Talk:United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine/Archive 8

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Limitation of Plan of Partition from Jewish point of view.

The Plan was accepted by the Jewish public and Jewish Agency, except for its fringes, despite its limitations.

I have never understood how the Jews could consider how the Partition Plan had limitations. With only 10,000 Jews in the proposed Arab state and a bare majority of Jews in the proposed Jewish state, any expansion of the boundaries of the Jewish state would have given it an Arab majority. Trahelliven (talk) 19:15, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

They remembered former promises. They argued that Balfour Declaration gave them the right to establish in the whole Palestine (area not clearly defined but where areas East of Jordan river could be seen as included), that the 1923 Mandate restricted this to the West side of Jordan river and that the partition plan restricted/limited this right even more. After 1939 White Paper, Zionist organisation at Biltmore in 1948 claimed their right to establish on the whole Palestine. Pluto2012 (talk) 05:07, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand how the Arab Rejected the plan "on the grounds that it violated the principles of the UN charter which granted people the right to decide their own destiny.[5]", while at the same time it used as the basis for Palestinian statehood(last section). Anyway, Dlv999 decided to hash it out in the lead[1] I included the opposing view from the same source per NPOV. Have fun at hashing out the precise wording.--PLNR (talk) 04:13, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

They referred to democracy basic principles. They argued that it was to the population to decide of their own destiny and not to external nations (in a form of colonial paternalism). Their urged for an unitary State. Several referendum had already taken place at other places in the world. This was refused to them. Pluto2012 (talk) 05:07, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but I was mostly making a point concerning the wording in the article, and that we follow WP:RS as oppose to our "understanding".--PLNR (talk) 06:16, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

That's explained eg in Tom Segev, One Palestine. Complete. The Arab feeling of unfairness in front of the Partition Plan is well known and documented. Pluto2012 (talk) 18:55, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

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Trahelliven -- One thing is that the boundaries of the Jewish state under the 1947 UN plan were completely militarily indefensible (in part very intentionally so), and therefore the Jewish community would have had to place their trust in the future intentions of the United Nations concerning matters involving their basic survival... AnonMoos (talk) 01:53, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

AnonMoos - How do you think that they should have been drawn the boundaries to create a Jewish state containing virtually all the Jews, with a Jewish majority and militarily defensible. Trahelliven (talk) 09:36, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure I have no idea; however, the fact remains that under the 1947 UN plan, the Jews would not really have been able to defend themselves, so that the survival of the Jewish state would have been mostly out of their own hands, and they would have had to simply trust in the good intentions of the United Nations and a favorable diplomatic balance among the great powers -- and also that such good intentions and favorable balance would continue five, ten, twenty etc. years down the road... AnonMoos (talk) 10:09, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

@AnonMoos, I doubt it was "very intentional", the commission reports show clearly that there was no viable option, unless Arab majority would subject to Jewish Minority rule or agree to a transfer, which wasn't going to happen. With that said, you are correct that those wasn't defensible borders, something that the Jewish population was very aware of in light of previous Arab unrest, growing friction among them and outside persecution. However, I am not certain how any of that effect the Article.. --PLNR (talk) 10:44, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

PLNR -- The existence of the two 4-way crossover points in the partition plan map strongly implies that defensibility was set aside whenever it conflicted with any other goals, which is pretty much the same thing as saying that defensibility of borders was not a real goal of the plan at all... AnonMoos (talk) 11:44, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

I have yet to read about that in details, but judging from other plans, they found that defensible borders were impractical, inlight of other terms of reference that had to met. It was their hope that this would eventually be addressed through cooperation by both states. So not intentional but a result of circumstances--PLNR (talk) 05:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Probably the only defensible line is the River Jordan. Trahelliven (talk) 10:52, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

One of the most critical defensibility problems was having Arabs in the hills looking down at Jews on the plains (see Latrun etc.). Not sure whether there's much point in discussing further details here, but there was a paradox that a partition which could be considered extremely generous as a partition, could simultaneously be considered quite skimpy and inadequate in setting up a fully viable independent state with the customary requisites of sovereignty... AnonMoos (talk) 11:39, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

From what I've read, the Partition Plan borders were partially planned with the hope in mind that they would promote the need for inter-community co-operation and compromise, which it would be worth dealing with in the article. Defensibility and indefensibility are sliding scales whose degree depends on the resources available to the opposing sides to attack or defend them (and it's worth noting that Israel has been more successful at invading its neighbours than the other way round). The Jordan is a bit of a ditch, particularly compared to water barriers like the Rhine, Straits of Gibraltar, Sea of Crete, English Channel and various parts of the Pacific, all of which have been successfully crossed by invasion. In the days of weapons such as aircraft (including drones) and long-range missiles, the idea of defensible borders becomes even more bogus. How many borders actually are 'defensible'?     ←   ZScarpia   12:17, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

ZScarpia -- With ICBMs, nowhere in the world is safe, but neither side in 1947-48 had ICBMs. The Israelis were thinking much more in terms such as that with the advantages of height and somewhat rugged terrain, a few well-positioned sporadically-firing WW2-surplus artillery pieces could make life miserable for a lot of people, and could be difficult to neutralize without launching an all-out full-scale military attack. Something of this kind happened from time to time on the Sea of Galilee in the pre-1967 period... AnonMoos (talk) 02:17, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting points. I'll keep my reply brief to try to avoid irritating anybody. I don't disagree that it would have been advantageous to hold the high ground, just not as advantageous as it was, say, in the pre-World-War-I era, after which aircraft were used for artillery spotting, intelligence gathering and attack and defence, making it easier to hit back at an out of line of sight target. Having said that, I realise that there was a dearth of aircraft or artillery pieces on the Jewish side at the start of the 1948 war, though that was fairly quickly rectified. In any case, if your opponent is holding the high ground, they can't invade you without coming down off it, though it does make it more difficult for you to invade them.     ←   ZScarpia   15:59, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

If there is no such thing as a defensible border, Israel's security in the long run will depend on any settlement being one with which the Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states are actually happy, not just one which was forced on them. Trahelliven (talk) 19:14, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Or in which Israel has overwhelming military superiority (including sole ownership of nuclear weapons), is surrounded by client or friendly buffer states ... . If the Partition Plan can be criticised for lack of defensible borders, of course they were also indefensible for the projected Palestinian Arab state as well as Israel's other new neighbours. All very soapboxy I'm afraid.     ←   ZScarpia   21:46, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

@Trahelliven @ZScarpia, you are off topic by 60 years.--PLNR (talk) 05:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Trahelliven -- There was absolutely nothing the Israelis could have done in 1948 to make the Arabs "happy" while still retaining the ability to defend themselves. A large number of Arabs in 1948 and afterwards considered the attainment of any form of Jewish control over territory or de facto sovereignty as a stain on Arab honor which could only be wiped away with blood (a significant number of Arabs still think that way today). The Israelis in 1948 remembered very clearly that the first Arab state to gain independence in modern times (Iraq in 1933) celebrated by massacring Christians, and they were determined not to follow down the same path... AnonMoos (talk) 02:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The massacre was performed by Kurds (who are our allies nowadays), not Arabs. And the Israelis also massacred Christians in 1948 but it is true, much less than the numbers of Muslims who they massacred...

Pluto2012 (talk) 21:44, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

If the borders are indefensible how have they managed to defend them?Serialjoepsycho (talk) 21:48, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

1) Many features of the 1947 plan borders which were nonsense from a military point of view (such as the two 4-way crossover points etc.) were eliminated in the fighting of 1948-1949.

2) From 1949-1967, the Israelis were still faced with the problem of Arabs on the hills looking down at Jews in the plains along much of the West Bank boundary (critically at Latrun, which threatened the main road to Jerusalem), and if a major concentrated conventional military attack had been launched from the West Bank into Israel, then Israel could have fairly easily been cut in half where it was narrow between the sea and the West Bank hills, resulting in a very grim situation.

The reason Israel didn't face such a situation was that Hussein of Jordan chose to do his fighting in 1967 in a half-assed manner. The Israeli government gave Hussein repeated assurances that if Jordan didn't attack Israel, Israel wouldn't attack Jordan. However, Hussein felt that the howling frenzied bloodthirsty mobs of the "Arab street" could destabilize his rule if he didn't make a solid show of attacking Israel, so he attacked Israel, but not with an effective concentrated aggressive military attack -- which meant that Jordan pretty much set itself up to lose in the 1967 fighting... AnonMoos (talk) 02:44, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Israel has nuclear weapons, or at the very least, everyone believes they do. The get massive military aid from the USA. The Arabs are divided, corrupt and generally badly governed. In the long rum, 100 or even 200 years, the situation may change. What then? Trahelliven (talk) 03:29, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

• comment, keep in mind of WP:NOTFORUM, better understanding of topic concerning the UN plan, might lead to the article improvement. However, just because this article is part of the Palestinian/Israeli Projects, it doesn't mean you should hash out our Palestinian/Israeli here. Thanks.--PLNR (talk) 05:19, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

1937 Peel Commission transfer

• Also concerning your recent edit in this section [2]. The report text says(third paragraph):

Extended content

If Partition is to be effective in promoting a final settlement it must mean more than drawing a frontier and establishing two States. Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population. The Treaties should provide that, if Arab owners of land in the Jewish State or Jewish owners of land in the Arab State should wish to sell their land and any plantations or crops thereon, the Government of the State concerned should be responsible for the purchase of such land, plantations and crops at a price to be fixed, if requires, by the Mandatory Administration. For this purpose a loan should, if required, be guaranteed for a reasonable amount. The political aspect of the land problem is still more important. Owing to the fact that there has been no census since 1931 it is impossible to calculate with any precision the distribution of population between the Arab and Jewish areas; but, according to an approximate estimate, in the area allocated to the Jewish State (excluding the urban districts to be retained for a period under Mandatory Administration) there are now about 225,000 Arabs. In the area allocated to the Arab State there are only about 1,250 Jews; but there are about 125,000 Jews as against 85,000 Arabs in Jerusalem and Haifa. The existence of these minorities clearly constitutes the most serious hindrance to the smooth and successful operation of Partition. If the settlement is to be clean and final, the question must be boldly faced and firmly dealt with. It calls for the highest statesmanship on the part of all concerned.

I see the numbers that you quoted, but I am little bit confused concerning the bold part, and lack of final numbers if such decision would be made. Do you have any Secondary source to confirm your wording? Also in all the sources I read, the Peel Commission is noted for concluding the Mandate is unworkable and recommending the Partition for the first time(its also notable in the context of 1936-1939 revolt, Peel/Woodhead/39White Paper and ww1) I don't recall seeing anyone noting the population exchange clause, certainly not in such details, for a report whose details was rejected by all. So why do you think it is notable here?--PLNR (talk) 04:01, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

The part with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was proposed for continuing as a mandated territory whose disposition would be left to the future. No short-term transfer of its population is proposed. If you'd prefer a secondary source, there are many. Morris, Righteous Victims, p139 says it in almost identical terms: "Peel made a second recommendation as a corollary to partition: an "exchange of population" between the prospective states—the transfer of some 225,000 Arabs and 1,250 Jews." (and he keeps writing "exchange" with scare quotes). Or we could use a statement without actual numbers like "..which for the most part would involve the resettlement of Arabs living within territory proposed for the Jewish state" (p242 of Tessler, History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict). Quite a lot of authors don't even mention that a tiny fraction (0.55%) of the transferred persons would be Jews and describe it just as a transfer of Arabs. The previous text encouraged the reader to assume there was some sort of balanced exchange proposed, which is far from the truth. Zero^talk 13:43, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Question of Balance should be addressed in the context of the full Peel Commission report, not implied through a specific clause of one of the chapters without proper context, otherwise you introduce POV. Which is why the previous wording was preferable as it was neutral and informative, providing a solution and point of reference to the frontier/friction problem.--PLNR (talk) 08:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Balance requirements apply to every article. There is nothing balanced or neutral about writing "population exchange" without the context that 199 in every 200 persons would be Arab. Zero^talk 09:49, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Expanding on my previous post, there was nothing "balanced" in the Greeko\Turkish population exchange figures as well. Balance implies compensation, financing of large scale development projects and other considerations. You are more then welcome to address this issue in length on the peel commission article. However, here its undue and replace neutral and informative entry, and point of reference concerning a considered Partition principle, with unnecessary details that lack context and adds nothing to the Partition Plan (no wonder that quite a lot of authors don't even mention them). Serving only your misguided notion that proposed exchange of population implies equal numbers?! It is like saying that exchange of land implies implies equal square footage.--PLNR (talk) 10:33, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the previous language was unsourced. So what has happened is an unverifiable entry has been replaced by an entry that is sourced and accurately reflects how the topic is covered by expert secondary sources. If you are interested in learning, this is a good example of how to improve the encyclopedia. Dlv999 (talk) 10:48, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I was wondering what has happened to improving the encyclopedia, as opposed to POV pushing on the laurels of policy you see around(i.e. game the system). Jumping in the middle to argue policy, you missed the fact that added source isn't secondary, but primary source, which fully covers both variant. Also I am certain that beside accuracy your are also familiar with concept such as representing in fair, proportionate and notable way in the context of a specific topic. So this sidetracking aside, I am still waiting for someone to provide WP based rational for that inclusion, addressing what I said in the previous two posts.--PLNR (talk) 05:57, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Now it has a secondary source as well. The content is not disputed by historians. The rationale is telling readers about the facts. You should stop flogging this dead horse. Zero^talk 09:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

e/c: Zero already cited Benny Morris in his comment timestamped 13:43, 26 January 2014 (UTC). The WP based argument is that it is sourced to a gold standard academic secondary source. Including the sourced material will mean our article will be more consistent with how the topic is covered by academic experts. You bandy around "POV pushing" charge, but your pattern of editing reveals you adding unsourced content while at the same time deleting and arguing for the deletion of well sourced material. You will not find that kind of edit pattern if you look at my edit history. Dlv999 (talk) 09:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Really, it is not that hard, just because something is quoted in WP:RS doesn't mean it is relevant and notable here. In your quote Morris speaks about the 'Peal commission', not about 'Partition Plan'. All you have to do is show why it is notable in the context of the Partition Plan.(i.e. Peel Commission is notable, due to being the first to say Mandate is unworkable and suggest partition, and the plan details were). Otherwise I can quote a book dealing with international treats, which discuss the peel commission and spam the paragraph with details about 'Civil Services' and 'Industrial Concessions' using your arguments to support it word for word.

I didn't mind to entertain the previous wording because it was somewhat informative and meaningful addition. in the sense that the reader could better understand the suggested principle by reading about the Greeko\Turkish case. I am saying principle, because there are no operative articles or any specifics concerning implementation, which is why the commission referenced the Greeko\Turkish case in the first place. Meanwhile, your version is pointless, those numbers doesn't add to the reader understanding how the Partition plan conceptualize, not what an exchange would entail(lacking context) nor used later on, their whole purpose is to introduce POV, to implying that it was unfair deal.--PLNR (talk) 12:00, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Morris is directly discussing the partition plan as it was envisaged by the Peel report. "their whole purpose is to introduce POV, to implying that it was unfair deal" - bullshit, the idea is to introduce the facts as they are laid out in expert scholarly sources - readers can make up their own minds based on the facts. Your pattern of edits seems to be about suppressing the well sourced facts that are not conducive to your preferred narrative. Dlv999 (talk) 08:00, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

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I'm not too sure how the details of the Peel Plan are very relevant to this article anyway, since the Peel Plan was a very different plan proposed under very different circumstances, and does not seem to have formed the basis for the U.N. plan. Unfortunately, some people's main interest in the Peel Plan with respect to this article seems to be to try to imply that Ben Gurion's reaction to the 1937 Peel Plan is somehow relevant to the 1947 U.N. plan... AnonMoos (talk) 10:16, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I can't agree more, its just selective POV Pushing. I made an edit in an attempt to address all of aspect of exchange in proportionate mater.--PLNR (talk) 07:46, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

to PLNR: I agree with you that the transfer does not belong to this article. My intention was to highlight that for them the transfer is not a POV but a (supposedly) historic deduction.

* However, in my opinion, the Balfour declaration, the Peel report, and the white paper should be mentioned in the background section. Ykantor (talk) 07:22, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

@Ykantor, if they have WP:RS to support their view, they are wellcomed to it, however, as I noted several times before, this article is about the "Partition Plan", not about some transfer, not about the peel report and neither about Balfour declaration vote. Most of the things I oppose here, if they were added on those article I'd support their inclusion there, but here its nothing but POV pushing.--PLNR (talk) 20:05, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Planned expulsion?

to AnonMoos, PLNR : When I discovered that the pro Arab editors really believe that the Zionists planned the transfer a lot of years in advance, I was shocked, because it is clear (for me) that this is just a propaganda. They do not think it is a POV, and they have pro Arab RS who support it (and more accusations against Israel.) e.g. Finkelshtein, Pape, Flapan, Khalidi etc. Anyway, the article does not say what was the rational behind the transfer proposal. PLNR edit is a step in the right direction. The transfer idea was suppoerted by Arab politicians too, since it is clear (in my opinion) that Arabs and Jews can not live together, unless one of the groups is very small. Ykantor (talk) 17:16, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

"The transfer idea did not originate with the Peel Commission. It goes back to the fathers of modern Zionism and, while rarely given a public airing before 1937, was one of the main currents in Zionist ideology from the movement's inception. The transfer idea did not originate with the Peel Commission. It was always clear to the Zionists that a Jewish state would be impossible without a Jewish majority....For many Zionists, beginning with Herzl, the only realistic solution lay in transfer." (Morris, Righteous Victims, 2001 pp139)

According to RS the idea transfer goes back to Herzl and the "fathers of Zionism". According to RS the rationale was that they wanted to create a Jewish state in a land that was overwhelmingly non-Jewish and they saw transfer as the "only realistic solution". Perhaps you could consider the possibility that editors you label as "pro Arab" only want to accurately reflect what has been written in RS on the topic and that perhaps your own views are not entirely consistent with what has been published in RS. Dlv999 (talk) 17:39, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

to Dlv999: Morris is an excellent RS and usually he has no mistakes. Israel had its' share of wrong doing, but the problem, as I understand it, is that the 1948 Arab refugees disaster was not a result of the supposed long term planing of this disaster. According to Morris, Refugee revisited:

p. 6, the evidence for pre-1948 Zionist support for ‘Transfer’ really is unambiguous; but the connection between that support and what actually happened during the war is far more tenuous than Arab propagandists will allow ... The exodus of the rich from Jaffa and Haifa over December 1947 to March 1948 was vastly different from the mass urban flight of April and early May; indeed, the multi-layered flight from Jaffa was markedly different from that from Haifa; and both had little in common with the expulsion and flight from Lydda and Ramle in July or from ‘Eilabun, Dawayima and Kafr Bir‘im in October–November1948

p.7, the intention of the Palestinian leadership and irregulars and,later, of most of the Arab states’ leaders and armies in launching the hostilities in November–December 1947 and in invading Palestine in May 1948 to destroy the Jewish state and, possibly, the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) itself; the fears of the Yishuv that the Palestinians and the Arab states, if given the chance, intended to reenact a Middle Eastern version of the Holocaust…from late July 1948, it was clear to the Yishuv’s leaders (and probably to most Arab leaders) that Israel had won its war for survival, at least in the short term, and that the subsequent IDF offensives were geared to securing the political military future of the Jewish state in what continued to be a highly hostile and uncomfortable geopolitical environment and to rounding out its borders.

p. 588,The first Arab–Israeli war, of 1948,was launched by the Palestinian Arabs, who rejected the UN partition resolution and embarked on hostilities aimed at preventing the birth of Israel. That war and not design,Jewish or Arab, gave birth to the Palestinian refugee problem.But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist Ideology…But there was no pre-war Zionist plan to expel ‘the Arabs’ from Palestine or the areas of the emergent Jewish State; and the Yishuv did not enter the war with a plan or policy of expulsion…. Hence, in the war’s first four months, between the end of November 1947 and the end of March 1948, there were no preparations for mass expulsion and there were almost no cases of expulsion or the leveling of villages; hence, during the following ten months, Haganah and IDF units acted inconsistently, most units driving out Arab communities as a matter of course while others left (Muslim as well as Christian and Druse) villages and townspeople in place; and hence, at war’s end, Israel emerged with a substantial Arab minority" Ykantor (talk) 20:30, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

"in the words of one of the Israeli soldiers, as quoted by Benny Morris, whose thesis about the birth of the refugee problem being not by design but by the natural logic and evolution of the war is not always sustained by the very evidence he himself provides, ‘cultured officers . . . had turned into base murderers and this not in the heat of battle . . . but out of a system of expulsion and destruction; the less Arabs remained, the better; this principle is the political motor for the expulsions and the atrocities’." (Shlomo Ben Ami, 2006, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace]]) Dlv999 (talk) 01:29, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Ben Ami claim, that the refugees have been expelled by design, is not supported by this Morris quote, (Morris, refugees revisited, p. 470). It describes the horrible massacre in Dawayima, and probably based on Kaplan (the quoted soldier) previous experience. Ben Ami does not refer to Morris claims that:

* if that was a general policy, how come that at the "war’s end, Israel emerged with a substantial Arab minority"

* The expulsion was inconsistent. "Most units driving out Arab communities as a matter of course while others left (Muslim as well as Christian and Druse) villages and townspeople in place" Ykantor (talk) 07:15, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment. Guys, this is not a form, please refrain from discussions unrelated to article topic or its improvement.

1947-1948

Hi, Trahelliven concerning your recent revert. You stated that:

"In view of what was to happen in 1947-1948, this proposed disproportionate proposed dispossession of Arabs is significant."

I don't know what "proposed disproportionate proposed dispossession" means, but what was to happen is certainly the UN Partition Plan. So kindly specify what exactly your variant adds to the UN Partition Plan, which wasn't already there? Because if its just the numbers to imply that the plan is unfair or disproportionate, unless you quote from WP:RS that explicit state that conclusion, this a violation of WP:SYN. More over it is a violation of WP:NPOV because you selectively choose parts of the plan that advance your position, while intentionally ignoring other parts of it i.e. the missing the compensation and development clauses.--PLNR (talk) 07:46, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry. I repeated a word. In 1947-48, about 700,000 Arabs left, fled from or were expelled from, what was to become Israel. The reverse applied to about 10,000 Jews. The Plan of Partition of 29 November 1947 was, I suspect, designed to prevent the necessity of an exchange. The proposal of 1937 is, therefore, worth mentioning. 225,000 Arabs living in the Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in the Arab state: The disproporn is so great that the numbers need mentioning. If you want to mention compensation, financing of large scale development projects and other considerations feel free to do so, I agree that the full picture needs to be told. Trahelliven (talk) 22:56, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

This article is about the Partition Plan, not about the events of 1947/48 that followed. You haven't specified what the numbers adds other than your unsourced suspicion. Confirming that it would serve to imply a conclusion not explicit state in source about "disproportionate" and or introduce bias that would require us to to cover the "disproportionate" amount of compensation Jews/British will have to pay and development projects for Ara that the plan covers. As noted before such detail is undue in the context of the Partition plan. (also on side note, I have hard time to follow your reasoning, the UN partition plan had different census data, different points of reference(no link to trans Jordan), two revolts in its belt, two mature uncompromising nationalist movements, pressure concerning Jewish immigration as result of WW2, British decide they are had enough etc, the parallels your are trying to make are superficial )--PLNR (talk) 23:34, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

PLNR (Replaying to [3])

A person seeing the word exchange, in the absence of any figures or other details being supplied, might expect the numbers to be roughly equal. When they are not (1,250 as against 225,000), it helps to supply the numbers.

When editing and you have something in brackets, please insert an extra space before and after except when followed by a full stop, comma etc. as I have just above, but you have not - revert(or self-revert). Trahelliven (talk) 05:26, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

If you have problem with term "exchange" we can replace it with a synonymous "transfer"--PLNR (talk) 07:16, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, we could describe it as transfer of Arabs, like many good sources do. But I still prefer to be more precise. Zero^talk 08:21, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Interestingly, the Zionist right wing also emphasised the lack of balance, for their own purposes. The leading Revisionist Zionist Joseph Schechtman, in his book Population Transfers in Asia, wrote (p89): "Even though it spoke of an Arab-Jewish exchange of population, the Royal Commission actually proposed a one-way transfer of Arabs. The 1,250 prospective Jewish transferees from the Arab State could not be balanced against the 225,000 Arabs to be transferred from the Jewish State." Zero^talk 08:33, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

As noted before, unless you can show(WP:RS) how those number from the peel report has any impact on the UN Partition Plan, those details are undue and without further coverage only introduce bias, and going in detail about the peel plan is not in the scope of this article. (OT: As for your claims about precision, based on your and Trahelliven explanation above, paint me a skeptic, unless you want to be precise about your POV pushing ;) so how about you and the Zionist right wing hash it out on the peel report article, where such detail are due)

So the current variant will be "It proposed that land and population transfer should be carried out to overcome demarcation problems"? --PLNR (talk) 08:44, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

PLNR, you seem to be in a minority of one on this issue, and at some point you are going to have to admit that you don't have consensus for your preferred approach and accept that you cannot always get your own way on everything. Dlv999 (talk) 10:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I know that you and zero will be lobbying for this no mater what, but this not a vote, it is simply about providing policy based explanation for this inclusion. So far the common denominator to all your comments is lack of explanation on how those Peel Plan numbers had any impact on the UN Partition Plan. Your suggestion were either relevant to Peel Plan article or conclusion that are not explicit state in our WP:RS (i.e. WP:SYN violation).

If you actually cared about precision then the more interesting aspect of this plan is that the commission seen the solution in ~context of the original mandate i.e. the Arab state was to be linked to TransJordan, which was part of the compensation/development scheme for resettlement. Which ties in with Abdullah interest in all of this (noted by ploto in another thread) That or British policy to still try to appease both sides, in light of their conflicting war time promises.

While your numbers add nothing and meaningless to the UN plan, as was explained above by me and noted by AnonMoos: "the plan was proposed under very different circumstances, and does not seem to have formed the basis for the U.N. plan". So their only purpose is to POV push what you wish to imply. Thus not ok. --PLNR (talk) 21:49, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

There are two issues here. One is whether the 1937 plan should be mentioned at all. My opinion is that all previous partition plans for Palestine are relevant to the background section of this article. The other issue is of how much detail to give. My opinion is that whatever detail is given should not be actively misleading, which rules out unqualified use of the phrase "population exchange" or "population transfer". Provided it is not written misleadingly, I don't care if the text gives numbers or uses a correct qualitative phrase like "overwhelmingly Arab". I don't object to the mention of Transjordan which is there already. Zero^talk 23:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

There is only issue here, is that you need to backing up your assertion that "It proposed that land and population exchanges[or transfer] should be carried out to overcome demarcation problems" is not Neutral or misleading.(or for that matter how adding the selective aspects of this plan is Neutral. As noted before going into detail about how the peel plan implementation isn't the scope of this article and completely undue since it didn't had any impact on the UN Partition Plan )--PLNR (talk) 01:13, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

To start with, most readers will have no idea what "demarcation problems" means. Overall the sentence won't tell anyone anything. It is useless. Zero^talk

If the sentence is useless it is because it was a half measure to appease your (ZionistArabist? right wing) pushing of that useless tid bit about population exchange. I didn't want to include either, but at least this way it was somewhat neutral and noted that the major demarcation problems (Which is very apparent from reading the report).

If you want to remove the sentence and the addition by Trahelliven, i'd support it. Otherwise, you are grasping at straws, I don't mind discussing wording issues (like demarcation/frontier/border/county line or Exchange/Transfer etc) as long as we finish discussing the issue at hand i.e. the lack of supporting reason for Trahelliven addition (as described in the top most post and every follow up post I made) If you can't provide such reason that addition would be reverted, no reason to dig in your heals like those right wings you speak about.--PLNR (talk) 10:51, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

The sourcing supporting the inclusion of the detail that the Arabs rejected the plan is equivalent to the sourcing for the details about the forced transfers that were part of the plan. I would find it misleading and contrary to policy to cherry pick one detail in RS (that it was rejected by the Arabs) and not include other equally well sourced details about why the Arabs may have opposed the plan. Dlv999 (talk) 11:05, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Jewish/Arab rejection of the Peel Plan is notable, since it resulted in the technical Woodhead commission and British stating that that the partition plan is impracticable ~"without" Arab-Jewish agreement. While population estimates based on border estimates, which might have been part of Partition plan if Woodhead went with it(depending on where woodhead would have drawn the border and final assessment) which it did not, those estimated numbers add nothing to the UN partition plan. They are intentionally one clause cherry picked from the whole plan and phrased in way to imply that the plan was unfair, which isn't stated in the source. So reiterating from before it is WP:UNDUE and WP:SYN violations. ( Also WP:RS about why the Arabs opposed the Peel plan are most welcome in the Peel plan articles) --PLNR (talk) 22:31, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

So Any more "but they use it too" or reaching for "straws" i.e. anything but a simple and direct answer to the question that was outlined in the first post and every post since, in simple, concise manner that is inline with wiki policy?--PLNR (talk) 13:39, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Can you explain in terms of RS coverage (as oppose to your own views) why you deleted the detail about the transfer proposal and not the detail about who accepted and who rejected the plan? To my mind the sourcing is equivalent. Articles are based on RS so the two details deserve equal weight. Dlv999 (talk) 02:41, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

You are not addressing the subject of this subsection, you haven't provided any new reason why those details should be included with that WP:RS. If you are interested in starting a discussion concerning Jewish/Arab rejection of that plan or amending the wording of that those sentence please do so in a new section, without disrupting this conversation.

Now, for a productive outcome of this discussion please explain your recent revert [4] in which you claim that I haven't made my case. Please specify what exactly haven't been substantiated, the part that cherry picking clauses from the plan violate WP:NPOV, that implying a conclusion which isn't stated directly in source is WP:SYN or that this is not the scope of the article to go into the details of the peel plan. --PLNR (talk) 05:25, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I added another source to support the material. You are making a WP:UNDUE claim to support your deletion of sourced content. You need evidence to support such a claim. I am requesting that evidence. Specifically, WP:NPOV says that we include all viewpoints in proportion to their coverage in RS. The RS for the transfer numbers is equivalent to that for the details the Arabs rejection of the plan, so we should give equal weight to both details not delete one and retain another. Dlv999 (talk) 08:10, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

That report include 10 recommendations, among them that:

Jews contribute more per capital to the revenues of Palestine than the Arabs, and the Government has thereby been enabled to maintain public services for the Arabs at a higher level than would otherwise have been possible. Partition would mean, on the one hand, that the Arab Area would no longer profit from the taxable capacity of the Jewish Area. On the other hand, (1) the Jews would acquire a new right of sovereignty in the Jewish Area; (2) that Area, as we have defined it, would be larger than the existing area of Jewish land and settlement; (3) the Jews would be freed from their present liability for helping to promote the welfare of Arabs outside that Area. It is suggested, therefore, that the Jewish State should pay a subvention to the Arab State when Partition comes into effect. (for example from The Arab-Israeli Conflict: An Introduction and Documentary Reader)

So (1) cherry picking a single recommendation which support your narrative is violation of WP:NPOV. (2) Adding those numbers for the sole purpose to demonstrating that the plan was unfair or disproportionate as Trahelliven and Zero suggested is violation of WP:SYN, since that conclusion wasn't stated directly in source.(if it was i'd be amendable to add it somewhere else) (3) covering all recommendation of the Peel plan in the UN partition plan is WP:UNDUE.

Now which part exactly I haven't made my case for which you claimed in your edit summary? --PLNR (talk) 09:04, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

(1)Look, published expert academic RS have discussed the transfer numbers as relevant. There is a big difference between including material supported by expert secondary sources, and mining the original (primary source) documents for quotes.

(2) See cite note 16: "This partition plan was unacceptable to the entire spectrum of Palestinian Arab society and political opinion. Apart from the proposed award of on-third of Palestine, including the bulk of its most desirable lands, to a community composed overwhelmingly of recent immigrants, the proposal had another implication of grave import to Arab Palestinians. The partition boundaries suggested by the Peel Commission meant that while the proposed Arab state would contain a negligible minority of about 1,250 Jews, the Jewish state would contain at least 225,000 Arabs. To deal with this complication, the Commission suggested a population exchange modelled on a 1923 agreement between Greece and Turkey, and recommended that "it should be part of the agreement that in the last resort the exchange would be compulsory". This suggestion was naturally anathema to the Palestinian Arabs given the grossly unequal numbers involved." Dlv999 (talk) 09:48, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

That quote was from a Secondary source(i can offer more). But before we go into that, I still want to know about your claim that I haven't made my case for, about which you made a lot of noise. Your after the fact source, doesn't address that. Only put to question, why didn't you provided it in the first place, when I dealt with ridicules claims about the aftermath of 1948 war, something about Zionist right wings, your suggesting that consensus should override policy, and a lot of false pretence about precision while POV pushing cherry picked recommendation and WP:SYN violation. Why haven't you presented it when I asked for additional arguments(for quite some time), in fact you only presented it after I had to conclude the discussion, as your were drifting away from topic as it happened above, turning it into indiscernible mess. After making the claim that I haven't made my case.

If you started this discussion with your new after the fact quote/source and suggestion that we should provide a concise reason for the Arabs disagreement as oppose to you and Zero(Who share a certain topic preference) POV pushing cherry picked recommendation that imply that, i'd had no problem with. Which is why I said in a recent comment that your don't seem to care about making constructive contributions to discussions and improving the article.--PLNR (talk) 11:16, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Zero0000 -- The Peel Plan should probably be mentioned, but I'm not sure I see a real need to discuss it in much detail. Controversies about the Peel Plan would be discussed on the talk page for the Peel Plan more productively than on this page... AnonMoos (talk) 05:23, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree, but at the moment there is only one paragraph in a long article and controversies are not being discussed there. One paragraph giving the plain facts doesn't seem too much to me. Zero^talk 07:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

---

• Since there are no supportive argument provided, I have reverted that addition. Next step if you wish to address any wording issues here, as oppose to make minor changes on talk, please do. Note that I made these two changes [5][6] hopefully to elevate your previous concerns. Feel free to make your own, revert them, you discuss.--PLNR (talk) 02:40, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Please see my comment above, timestamped 02:41, 6 February 2014. I made the comment and reverted your edit before I saw this latest post. Dlv999 (talk) 02:44, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

PLNR, you should be topic-banned for your obsessive editing against consensus, not to mention against common sense. The argument over the "exchange" ended days ago, and you lost. Get over it. In addition, most readers will still have no idea what "demarcation problems" means and it is pretty obvious that you don't either. Pay attention: Demarcation is the act of physically marking a boundary. Sometimes, to the annoyance of geographers, it means the precise determination of a boundary prior to marking it. The word "demarcate" is used with that meaning throughout the Report. However, the relevant section starts (p.389, para 35–36) by stating that it is not about determination of the frontier. The problem being discussed is ethnic separation (see the phrase "Minority Problem" on the next page), not demarcation. Specifically, there was not enough land sufficiently free of Arabs and Arab-ownership, so it was proposed to create more. That's what it states very clearly across the p390–391 boundary.Zero^talk 08:42, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

you might want to lay off the original research. My phrase was exactly per source, from when I covered the peel plan article.(however if you want to indulge yourself, its quite possible that it turn was based on the first paragraph of the ten's recommendation in the summary report)--PLNR (talk) 11:47, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Jewish/Arab rejection

• The topic of the article is UN Partition Plan, it is not primarily about the Peel plan and thus shouldn't cover the peel plan details, which are covered fully on its page and need not be recycled here.

However, the rejetion is notable, and as noted in the previous section, the reason for the arab reection can be clarified. Would something like that based on dlv999 source or the 'The Jordanian-Palestinian Relationship: The Bankruptcy of the Confederal Idea By Musa S. Braizat' would address it in a concise manner without recycling the peel plan:

Current

It concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, recommending a Partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan, a much smaller Jewish state (about 15%), and a mandatory area. It proposed that a land and population transfer should be carried out to forestall problems arising from the presence of national minorities.[14] The exchange proposal was to involve the transfer of an estimated 225,000 Arabs living in the Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in the Arab state, which would be compulsory "in the last resort".[14][15][16] The plan was unacceptable to Palestinian Arab society due to the unequal population exchange and the proposal to turn over one third of Palestine, including the majority of it's favourable land, to recent immigrants to the country.[16] The Arab leadership rejected the plan. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and Ben Gurion had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.[17][18][19][20]

Proposed

[peel plan] concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, recommending a Partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan, a much smaller Jewish state (about 15%), and a mandatory area. The Arab leadership who considered the recommendations unjust, rejected the plan. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and Ben Gurion had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.[17][18][19][20]

--PLNR (talk) 11:47, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:NPOV says that we represent all significant published views. The views of the population of Palestine is clearly significant part of the coverage in high quality academic sources on the topic. I would reject any approach that gives WP:UNDUE weight to the views of the British colonial elite and ignores the views of the local population, because if you read modern scholarship they balance the views of the colonial leadership (in commission findings, white papers ect) with those of the population. We are supposed to represent sources and represent views in proportion to how they are represented in the sources so we should take a similar balanced approach.

If the background section is going to conclude with the claim that: "The recommendations triggered violent demonstrations in the Arab states, and calls for a Jihad and an annihilation of all European Jews in Palestine.[28]" - It is certainly also going to include all the well sourced details as to why the Palestinians opposed the various colonial plans for Palestine. Dlv999 (talk) 14:54, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Will it be possible for you to write here what is your proposal? thanks Ykantor (talk) 18:27, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Subject to one exception, I am satisfied with the paragraph as it is. There is an explanation on why the plan was rejected by the Arabs, but none on the reasons for the Jewish equivocal attitude to it. Trahelliven (talk) 22:25, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi Trehelliven, I agree with your proposal. This source, says that Jewish acceptance was because the plan "validated the idea of a Jewish state across a substantial part of Palestine." Ben Gurion felt the transfer proposal would be "of tremendous advantage to us" and Weizman offered to help the British implement the transfer of the Palestinian population. The equivocal acceptance was because the suggested boarders "did not meet maximalist Zionist aspirations". Also the source says that in rejecting the plan the Arab Higher Committee called for independence for a united Palestine with protection for the rights of the Jewish minority - which I think is an important and interesting detail to include in the article. Dlv999 (talk) 12:21, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

• @dlv999, You keep ignoring that the topic of the article\subsection, is the UN partition plan, not partition in general, nor the Peel Plan. Asserting that we should recycle details from the Peel Plan only of the Arab viewpoint and reasons supporting it, on the specious pretext that they are significant to the UN partition plan. (1) What is the significance of those numbers which you try to force into this article, or the specific reasons the Arab rejected this part of this plan, that "Arab considered it unjust" don't deliver? because it seem like you are trying to turn this article into a WP:COATRACK for who were right/wrong or some Zionist aspiration (2) Can you find a scholarly source that provide a summary of the UN Partition plan, where those details are noted?--PLNR (talk) 12:34, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Please read the above discussion. I've just said that I agree with Trehelliven that the Jewish viewpoint should be explained. If we are going to discuss the Peel Plan it has to be done in a neutral way - that is in Wikipedia terms including all significant views published in RS. As stated I would oppose any text that gives WP:UNDUE weight to the Colonial leadership and fails to represent the views of the population of Palestine. Most high quality academic sources (that we should be basing the article on) do not provide the kind of "summary" you request. Are you able to provide such a summary for your preferred details for the background? Dlv999 (talk) 12:48, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Please read my comment again, the topic of the article is UN Partition Plan, not Peel Plan(nor any other plan). So yes I am asking you to (1) explain the significance of those details you quote to the UN plan, contrasted with simple summary that "Arab considered it unjust". (2) provide a WP:RS 'summary' of UN partition plan, so we can finally establish that details that you combed from WP:RS about the Peel Plan are undue for this article\section scope. Otherwise I'd have added that tid bit about Jewish state having to pay subvention to the Arab State, due to the Arab loss of income from the much higher taxable capacity of Jews --PLNR (talk) 13:25, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

If you have valid RS you are welcome to add what you please. But the source you cited for that material is primary, not historical scholarship that we should be basing this article on. See WP:HISTRS. The details you want to exclude have equal or better sourcing than the details you want to keep in the background section, so it doesn't appear you are taking a rational approach to what to include/exclude. In fact I don't think any of the material/sources in the background section would meet the requirements you are trying to apply to these particular details that you don't like. If you want to set an extremly high bar for inclusion of material in the background section, that is something we can discuss, and if there is consensus we can implement it, but it must be done consistently across the whole section, not just applied to the details you don't like. Dlv999 (talk) 13:33, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

We are talking about providing basic WP:DUE coverage concerning the UN Plan. As oppose to use it as WP:COATRACK for issues concerning other topics that should be and already are addressed on its own articles. So I am waiting for you to address issues (1) and (2) outlined above. I am not certain what other details you refer to, if its concerning the current/proposal text I would love to hear your suggestions, otherwise please stay on topic.(also I have been working with such summary to identify all important events that need to be mention, most of the background section fit like glove)--PLNR (talk) 14:38, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE says that we should represent all significant viewpoints, that means including the viewpoint of the Palestinian population. If you have such a source please tell us what it is. Dlv999 (talk) 17:23, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

We know what WP:UNDUE means, which is why I am asking you for the third time to demonstrating that the detailed representation you are trying to force is a significant viewpoint in the context of the UN partition plan, which in your opinion a simple statement such as "Arab viewed the Peel Plan as unjust", don't deliver, thus supporting your inclusion. --PLNR (talk) 04:59, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

If the viewpoint of the Palestinian population is significant then we have to include it and make it intelligible to the reader. You seem to agree that it is significant (and should be included), but your proposed text fails to explain the position to the reader in an intelligible way. Balanced third party RS explain the Palestinian population's position along with the findings of the commission - that is the approach we should take. I think this discussion isn't particularly productive, perhaps we should let other editors weigh in and see whose approach/proposed text has broader support/consensus. Dlv999 (talk) 10:50, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

• Here is my proposed text taking into account the Zionist position per RS (as discussed above):

It concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, recommending a Partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan, a much smaller Jewish state (about 15%), and a mandatory area. It proposed that a land and population transfer should be carried out to forestall problems arising from the presence of national minorities.[14] The exchange proposal was to involve the transfer of an estimated 225,000 Arabs living in the Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in the Arab state, which would be compulsory "in the last resort".[14][15][16]

The plan was unacceptable to Palestinian Arab society due to the unequal population exchange and the proposal to turn over one third of Palestine, including the majority of it's favourable land, to recent immigrants to the country.[16] The Arab leadership rejected the plan, instead the Arab Higher Committee called for independence for a united Palestine with protection for the rights of the Jewish minority.[16] The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and Ben Gurion had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.[17][18][19][20] Though the plan did not meet maximalist Zionist aspirations it endorsed the idea of a Jewish state on a substantial part of Palestine. Ben Gurion felt the transfer proposal would be "of tremendous advantage" to the Zionist movement and Weizmann offered to help the British carry it out.[16] Dlv999 (talk) 10:35, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I've been following this discussion from a distance for a while and I'd like to chime in briefly. I think the Peel plan is relevant to the Background section of this article, since it deals with the very same issues that came up in connection with the UN plan in 1947, and sources handle the two plans together. Dlv's version seems fine to me as both Arab and Zionist thinking is described to the reader. --Dailycare (talk) 20:36, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Dailycare -- the Peel Plan is relevant background to this article, and certainly should be mentioned as such, but it was a very different plan offered in very different circumstances (by the British, not the League/UN, to start with), so I'm not sure what the point of going into great detail really is... AnonMoos (talk) 01:40, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

I think the sources decide this, as sources describe the two plans together so should we. Importantly, I feel that describing the reasons the Peel plan was objected to makes it easier to place opposition to the Partition plan in historical context. --Dailycare (talk) 19:16, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

You misrepresent the argument. As explained multiple times before, no one questions whether the Peel Plan in it self is notable, but the assertion that the details above are notable in the context of the UN Plan and not WP:DUE considering everything else covered in the background section. For example

So we are waiting for dlv999 to provide sources to support his assertion, to avoid what you call making it "easier to place opposition to the Partition plan in historical context" to become WP:coatrack for undue POV pushing. Also people who wish to learn why the Arab thought the Peel Plan "recommendations were unjust" or why the Jews rejected it, will do the same thing as with other instances on this page and go read the main article about it.--PLNR (talk) 06:51, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

It sounds to me like what is being suggested is that it says to much about the Arab side of this so that should be trimmed down to give the jewish side equal coverage.Serialjoepsycho (talk) 16:45, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

• whats being requested, is that dlv999 provide WP:RS to support his inclusions which are based on assertion that those cherry picked Peel Plan details are WP:DUE in the context of the UN partition Plan background section( Not Peel Plan). Until that happens there is nothing to discuss, since its nothing more than POV pushing. See also here.--PLNR (talk) 06:51, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Why the Arabs rejected the Peel committee conclusions?

This sentence is a misleading: "The plan was unacceptable to Palestinian Arab society due to the unequal population exchange and the proposal to turn over one third of Palestine, including the majority of it's favourable land, to recent immigrants to the country". It should follow the Peel Commission#The Arab reaction footsteps. i.e. "The Arabs emphatically rejected the principle of awarding any territory to the Jews". Ykantor (talk) 08:35, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Shouldn't it follow the source? Itsmejudith (talk) 08:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it should follow the source. Also, the two statements don't contradict each other. The existing text is better because it gives a hint of why the Arabs emphatically rejected it. Zero^talk 09:15, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

It is a mistake. It wrongly implies, that the Arab rejected the Jewish state size, while a smaller size would have suffice. The Peel Commission#The Arab reaction text is correct, and contradict this statement. If there is a need to "gives a hint of why the Arabs ,emphatically rejected it", it should not replace the correct reason for the Arab rejection.

The Palestinian Arab leadership (The Higher Arab Committee) rejected Peel plan on July 1937, and rejected any kind of partition or any Jewish state (The Jewish state size did not matter for the rejection). In Sept 1937, a conference of the Arab states in Bludan, rejected any attempt to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Searching Google books with the "1937 Arab rejected peel" string, results in a long list of sources which agree with the Peel Commission#The Arab reaction sources, that the Arab rejection of Jewish state was not dependent in its size. Ykantor (talk) 16:26, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Please, please do not use Google Books to try and support statements that you wish to make. It is completely the wrong way to go about sourcing. Start with what the reliable historians say. Thanks. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:43, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Ykantor, without engaging in a debate. The Arabs rejected a Jewish state for the simplest of universal reasons. They disliked the idea of foreign powers breaking up their kingdoms along ethnic lines: they disliked foreign powers flooding Arab majority countries with large-scale immigration by a completely alien, i.e. European population. The 'emphatic rejection' was absolutely normal in geopolitical terms. It has nothing intrinsically to do, as your edits often suggest, the 'Jews'. All Arab countries had significant Jewish minorities. Palestine was creating a situation on the ground with no precedent in their historical memory, and challenged the principles of the post WW1 settlement at Versailles on self-determination.Nishidani (talk) 17:28, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

@Itsmejudith, and yet this is exactly how it seem that some people here go about it, although instead of google books they have several shared PDFs, where they fish for sources to advance them. At least I am not familiar with any reliable historian that would put in one page summary of UN partition plan background, any of that, do you? --PLNR (talk) 17:51, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

@Nishidani, at the core it is usually economy, most of the Arab population didn't know or care about foreign powers. I can understand them, they were agrarian, young and uneducated, with increased European immigration(which brought a lot of capital, new professions etc), they found themselves i'll equipped to deal with change, slowly becoming isolated and loosing grasp on power.(just the same I can understand the Jews and I can understand the British).--PLNR (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

to Itsmejudith: It is a pity that you have not fully read my previous post. The Google search is mentioned as an extra to the Peel Commission#The Arab reaction sources, which states a view which contradict the text here. Anyway, here are more sources:

**"The Husayni leadership, along with most of the Palestinian camp, rejected the idea of partition outright"

**"The Bludan conference rejected the partition plan...affirming Palestine as a part of the Arab worls and rejecting both partition and any attempt to establish a jewish state in Palestine"

****to Nishidani: I agree with your words. I fully understand an Arab Palestinian who justifiably asserts so. The problem is that the Zionist ideology and this Arab view are directly contradicting. However, I hope that the Arab- Israeli dispute may be shifted to the discussion of the practical problems, leaving aside the contradicting ideologies. Half a loaf is better than none.

**The section misleading statement, is problematic because of its first words :"The plan was unacceptable to Palestinian Arab society due to..." . the sentence continuation describes correctly the Arab claims. In my view, it can be modified like: "The Arabs rejected an establishment of any size of a Jewish state. They were against the proposed unequal population exchange and the proposal to turn over one third of Palestine, including the majority of it's favourable land, to recent immigrants to the country". Ykantor (talk) 19:57, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Peel Commission paragraph

Following previous attempts in the section "1937 Peel Commission transfer" and recent failed attempt to resolve this at DRN. Lets try to work this out again.

assumptions

1. The topic of the article\section is UN Partition Plan with Economic Union background during the mandate period, it is not primarily about the Peel Plan ( or any other plan). Thus we shouldn't indulge in undue extra details of tangentially related subject, which are covered on their respective page and need not be recycled here.
2. The peel plan is most notable for being the first to state that the mandate had become unworkable and suggested Partition for the first time.

Observations

1. Neither why the Peel commission decided that the mandate had become unworkable, or proposed the partition is covered in any details. Instead we cover in full detail the Arab stated goals in the violent strikes that preceded the Peel Commission and its recommendations.
2. The Peel Plan which provided framework for its Partition recommendation, framework which was rejected by both parties and later rejected by the technical Woodhead commission. Instead of concise summary of the Framework recommendation, again we provide a detail account why the Arabs found the plan unacceptable, highlighting one of the ten recommendations, to support their objection.

Any thoughts on the topic.--PLNR (talk) 01:14, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The Background section should be a very brief introduction mainly consisting of links other articles. We should not rehearse all the controversies here. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:53, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I agree, concise summary and links to relvent article is the key to avoid WP:Coatrack decoration. --PLNR (talk) 12:20, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Changes

Concerning the two observation noted above, can anyone make an argument why that excessive detailed breakdown of tangibly related topics are due in the context of this section/paragraph and or suggest changes to it.

Extended content

In 1937 the British established the Peel Commission following a six month long Arab General Strike and armed insurrection. Rashid Khalidi ascribes this to Palestinians seeking to obtain their national goals of independence from the British and to halt the process in which they saw the country coming under the control of foreigners.[12] It concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, recommending a Partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan, a much smaller Jewish state, and a mandatory area. It proposed that a land and population transfer should be carried out to address problems arising from the presence of national minorities.[13] The exchange proposal was to involve the transfer of an estimated 225,000 Arabs living in the Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in the Arab state, which would be compulsory "in the last resort".[13][14][15] The plan was unacceptable to Palestinian Arab society due to the unequal population exchange and the proposal to turn over one third of Palestine, including the majority of it's favourable land, to recent immigrants to the country.[15] The Arab leadership rejected the plan. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation.[16][17][18][19]

--PLNR (talk) 12:20, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Following the recent change[7], I have no longer problem with first issue. IMO it is both informative and natural. Although it might be prudent to add that the mandate became unworkable due to Arab and Jewish nationalist aspirations being determined as "irreconcilable". (i.e. it is not only Arab nationalism issues) unless it would open another can worms.

The second issue is still remains:

Extended content

The Commission concluded that the Mandate had become unworkable, and recommended Partition into an Arab state linked to Transjordan; a small Jewish state; and a mandatory zone. To address problems arising from the presence of national minorities in each area, it suggested a land and population transfer[14] involving the transfer of some 225,000 Arabs living in the envisaged Jewish state and 1,250 Jews living in a future Arab state, a measure deemed compulsory "in the last resort".[14][15][16] The Palestinians and Arab leadership rejected the plan as unacceptable, given the inequality in the proposed population exchange and the transfer of one-third of Palestine, including most of its best agricultural land, to recent immigrants. [16] The Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion, persuaded the Zionist Congress to lend provisory approval to the Peel recommendations as a basis for further negotiations.[17][18][19][20]

1. The excessive detailed breakdown of the transfer figures, lacking context of all the rest of the plan provisions is undue and is WP:Coatrack decoration, in an attempt to set the tone by for the Arab response. -- It is also incorrect, nowhere it was stated that the transfer would involved those numbers but at most those numbers with scope of their partition plan borders. Also any compulsory population transfer would occur only by agreement between the two States such as in the case of Turkey and Greece.
2. The Arab response is both misleading by implying that Arab would be willing to accept territorial division if not for those select issues; and introduce bias by presenting select detail which instead of explaining the Peel Plan contribution to the UN plan, only set to reinforce Arab position as oppose to explain the Peel Plan contribution to the UN plan. -- Those details also ignore all economical aspects, development, borders etc of the plan. For example British opposed to immigration restrictions because since the 30s budgets surplus closely correlated with Jewish immigration, and interference with it was seen as liable to produce an economic crisis in palestine. It ignores that Jewish tax money was funding Arab improvement in welfare, and Partition will include subventions to be paid by the Jewish state to the Arab for the loss of income(I doubt the jew was happy about it). It ignores previous reports that Palestine could not support or maintain a larger agricultural population unless its farming underwent a radical change and this commission noting that in contrast to the Jews, the Arabs with few exceptions were disinterested in intensive cultivation efforts. That many other aspects of the plan such as development projects all of which if consider without context of the plan as a whole would seem unbalanced.--PLNR (talk) 15:46, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Hello PLNR,

I am not sure to understand what you mean but maybe what follows answers partly to your question :

An important consequence of the Partition Plan is the '48 war that lead to flight and expulsion of Palestinian Arab population. According to Benny Morris, and many other historians, a cause of the exodus was that the transfer of population that had been openly suggested in the Peel Plan without morale condamnation and that it was unavoidable in a context of war with the borders chosen by the Partition Plan.

Given in the Palestinian narrative, the Nakba (the exodus) is the main point and given the consequence this exodus still has today (Palestinian Refugee Problem) it should be relevant (and not undue) to emphasize this consequence of the Partition Plan.

More can be found in Morris'book downloadable from here.

Pluto2012 (talk) 20:26, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Also, the British government's refusal to adopt forceable transfer of Arabs and the Woodhead commission's opinion that voluntary transfer wouldn't work either was the primary reason that the Woodhead commission rejected the Peel plan. So one can argue with some validity (though I'm not proposing it be written this way in the article) that this article would not exist but for the transfer requirement of the Peel plan. It's relevance is obvious. Zero^talk 23:18, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Pluto2012, since this article is part of arbitration case on the Arab–Israeli conflict, to avoid spillover I intentionally started this section by noting the topic of the article\section (i.e. how the UN Partition plan came about). Your argument that cornering the Arab narrative and the results of the 1948 War that followed, while important and should be covered in detail on their respective articles\sections, has nothing todo with the topic at hand and only server as WP:COATRACK decorations that get in the way of natural concise coverage of the topic. Note that even the book you linked on the topic of the Palestinian refugee problem, the historical background section doesn't cover any of those details noted above as undue.--PLNR (talk) 06:23, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi PLNR,

> "the topic of the article\section (i.e. how the UN Partition plan came about).

In the article about the "UN Partition Plan background", we can talk about the other plans and in particular, we should talk about the Peel Plan. It is in the background and is part of the way the Plan came about. Do you deny the Peel Plan had impact on the UN Partition Plan ?

> "the Arab narrative and the results of the 1948 War that followed (...) has nothing todo with the topic at hand"

You are wrong and don't understand what I write. My arguments give the reasons why Peel Plan and transfer concept are important in the background and due to this reason, they are directly linked to our discussion. The transfer concept had important consequence (see above). The Peel Plan (background of the UN Partition Plan) discussed these issues. The UN Partition one didn't.

Pluto2012 (talk) 08:35, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Pluto2012

>"Do you deny the Peel Plan had impact on the UN Partition Plan ?"

Please re-read carefully the section from the start, Peel Plan impact on the UN plan has never been questioned, its relevance was noted in 'assumption #2'. What is questioned is the assertion that the cherry picked details (two sentences highlighted in recent collapsed section) are due. As oppose to being a coatrack for what you described as "Palestinian narrative", driving the coverage of the topic away from natural concise variant.

> Please address the issues with two contested sentences, explained in most recent point .1 and .2 above( for ease of use here is the relevant edit [8] )

> As for the rest of your comment, to make the discussion more productive, please make specific reference to the current text and explain exactly how do you believe they are due in the context of the UN Plan.--PLNR (talk) 10:01, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

To avoid the practice of deflecting with general statements as has been done in previous discussions, and possible bias, promotion of certain narratives and or lack of familiarity with other details of the plan. I decided that the best way to make the point that all of those details are WP:DUE in the context of the "UN Partition Plan economical union" is by inclusion of similar details, here is my First entry [9].--PLNR (talk) 16:49, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Could you quote the text in Morris and El-Eini that supports your addition? I checked both citations and could not find the material that would support your addition. Dlv999 (talk) 16:36, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Simha Flapan

I don't see what would be poorly sourced here ? I add it is a well known point of view that Yishuv accepted the partition as a compromise and that the leaders expected more. Pluto2012 (talk) 18:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

There was a discussion on sourcing of this very bit here. The conclusion was that the bit is very accurately sourced. However, a more detailed exposition of the new historians' views on the subject could be a good idea, if someone has appropriate sources. Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 11:26, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Of course the Yishuv accepted the partition as a compromise and that the leaders expected more. Flapan opposes a myth which he just founded. Who mentions this myth? I guess it is mentioned by Flapan only. Similarly, Flapan could have oppose a myth that the moon is made of blue cheese, as it seems that no one heard about the myth, except Flappan. This quote is valueless. Ykantor (talk) 11:54, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Flapan is RS (a published significant view). You are not. In Wikipedia you need to learn how to include significant published views that you may not personally agree with. Your personal opinion on the topics is largely irrelevant. If you find yourself advocating your own views against published RS you are making a mistake. If you can't get you head around this you might be better off writing your own blog rather than writing Wikipedia articles. Dlv999 (talk) 15:58, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

If you look on page 138/139 of Benny Morris Righteous Victims he states:

"Weizmann and Ben-Gurion pressed for a solution based on partion. Said Weizmann: "The Jews would be fools not to accept it, even if [the land they were allocated] were the size of a table cloth."117 Both saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine. "No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land of Israel," Ben-Gurion was quoted as saying.118 He wrote to his son Amos: "[A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning.... Our possession is important not only for itself... through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state . . . will serve as a very potent lever in our historical efforts to redeem the whole country." Dlv999 (talk) 16:31, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

He also notes Ben Gurion's "expectation that the establishment of a Jewish state in a fraction of Palestine was merely a stepping-stone to the eventual conquest of the entire country.." Dlv999 (talk) 16:31, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

The myth is that the yishuv leaders accepted the Partition Plan. The myth is so deep that it was the object of edit wars and discussions on wikipedia a fews months ago. Pluto2012 (talk) 18:35, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

The Yishuv was working very hard to convince U.N members to vote for the partition plan. Hence the Yishuv accepted it. However they said clearly that they are not happy with some aspects and hoped for improving those aspects.

to Dlv999: It seems we share the same view. I wrote:"Of course the Yishuv accepted the partition as a compromise and that the leaders expected more". However, Flapan created a myth that never existed, in order to fight against it. Are you aware of anyone claiming that "The Jewish community abandoned ambitions for the whole of Palestine " (Flapan words) ? I guess there are no such views. Is there any value to mention an opposition to a myth that never existed? Ykantor (talk) 18:49, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Ykantor, what kind of edit do you propose? --Dailycare (talk) 19:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Flapan is a controversial source, and in my opinion these sentences should be deleted. However, for the "thwarting the creation of the Palestinian state and increasing the territory assigned by the UN to the Jewish state", it could be quoted using better sources e.g. Khalidy, Shlaim etc. BTW the "thwarting the creation of the Palestinian state" is not correct, since there were Yishuv leaders that later preferred a Palestinian puppet state in the West Bank as an alternative to a Jordanian rule.(Morris 2008 p. 315 ; palestine-studies.com, Morris,1995 Falsifying the Record: A Fresh Look at Zionist Documentation) Ykantor (talk) 05:21, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, we could use Morris, (see the quotes in my above post e.g BG's "expectation that the establishment of a Jewish state in a fraction of Palestine was merely a stepping-stone to the eventual conquest of the entire country.."). Also your citation of Morris is unbelievably tendentious. If you read your cited source, Danin, a special advisor to the Foreign Office suggested the idea of a puppet state, but it was dismissed out of hand by Ben Gurion who responded that, "The Arabs of the land of Israel, they have but one function left-to run away" and walked out on the conversation. Morris adds that "Ben Gurion's intent was clear: Since he expected that the IDF would conquer the West Bank shortly and that the inhabitants would flee, he saw no point in cutting a deal with them." Dlv999 (talk) 06:06, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

-Your previous post refers to the Peel partition of 1937 and not to the U.N partition of 1947.

- If you look at my first suggested source (Morris 2008 p. 315) you may find Shertok's suggestion of a Palestinian puppet state.

- There were more occasions when Yishuv leaders considered the advantages of a Palestinian state Vs a Jordanian rule. Ykantor (talk) 11:24, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

If we use the stepping-stone quote, it can be attributed directly to Ben Gurion which would convey the point to the reader in a clearer way than the current wording with Flapan. --Dailycare (talk) 16:54, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

To be fair, Ykanktor is correct that the quote is in reference to the 1937 Peel partition proposal and not the 1947 U.N. partition plan so we can't really use it in the section about reception to the U.N. plan. I don't think the thought process really changed between 1937 when the Zionist leadership were advocating partition as stepping stone to full conquest of Palestine and 1947 when they were again advocating partition, but we have to follow exactly what the sources say at each point. Dlv999 (talk) 17:26, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Here are some sources that will probably be more useful:-

• Sean F. McMahon (15 April 2010). The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations: Persistent Analytics and Practices. Routledge. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-135-20204-0.
• "Resolution 181, like the Peel Commission before it, caused some dissent within the Zionist ranks, but since it offered the international recognition of statehood, the Zionists eventually accepted it. Flapan suggests that Ben Gurion and many others in the Zionist leadership viewed acceptance as a logical pragmatic move, citing Ben Gurion's statement that 'in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine' (quoted in Flapan 1987:22). This indicates that the Zionist leadership's support for partition was premised on the expectation that the territory allotted would be expanded in the coming conflict that they viewed as inevitable since the mid-1940s." Kylie Baxter; Shahram Akbarzadeh (21 August 2012). US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: The Roots of Anti-Americanism. Routledge. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-134-12897-6.

Dlv999 (talk) 18:22, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

-It seems that the quote "in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine" belongs to 1937 too, and not to 1948. Moreover, if this blog is right, than it is out of context.

- It is preferable to cite better sources (e.g. Khalidi, Shlaim) for Ben Gurion attitude toward future expansion of the proposed Jewish state. Ykantor (talk) 17:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

The last two sources are directly discussing the UN partition plan. Your blog is irrelevant to the discussion. Dlv999 (talk) 07:10, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Camera is not a source. The US Foreign policy quote from Flapan comments: 'This indicates that the Zionist leadership's support for partition was pèremised on the expectation that the territory allotted would be expanded in the coming conflict that they had viewed as inevitable since the mid-1940s.' All this must be evaluated in terms of the Biltmore Program. A huge amount of planning, organization and investment went in over decades towards the establishment of Israel, and, 'as recent scholarship makes abundantly clear, the Zionist leadership was sometimes willing to accept partition as a first step, but this was a tactical manouever and not their real objective. They had no intention of coexisting alongside a viable Palestinian state over the long run, as that outcome was in direct conflict with their dream of creating a Jewish state in all of Palestine.' John J Mearsheimer, Stephen M Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Penguin 2008 p.160

Camera mightn't see this, but blind Freddy and his dog could.Nishidani (talk) 18:57, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Quigley ("Case for Palestine") writes that in 1947 Ben Gurion had plans to "starve out" Arabs from Haifa and Jaffa in the wake of the UN vote (p. 41), and Ben Gurion said at the time that a "major offensive" would "greatly reduce the percentage of Arabs" in the new state. On p. 57 Quigley writes "the Jewish Agency did not restrict itself to Jewish-populated sectors, or even to the area projected for a Jewish state in Resolution 181, which included many Arab-populated sectors. In early March the Haganah command agreed on a set of war objectives it called "Plan D". The plan called for "control of the area given to us by the UN in addition to areas occupied by us which are outside these borders". Pappé writes (p. 36) that Ben Gurion planned to "accept the plan and work against it". He also quotes Ben Gurion saying Israel's borders "will be determined by force and not by the partition resolution". And no, CAMERA isn't a source. --Dailycare (talk) 19:16, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Sean F. McMahon, The Discourse of Palestinian-Israeli Relations: Persistent Analytics and Practices, Routledge 2010 pp.39-41 has a contextualized analysis of the various elements from the Peel Commission onward.Nishidani (talk) 08:00, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

-1 Camera is not a source, but as it cite this statement, it can be verified.

-2 As I said, there are better sources than Flapan. Some sources have opposing interpretations but their factual sentences may be trusted. However in my opinion, Flapan facts are not always correct. I don't know much concerning Quigley, but in the same p. 41, his factual sentence about Khissas is misleading. He says that the Palmach attacked Khissas, but does say nothing about the reason. According to Morris 2008 p. 103, "On 2 December 1948, several Arabs attacked a Jewish guard buying cigarettes in a kiosk in the village of Khisas, at the tip of the Panhandle. The guard shot one of them dead. The British arrested the guard, but local villagers began to snipe at Jews cultivating nearby fields. On 18 December a group of Arabs ambushed and shot dead a Jewish cart driver near Kibbutz Magayan Baruch". Khissas was attacked as a reaction for those attacks and murder. Moreover, Quigley says that the Jewish agency commended that action. He fail to mention the documented Jewish leaders condemnation of the attack. These are 2 factual misleading sentences. He does not mention the 2 opposing Yishuv motives: On one hand they wanted to calm the area, but on the other they had to punish, or else to risk more incidents of Arabs killing Jews. This is one case only, but if Quigley repeats it, he should be avoided like Flapan.

-3 Ben Gurion territorial ambitions: It is well known that Ben Gurion hoped for more than the U.N. proposed Jewish State. However, one of the reasons that he was such a great leader was his pragmatism. He adapted his plans to the circumstances and to the priorities.

--3a Before the 15 May 1948, his priority was the establishing a Jewish state (Ben-Gurion said "I know of no greater achievement by the Jewish people . . . in its long history since it became a people"). Hence he has done his best to support the U.N partition resolution, including an Arab state.

---According to the Arab League general Safwat: "Despite the fact that skirmishes and battles have begun, the Jews at this stage are still trying to contain the fighting to as narrow a sphere as possible in the hope that partition will be implemented and a Jewish government formed; they hope that if the fighting remains limited, the Arabs will acquiesce in the fait accompli. This can be seen from the fact that the Jews have not so far attacked Arab villages unless the inhabitants of those villages attacked them or provoked them first."

---When he sent Golda for a meeting with king Abdullah, he instructed her that the first priority of the Yishuv was the implementation of the partition resolution, including an Arab state.

-3b During the weeks just before the Arab invasion, Ben Gurion first priority was the Yishuv survival. His generals advised him that the chance is 50:50 only. Retrospectively, they exaggerated the Arabs armies size. Plan D was a set of guidelines, that any other military planner would have similarly written. Important territories had to be conquered in order to prepare for the expected invasion. That included access to Jewish population out of the proposed Jewish state state e.g. Jerusalem corridor, north western Galilee.

-3c In Oct 1948 Israel was established, and it became clear that The Israeli army is stronger than any of the Arab states armies. He planned to fight against the Arab Legion and to annex more of the West bank. During that period, Shertok proposed a puppet Palestinian state.

-4 The proposed Arab state: The Yishuv, the Arab states and the British opposed the Mufti and did not want an Arab state led by him. Had the Palestinians a more pragmatic leader, they might have succeeded and having their own state. Also, an Arab state was not economically viable, which meant that it could not afford to continue with relatively good educational and health services. ( I guess it was better than in the surrounding Arab states.) Thus UNSCOP recommended an economic agreement between the Jewish and the Arab state. It means that the Jews had to subsidize the Arabs, which could have been beneficial for both sides in my opinion. However, one can not expect the Jewish state to subsidize a declared enemy to its own existence like the Mufti. Ykantor (talk) 09:47, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Please try to stay focused. The above is all over the place like a dog's dinner. You argue Flapan is not an optimal source for 'a compromise by which the Jewish community abandoned ambitions for the whole of Palestine and recognized the rights of the Palestinians to their own state.' Actually he was one of the first historians to deconstruct the simplistic narrative that the Jewish side was ready for compromise while the Arabs were intransigent. The Arabs were ignored by the UN, overruled, and had nothing historically to gain by a compromise which gave a foreign immigrant population land that was under Arab title and overwhelming populated by traditional Palestinian communities. The Jews had everything to gain. The UN plan, from an Arab perspective, conceded nothing, and therefore was not a matter of 'compromise':-

The Arab view, according to Walid Khalidi, was that the UN plan was not a compromise, a term which would mean, both concessions and an agreement acceptable to both parties. The U.N. proposal was seen rather as ‘Zionist in principle,Zionist in substance, and Zionist in most details,’ and Zionists had nothing to concede.' Baylis Thomas How Israel Was Won, Lexington Books 1999 p.57 n.8

I have a dozen sources for this, which I will get round to adding when time allows.

The Yishuv view dating back to 1937 and constantly reaffirmed, as many after Flapan have documented, (a) accepted the compromises since it gave them an entitlement to a state in Palestine and (b) such a state was perceived as the sine qua non for eventually taking the whole of Palestine, and transferring the local population out. This was Ben-Gurion's repeated view for more than a decade before Partition, seconded by many insiders close to him. The Arabs understood this would happen - the could see the drift confirmed when the UN stacked the subcommittee on boundary arrangements in October 1947, a year before the vote, by excluding any Arab representation there (Baylis p.57 n.6), and giving the work over to known pro-Jewish representatives. Ben-Gurion understood exactly what the Arabs understood. The only ones pretending not to understand, or not understanding, were Western powers, a tradition they have solidly maintained for 70 years.Nishidani (talk) 12:23, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Well said Nishidani, I think a problem w the article as it is now, is that it gives the impression as if two sides, the Jewish-Zionist and the Arab sides were fighting some kind of symmetric war over a piece of land, the first being ready for compromise and the second stubborn, hateful and irrational. The situation on the ground, however, was highly asymmetrical since the immigrant Jews made claims on what was de-facto a land inhabited by indigenous, mostly non Jewish population. It is the asymmetrical situation that brought about a difference in the respective positions, and this should be made much more explicitly in the article IMHO Engelo (talk) 18:36, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I understand that, but one has to be very wary of succumbing to a natural temptation to challenge the tendentiousness of many sources. WP:NPOV mandates narrative symmetry, or rather the balanced representation of two opposed interests. This is extremely difficult to do, esp. when the historical forces at 'play' are assymetrical. It's complicated by the fact that there are disputes within each side, changes in the various narrative traditions. My own private perspective, for example, is that the whole (Western) historiographical tradition here is deeply flawed, since everything is pitched within the narrative framework of state forces (British mandate/American vs Russian interests in the ME/Arab state divisions:Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria etc./Jewish-Yishuv-Zionist forces) in a geopolitical show-down. The key historical actor, Arabs within Palestine, are not actors: they are acted on (this is the major flaw in Morris's approach: analyse all of his village data, and it is not five armies invading Palestine, but one army shooting up hundreds of local villages). But as an editor, that personal bias is an irrelevancy. However, all we can do is scour the best sources and give as full a representation to the dominant terms of interpretation according to undue weight.Nishidani (talk) 20:27, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

"The key historical actor, Arabs within Palestine, are not actors: they are acted on" - that is not a personal view Nishidani, but a necessary consequence of well established scholarship on colonialism in general and orientalism in particular. THAT view is the mainstream view, and if there are those who dissent from it, I see no reason why they shouldn't present the merits of their view as a critique of the mainstream. But what we have here is a world turned upside down, in which symmetry between oppressor and oppressed appears to be the mainstream argument, and the view that reflects mainstream scholarship is marginalised, barely mentioned at all. What is the justification for that??? Engelo (talk) 22:41, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Ykantor, you may have a fundamental misunderstanding on the notion of reliable sources. We don't judge a source as reliable or not, for a given item, based on what individual editors feel they should have written about another item. Rather, a source is reliable according to criteria laid out in WP:IRS. Academics active in the field produce texts that are reliable for lots of stuff that relates to this field. Cheers, --Dailycare (talk) 20:14, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

to Nishidani: OK. let us re-focus. I repeat my proposal:

- to delete Flapan 1st sentence " it is a myth that Zionists accepted the partition as a compromise by which the Jewish community abandoned ambitions for the whole of Palestine and recognized the rights of the Palestinians to their own state", since it is value-less.

- to cite better sources for: "the acceptance was only a tactical move aimed at thwarting the creation of the Palestinian state". BTW in my opinion, it is wrong to claim that: "aimed at thwarting the creation of the Palestinian state".

- to Dailycare, Nishidani: within the definition of a RS, we should strive to use the better sources. For instance, I try to avoid Karsh (except for factual sentences), because Morris is more respected here. I am not sure if Flapan is a RS, and more important, his factual sentences are not always correct. Isn't it preferable to cite better sources for his quote: "the acceptance was only a tactical move aimed at thwarting the creation of the Palestinian state"?

- Concerning compromise and justice: Both sides, the Arabs and the Jews, have their own contradicting justice. Wars cause suffering of ordinary people of both sides, including the winning side. In order to avoid disputes and wars, isn't it better to avoid the disputed justice and solve the practical problems? None of the sides would accept that they have to leave the country because the other side is right in claiming the whole of it. Ykantor (talk) 04:00, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I would be opposed to the removal of Flappan. Both academic sources I listed in my comment timestamped: 18:22, 8 April 2014 cite Flappan's view on this issue. When you have multiple academic sources citing a scholar on an issue that is good evidence that their opinion is a "significant view" in Wikipedia terms and as such should be included per our core WP:NPOV policy. I haven't really seen any evidence/policy based reason's for excluding Flappan in this discussion. Dlv999 (talk) 07:56, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a consensus here that Flapan is eminently citable. The word 'myth' may require attribution to him. I don't use Pappé, nor Karsh, because both are vigorously challenged as allowing their personal views to taint the evidence. But Benny Morris is not the be-and-end-all of I/P historiography. History is not just 'facts' (as I thought aged 11, and began writing a history of the world listing them), it is fundamentally about the interpretation of facts, since facts do not bear meaning unless contextualized within an hermeneutic framework.

'None of the sides would accept that they have to leave the country' (Ykantor). That overlooks, as it accepts mechanical symmetry, the key fact that one side wanted to enter the country en masse, while understanding this meant the other indigenous side had to leave it, while the 'other side' did not assert that Jews resident in their Yishuv had to leave their country: it argued that, being a minority, the immigrants had no right to act as though they had majoritarian status.

I think the flap about Flapan is therefore resolved. His point of view is, as I will presently document, the mainstream view now. Even Itzhak Galnoor's book, which is decidedly slanted towards Zionism, is sufficiently distanced on this point to state that what Flapan calls a 'myth' is no more than 'the interpretation of the Zionist movement and most Jews in Israel is of continued willingness for territorial compromise in the face of consistent Arab obstinacy,' p.296. You should also read Shlomo Ben-Avi's general overview, rigorously honest, of Zionist attitudes over the 1930s and 40s Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, OUP 2006 p.24. He is a Zionist, but recognizes the obvious. Nishidani (talk) 10:46, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

'None of the sides would accept that they have to leave the country' (Ykantor) - this was NOT the basis of the conflict about the partition plan. The question was never - should the land be exclusively Jewish or exclusively Muslim/Christian. The question was this: GIVEN the cohabitation of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the land, should it be partitioned or not? If the land is partitioned, that means the de-facto removal of land from their original ownership, mostly Arab land into Jewish hands, and forced transfer of population. If the land is not partitioned, Jews, Muslims and Christians could stay where they are, land does not change ownership, and they all live in one democratic country, in which the rights of all minorities are protected. THAT is the real background to the partition plan, and against THIS background, Arab refusal to partition becomes a rational response, rather than an irrational one. I think that a NPOV requires to demonstrate the two sides of the debate (pro-partition vs. against-partition) neutrally, and thus make it obvious for the reader thatArab refusal to partition was a RATIONAL, and logical reaction. An NPOV should reflect the fact that hundreds of thousands of European immigrants came to a land without speaking its language and hardly knowing anything about it, demanding that it be partitioned between themselves and the locals, at the expense of the locals. However you want to look at this, calling this justice is beyond chutzpah. This is not justice but lack of respect and human dignity towards the locals. NPOV should make it clear that the locals would have been complete nuts to agree to partition Engelo (talk) 12:17, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Your point about this being a three-cornered conflict, not, as overwhelmingly assumed in the historical literature, a Judaic/Islamic or Jewish/Arab conflict, is well-taken. The omission of a perspective conveying Christian interests in their 'holy land' is an egregious scotoma, for which so far scholarship has had no adequate redress. 70% of the foreign tourists to Jerusalem are Christian,17% of the city's key historic properties are Christian, 117 Christian churchs and foundations thread through its small historic core, but you'd never get this impression from mainstream news reports or Wikipedia (and being a pagan, it's not within my busy brief to fix that skew).

For the rest. Not quite. Perhaps the majority of editors in this area have a private angle: mine is known, for example, and Ykantor for example is admirably on record stating he believes there is only one version of history (and here it coincides with a neo-Zionist reading). But what we are obliged to do as editors is to suspend our personal POV, survey the available RS for facts and interpretations, and faithfully transcribe those according to WP:Due, ensuring that both narratives are given equal treatment. For any one who has read deeply in the scholarship and the original documents, it is often the case that even academic RS often turn out to underreport, or ignore, what might strike one as important facts, which are however verifiable in personal memoirs or books that fail our strict reading of RS (which means basically books written by professional scholars which are, via publishing houses, normatively subject to peer-review, or which are hailed by competent scholars as important, useful or invaluable contributions). These observed lacunae cannot be adjusted back in by finangling the editing criteria (a huge amount of detail on Israeli settlement is available, but most of the sources, though respectable, can be, and are, challenged as non-compliant with a strict reading of WP:RS, meaning editors just have to work harder hoping scholars catch up with realities on the ground). That makes editing for all sides frustrating, at times, but we are under an obligation not to do justice to history, but to do justice to the lay of the scholarly land. As a lawyer, who had never lost a case in 40 years, once told me: justice has nothing to do with justice. It has to do only with the documentary evidence measured against the precedents of law. The Palestinian case is an outstanding example of, for several key decades, being 'written out', or consigned to the margins of, history. But as transcribers, we must sit in court, and jot down faithfully what the witnesses say, not interlard or reorganize the transcript with extrajudicial judgements. The bias was that most of the evidence came from Western or Israeli archives. The verdict lies with the jury of scholars, and the only consolation is that panel, over time, has a far greater range of testimony from both sides than was earlier available, and shows a tendency towards incremental detachment of a kind that will render verdicts that are historically more informed than was possible earlier. On wikipedia, nonetheless, we cannot anticipate the probable outcome of history in future hermeneutics.Nishidani (talk) 15:21, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand your point Nishidani, the bit I think I understand, I have no problem with but looks like a straw man to me. I must have been unclear if I gave the impression that this is a three way debate. It is not between Christians, Jews and Muslims. But by the same token, it is also wrong to assume that the debate is between Jews and Arabs. In fact, the debate is political, it is between Zionists and non-Zionists, neither of which are co-extensive with Jewish, Christian, Muslim and/or Arab identity. Already here we see a problem with the article when it speaks of the reactions of Jews and Arabs, instead of speaking about the reactions of Zionists and non-Zionists (the view of non-Zionist Jews against partition is well recorded, for example in a recent book by Mike Marqusee). The second issue concerns the problem that the article gives the impression as if partition is the only rational "compromise" to the debate. In doing so, it adopts a Zionist POV. From a non-Zionist perspective (and arguably, from a NPOV), if X enters Y's property and demands part of it, this demand is injustice tout-court. Any law/statement that says that Y MUST abide is clearly unjust and illegal, which is why 181 is often said to be in contradiction with the mandate/authority of the UN - but this argument is hardly voiced in the article. Yes, there are isolated traces of this argument peppered here and there, but this needs to be consolidated and strengthened. At the moment, the article gives the impression that Jews were peaceful and happy to compromise whereas the Arabs irrational and extreme. Is that really a fair NPOV in your opinion? Engelo (talk) 19:38, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

On wikipedia, there is a long process in article creation. Until the article passes GA review, it is not reliable. When it gets to Featured Article rank, it is encyclopedic, and compliant with WP:NPOV in the eyes of a wider community of experts. Almost all I/P article never get to GA level, but we plug away in that direction. What you call a 'straw man' is the complicated set of protocols governing the on-going process of drafting, which is collective. At no state like this will any article satisfy anyone. Secondly, articles are written strictly as paraphrases of sources which, optimally, come from the specialist academic literature. If that literature is defective, or fails to make the distinctions you draw, nothing can be done to remedy the fault. To do so would violate WP:OR. I don't think the debate is between 'Jews' and 'Arabs', though most of the academic literature assumes or asserts that it is. Most of the best critical demystifying scholarship is the handiwork of Jewish and Israeli academics.

The article at present may have at one point, on the description of the 'compromise', a Zionist POV slant, for example. That only means the section hasn't yet been properly written. It will be, shortly, I expect. You will notice above that I cited Walid Khalidi's interpretation of the partition. That statement will be in the text, together with a dozen other sources that ramify and nuance that section. Any one can proceed to help out. If no one else does the work, I will get round to it, if looking after 800 other articles on wikipedia allows me the spare time for this extra-curricular hobby.Nishidani (talk) 20:34, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that, Nishidani, I respect your efforts and patience in clarifying these issues. When I say straw-man, I do not meant that I think that these standards or protocols are unimportant, on the contrary! What I mean is that I think it is possible to make the non-Zionist POV clearer without having to violate any of these protocols. But there are tons of quotes and resources that make it clear, why the non-Zionists would be against partition. Even Zionist leaders were aware that the most RATIONAL course of action, on the part of Palestinians, was to refuse partition. Here two quotes from Moshe Sharett, Israel's second Prime Minister: "We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it" (from Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 91) And then again on partition: "The [Palestinian] Arab reaction would be negative because they would lose everything and gain almost nothing ...They would lose the richest part of Palestine; they would lose major Arab assets, the orange plantations, the commercial and industrial centers and the most important sources of revenue for their government which would become impoverished; they would lose most of the coastal area, which would also be a loss to the hinterland Arab states...It would mean that they would be driven back to the desert." (from Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians, p.59) Engelo (talk) 21:35, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

None of the sides would accept that they have to leave the country

I refer here to a discussion that started at the Flapan section, but does not belong to the section.

Nishidani wrote: "'None of the sides would accept that they have to leave the country' (Ykantor). That overlooks, as it accepts mechanical symmetry, the key fact that one side wanted to enter the country en masse, while understanding this meant the other indigenous side had to leave it, while the 'other side' did not assert that Jews resident in their Yishuv had to leave their country: it argued that, being a minority, the immigrants had no right to act as though they had majoritarian status."

Engelo wrote:" 'None of the sides would accept that they have to leave the country' (Ykantor) - this was NOT the basis of the conflict about the partition plan. The question was never - should the land be exclusively Jewish or exclusively Muslim/Christian. The question was this: GIVEN the cohabitation of Jews, Christians and Muslims in the land, should it be partitioned or not? If the land is partitioned, that means the de-facto removal of land from their original ownership, mostly Arab land into Jewish hands, and forced transfer of population. If the land is not partitioned, Jews, Muslims and Christians could stay where they are, land does not change ownership, and they all live in one democratic country, in which the rights of all minorities are protected. THAT is the real background to the partition plan, and against THIS background, Arab refusal to partition becomes a rational response, rather than an irrational one. I think that a NPOV requires to demonstrate the two sides of the debate (pro-partition vs. against-partition) neutrally, and thus make it obvious for the reader that Arab refusal to partition was a RATIONAL, and logical reaction. An NPOV should reflect the fact that hundreds of thousands of European immigrants came to a land without speaking its language and hardly knowing anything about it, demanding that it be partitioned between themselves and the locals, at the expense of the locals. However you want to look at this, calling this justice is beyond chutzpah. This is not justice but lack of respect and human dignity towards the locals. NPOV should make it clear that the locals would have been complete nuts to agree to partition "..."The second issue concerns the problem that the article gives the impression as if partition is the only rational "compromise" to the debate. In doing so, it adopts a Zionist POV. From a non-Zionist perspective (and arguably, from a NPOV), if X enters Y's property and demands part of it, this demand is injustice tout-court. Any law/statement that says that Y MUST abide is clearly unjust and illegal, which is why 181 is often said to be in contradiction with the mandate/authority of the UN - but this argument is hardly voiced in the article. Yes, there are isolated traces of this argument peppered here and there, but this needs to be consolidated and strengthened. At the moment, the article gives the impression that Jews were peaceful and happy to compromise whereas the Arabs irrational and extreme. Is that really a fair NPOV in your opinion?"

Nishidani said: "one side wanted to enter the country en masse, while understanding this meant the other indigenous side had to leave it", but at 1922 there were 0.8 million people in Palestine (the first reliable census) while nowadays there are more than 10 million people there, and the Negev is still empty. Hence it did not mean that the Arabs had to leave. On the contrary, Arabs from other countries immigrated to Palestine looking for jobs.

In my opinion the article does not present the Arabs as irrational people. The had a rational which was based on justice only , and ignored the practical aspects.

I object Engelo sentence, concerning "Jews, Muslims and Christians could stay where they are, land does not change ownership, and they all live in one democratic country, in which the rights of all minorities are protected"".

"On 23 July, at Sofar, the Arab representatives completed their testimony before UNSCOP. Faranjieh, speaking for the Arab League, said that Jews “illegally” in Palestine would be expelled and that the future of many of those “legally” in the country but without Palestine citizenship would need to be resolved “by the future Arab government.” UNSCOP tried to get other Arab representatives to soften or elucidate this answer but got nowhere" (Morris 2008 p. 45)

In 1946 "The League demanded independence for Palestine as a “unitary” state, with an Arab majority and minority rights for the Jews. The AHC went one better and insisted that the proportion of Jews to Arabs in the unitary state should stand at one to six, meaning that only Jews who lived in Palestine before the British Mandate be eligible for citizenship" (Morris 2008 p.66 )

Those 2 quotes, explain why a unitary state was not an option. Since none of the sides would accept that they have to leave the country, the only viable solution was to partition the country. As the UNSCOP committee said: " The basic premise underlying the partition proposal is that the claims to Palestine of the Arabs and Jews, both possessing validity, are irreconcilable, and that among all of the solutions advanced, partition will provide the most realistic and practicable settlement, and is the most likely to afford a workable basis for meting in part the claims and national aspirations of both parties".

In my opinion, it was correct and it is correct nowadays too. The criminals of Price tag policy prove that Israel should not have Arab minority at all. The solution is that all Arabs will be citizens of the Arab state, living in one side of a border, and all Jews would live in Israel only, in the other side of the border. Ykantor (talk) 22:39, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I.e. Israel should be ethnically cleansed again, to get rid of the other 20% of the population that managed to hang on.Nishidani (talk) 06:30, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

This is not related to my text, and of course not to my thinking. As in 1937 (Peel) and 1947, it is correct nowadays as well: A partition. But in the meantime, we realized that Jews and Arabs can not live together. Hence the border should be positioned as to minimize the minorities size. I do not see even a slight connection to an expulsion. Ykantor (talk) 08:22, 16 April 2014 (UTC)