestinians had been exiled from their homeland. In the first stage of the war, the Palestinian exodus from the areas assigned to the Jewish state was a consequence of the collapse of governmental systems in Palestinian society and the anarchy that reigned in their place. In the second stage, following the Arab invasion, there were numerous instances in which the IDF expelled the Arab population and destroyed its villages to prevent its return ... The conclusion was that the State of Israel could not allow the Arabs to return to their homes. Their flight had become refugeeism ... [p. 175] From the summer of 1948 on, the army's orders were to prevent the Arabs from returning to their villages, either by force of arms or by destroying the villages.

So, Zionists caused the exile. Yeah, it started as a voluntary flight expecting to return, but then Israel stopped them from returning. In addition, it expelled those who didn't flee.

BTW, this explanation of Plan Dalet was, um, interesting, from p. 161:

It was now possible to implement Plan Dalet (Plan D) in preparation for the expected invasion by the Arab states ... Pro-Palestinian researchers present Plan D as the draft of a preplanned, total population transfer of the Arabs of Palestine. But as the plan text shows, while it did order commanders to destroy villages and expel the inhabitants if they resisted, it also instructed commanders to leave them where they were if they did not resist, while ensuring Jewish control of the village. There is a great difference between an order for total expulsion nd a selective order, which assumes the Arab villages will be able to live in peace in the Jewish state.

LOL is all I can say about that. Levivich (talk) 19:12, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

Please stop deleting sourced content @XDanielx as you have done again here. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:31, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

@IOHANNVSVERVS: again please don't revert without addressing the issues raised. There are several unanswered threads above explaining in detail why the sources are deficient. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 04:50, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

I have addressed the issues you've raised. The content is well sourced. If you think the paragraph needs improvement then improve it. I don't see how there is any justifying the wholesale removal of all this content and its sources. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 04:56, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Political and sociological influences on the historical debate

I removed the subsection titled "Political and sociological influences on the historical debate" along with its content. See diff here. Just making this talk page entry for visbility/review. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 01:49, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

That section jumped out at me on first read, too. Not least because of the overly long subheading and indirectness of the prose. If this content were to make its way back in, it should belong as contextual analysis alongside the relevant issues.

E.g., it could probably be summarised like this:

"Israeli sociologists such as Uri Ram and Steven Glazer have suggested that differences between Israeli and Palestinian accounts of 1948 should be understood in the context of competing nationalisms—both between and within those nations. Thus, for Ram, the traditional Israeli account might be understood as arising from the Israeli labor movement, in contrast with later post-Zionist and neo-Zionist understandings emerging in the 1980s and 1990s (respectively)."

This could then become the last paragraph in the intro to the Historiography section (just before Early Israeli historiography), serving as a bridge between the current view and historic views, and therefore putting them into context. Lewisguile (talk) 09:05, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

References

Replace 'Zionist' with 'Israeli'?

Zionist is a loaded term. These people referred to themselves as the state of Israel. I propose to replace 'Zionist' with 'Israeli' throughout this article. Thoughts? 14.201.1.125 (talk) 12:17, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

Not done. There is pre state usage and quoted sources using the term. Feel free to specify usage that is "loaded". Selfstudier (talk) 13:26, 15 October 2024 (UTC)

either tolerated or implemented by the Yishuv leadership

IOHANNVSVERVS, can probably say more than tolerated for expulsion, for instance Morris here p. 48 (should probably cite The Birth tho), but doubtful for 'massacres'. Any objection to removing Philip Mendes altogether from both articles? It's just a speech. fiveby(zero) 22:56, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

No objection to removing or minimizing Mendes. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:59, 5 November 2024 (UTC)