Talk:1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight#Neutrality issues with this page

{{edit extended-protected|1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight|answered=yes}}

“Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning.”

Source 2 is vague and source 3 is not even a source (it only mentions an author and year with no title or any further information). This statement does not seem reliable as the source 2 is vague and source 3 is not even a source. 94.156.206.142 (talk) 18:54, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

:"Pappé 2006" refers to The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006) by Ilan Pappé. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:00, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

:Also for more information and sources about this see the body of this article as well as the article on the Nakba. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:02, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

@אקעגן, could you please explain [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight&oldid=prev&diff=1293002381 this edit] where you removed important information form the lede? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 03:06, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

It's one thing to want to reword or copyedit the text but important information should not be removed. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 03:08, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps "[...] were expelled or made to flee from their homes, at first by [...]", or "[...] fled from their homes or were expelled, at first by [...]". Or perhaps something like "[...] fled or were expelled. The expulsions were conducted at first by [...]" IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 03:13, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

:The sentence fragment indicating that Palestinians "fled by paramilitaries" is not coherent. I imagine the paramilitaries referenced are meant to describe those who expelled Palestinians. The simplest phrasing in this case would be to change the order: "fled from their homes, or were expelled by ..." אקעגן (talk) 03:19, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

::Right. Would you like to implement that or shall I? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 03:24, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

::Also I think the smoothest wording would be "[...] fled or were expelled. The expulsions were conducted at first by [...]". IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 03:25, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

:::Done! אקעגן (talk) 13:36, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

The majority of Palestinians who left during the 1948 war and the surrounding years did not do so due to expulsions, but fled for a variety of reasons."What happened in Palestine/Israel over 1947–1949 was so complex and varied, the situation radically changing from date to date and place to place, that a single-cause explanation of the exodus from most sites is untenable. At most, one can say that certain causes were important in certain areas at certain times, with a general shift in the spring of 1948 from precedence of cumulative internal Arab factors – lack of leadership, economic problems, breakdown of law and order – to a primacy of external, compulsive causes: Haganah/IDF attacks and expulsions, fear of Jewish attacks and atrocities, lack of help from the Arab world and the AHC and a feeling of impotence and abandonment, and orders from Arab officials and commanders to leave. In general, throughout the war, the final and decisive precipitant to flight in most places was Haganah, IZL, LHI or IDF attack or the inhabitants’ fear of imminent attack." (Morris 2004) Indeed, of all the 369 Palestinian towns and villages surveyed in Morris 2004, residents were expelled from 41 (11%). Yet, virtually all the first paragraph of the lede discusses expulsions, who did them, massacres, and so on. It is only at paragraph three that there is discussion about this. Nonetheless, discussions of well poisonings, and other factors that played a relatively negligible role in the flight of Palestinians is mentioned in the first paragraph. Likewise, "Hebraization of Palestinian place names" has nothing to do with Palestinians fleeing or being expelled, but it is right up there.

Some of the reasons for flight include rumours of massacres, unwillingness to live under Jewish rule, fear of violence, and so on. On the other hand, the fledgling state of Israel didn't want to accept Palestinians back to their homes, in large part, because they were historically hostile and could form a large Fifth Column"The facts that Palestine’s Arabs (and the Arab states) had rejected the UN partition resolution and, to nip it in the bud, had launched the hostilities that snowballed into fullscale civil war and that the Arab states had invaded Palestine and attacked Israel in May 1948 only hardened Jewish hearts toward the Palestinian Arabs, who were seen as mortal enemies and, should they be coopted into the Jewish state, a potential Fifth Column." (Morris 2004) in the country. Yet, in the infobox, the "motives" (I'm not sure that that actually means in this context) are provided: Anti-Arab racism, Zionism, and Settler colonialism.

I could pull other examples, but I these these exemplify some of the established issues with this page. The article, as it stands, is extremely problematic from a WP:NPOV (and particularly a WP:DUE) perspective. אקעגן (talk) 19:21, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

:I disagree with most of your objections. I'll also note that you're only citing one source, Benny Morris 2004. I beieve Morris' assessment as to the cause of the flight/expulsion is considered fringe today.

:See for example: Laila Parsons, McGill University, 2009, Review of Ilan Pappé's 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine':

:"Ilan Pappe has added another work to the many that have already been written in English on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. These include works by Walid Khalidi, Simha Flapan, Nafez Nazzal, Benny Morris, Nur Masalha, and Norman Finkelstein, among others. All but one of these authors (Morris) would probably agree with Pappe’s position that what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 fits the definition of ethnic cleansing, and it certainly is not news to Palestinians themselves, who have always known what happened to them." [https://www.mcgill.ca/islamicstudies/files/islamicstudies/parsons.pappe_.review.pdf]

:Also, Saleh Abdul Jawad says of Morris that "although he ferociously denied a master plan of ethnic cleansing in 2001, he now admits that the events during 1948 constitute a “justifiable” ethnic cleansing.", citing Morris' somewhat infamous interview with Ari Shavit.

:An excerpt of that interview:

:Interviewer: They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.

:Morris: There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing.

:Interviewer: And that was the situation in 1948?

:Morris: That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.

:Interviewer: The term `to cleanse' is terrible.

:Morris: I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed.

:-IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 19:40, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

::I don't find this line of thinking especially compelling. Morris has critics (many of whom continue to cite him extensively, as she notes!), but certainly Pappe and other authors do as well. Would a negative review of his work be enough to invalidate Pappe's work in your eyes?

::Morris denies that there was a policy of expulsion by Israeli forces. This has no bearing on his views of expulsions in 1948 constituted ethnic cleansing. In the same interview he says this explicitly: "From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created."

::At any rate, you are attacking Morris as a person, but not his factual statements. The statements I cited are also factual ones. Do you think that some aspect of those citations is factually wrong? אקעגן (talk) 20:36, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

:::This is not a logical response to what I've said or to the sources I've cited. I find your editing to be disruptive and I ask that you self revert [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1948_Palestinian_expulsion_and_flight&curid=25234737&diff=1293118380&oldid=1293095056 your latest edit]. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:47, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

:::To clarify, I'd ask that you self revert and discuss changes you'd like to make here first rather than continuing to make them unilaterally. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:48, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

::::You said Morris' views on the reasons for flight/expulsion of the Palestinians are fringe because 1) Laila Parsons said Morris stands alone in arguing that 1948 wasn't an ethnic cleansing (of course, within her selected list of historians; she just totally leaves out ones she rejects from the gate, like Efraim Karsh) and because 2) you cited an interview where Morris says ethnic cleansing took place in 1948. The logical thread does not come together. אקעגן (talk) 21:05, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

::Morris's assessment is definitely not fringe. How are Abdul Jawad's words and the interview that you quoted relevant to the due weight and reliability of Morris?

::Even if it were true that most historians disagree with Morris about the right term for the 1947-1948 events, it doesn't mean that all of Morris's scholarship is contested.

::However, it's actually not true. There are also historians like Karsh who criticised new historians "from the right" and Anita Shapira. Disputes and disagreements are normal amongst historians. Alaexis_¿question? 20:58, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

:::Surely its relevant to his reliability that Morris has contradicted himself, both denying the expulsions were ethnic cleaning but then admitting that they were.

:::You mention Karsh (as has אקעגוץן), yet he is even more fringe and less reliable than Morris.

:::Howard Sachar described Karsh as "the preeminent scholar-spokesman of the Revisionist (politically-rightist) Movement in Zionism."{{cite web|url=http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/reviews.asp?isbn=9780300127270|title=Palestine Betrayed Reviews|last=Sachar|first=Howard|publisher=Yale University Press|access-date=6 June 2011|archive-date=22 January 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120122012224/http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/reviews.asp?isbn=9780300127270|url-status=dead}}

:::Benny Morris called Karsh's Fabricating Israeli History "a mélange of distortions, half-truths, and plain lies that vividly demonstrates his profound ignorance of both the source material... and the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict," titling his article "Undeserving of a Reply".[http://www.meforum.org/article/90 Morris, 1996, "Undeserving of a Reply", The Middle East Quarterly]{{bsn|date=June 2022}} Morris adds that Karsh belabors minor points while ignoring the main pieces of evidence.Benny Morris, "Refabricating 1948", review of Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians." by Efraim Karsh, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Winter, 1998), pp. 81–95.

:::Morris: "Karsh resembles nothing so much as those Holocaust-denying historians who ignore all evidence and common sense in order to press an ideological point. One can only assume that, like them, his modest "contribution" to the Israeli historiographic debate will soon vanish." Morris, B. (1998). Refabricating 1948 [Review of Fabricating Israeli History: The “New Historians.,” by E. Karsh]. Journal of Palestine Studies, 27(2), 81–95. https://doi.org/10.2307/2538286

:::Ian Lustick: "But however impressed readers are likely to be by the intensity of Karsh's pristine faith in Zionism, they are sure to be stunned by the malevolence of his writing and confused by the erratic, sloppy nature of his analysis. Errors, inconsistencies, and over-interpretation there may be in some of the new Israeli histories, but nothing in them can match the howlers, the contradictions, and the distortions contained in this volume." I. Lustick, 1997, 'Israeli History: Who is Fabricating What?', Survival, 39(3), p.156–166I. Lustick, 1997, Survival, 39(4), p.197–198

:::Avi Shlaim has written that Karsh gives "a selective and tendentious account designed to exonerate the Jewish side of any responsibility" for some of the events that took place in 1948 and that he engages in "distort[ion] and misrepresent[ation of] the work of his opponents"

:::Shlaim, Avi (September 1996). "A Totalitarian Concept of History". Middle East Quarterly. 3 (3): 52–55. Archived from the original on 24 September 2021.

:::Ilan Pappé in 'Were they expelled?': "The call from the Arab leaders on the one hand and the "domino effect" on the other appear in Ephraim Karsh's book, the most recent attempt to defend the Israeli official version of the war."

:::- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:30, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

::::I would be interested in seeing an earlier statement by Morris himself in which he says that it was not an ethnic cleansing, because I don't see an actual citation for it in the source you cited. But even if you do find such a source, this does not show anything negative about his scholarship. Dcholars opinions can change, and this issue you bring up even just seems like a terminological point, not a factual one (he talks quite a bit about expulsions). This was never a fundamental part of his book (in fact, he talks quite a bit about expulsions), which instead argued that there was no top-down plan for expulsions by the Israelis.

::::By the way, if I could find negative statements or reviews of Pappe, would you concede that he is a "fringe" scholar? אקעגן (talk) 01:03, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::Morris in the 80s is not Morris after 2000. There is broad consensus that Morris underwent an ideological shift during the Second Intifada in which his views became more extreme and that this ideological shift colors his work. On this point, see:

:::::* {{Cite journal |last=Pappé |first=Ilan |date=2009 |title=The Vicissitudes of the 1948 Historiography of Israel |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6 |journal=Journal of Palestine Studies |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=6–23 |doi=10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6 |issn=0377-919X |jstor=10.1525/jps.2010.xxxix.1.6 |hdl-access=free |hdl=10871/15209}}

:::::* Shapiro, B. (2015). The strange career of Israeli 'New Historian' Benny Morris. Palestine - Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture, 20/21(4), 154-160.

:::::* {{Cite journal |last=Abdel-Nour |first=Farid |date=May 2013 |title=From Critic to Cheerleader: The Clarifying Example of Benny Morris' ‘Conversion’ |url=https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/hls.2013.0058 |journal=Holy Land Studies |language=en |volume=12 |issue=1 |pages=25–41 |doi=10.3366/hls.2013.0058 |issn=1474-9475 |url-access=subscription}}

:::::إيان (talk) 18:17, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

::::::None of this is relevant to the point. He still is a widely-cited and widely respected source. אקעגן (talk) 14:19, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

I would direct both Alaexis and אקעגן to our article Causes of the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight, which says "Scholarship today generally considers that violence and direct expulsions perpetrated by Zionist forces throughout both phases of the 1947-1949 Palestine war (both during the civil war phase and during the 1948-1949 Arab-Israeli war) were the primary cause of the displacement of the Palestinians.{{refn|Slater, Jerome (2020). Mythologies Without End: The US, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0-19-045908-6. “There is no serious dispute among Israeli, Palestinian, or other historians about the central facts of the Nakba. All of the leading Israeli New Historians—particularly Morris, Shlaim, Pappé, and Flapan—extensively examined the issue and revealed the facts. Other accounts have reached the same conclusions. For example, see Ben-Ami, "A War to Start All Wars"; Rashid Khalidi, "The Palestinians and 1948"; Walid Khalidi, "Why Did the Palestinians Leave, Revisited"; Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians; Raz, Bride and the Dowry. Reviewing the evidence marshaled by Morris and others, Tom Segev concluded that "most of the Arabs in the country, approximately 400,000, were chased out and expelled during the first stage of the war. In other words, before the Arab armies invaded the country" (Haaretz, July 18, 2010). Other estimates have varied concerning the number of Palestinians who fled or were expelled before the May 1948 Arab state attack; Morris estimated the number to be 250,000–300,000 (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 262); Tessler puts it at 300,000 (A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 279); Pappé's estimate is 380,000 (The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 96). In another recent review of the evidence, the Israeli historian Daniel Blatman estimates the number to be about 500,000 (Blatman, "Netanyahu, This Is What Ethnic Cleansing Really Looks Like"). Whatever the exact number, even Israeli "Old Historians" now admit that during the 1948 war, the Israeli armed forces drove out many of the Palestinians, though they emphasized the action as a military "necessity." For example, see Anita Shapira, Israel: A History, 167–68.}}{{refn|Abu-Laban, Yasmeen; Bakan, Abigail B. (July 2022). "Anti-Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting". The Political Quarterly, Vol. 93, Issue 3, p. 511: "Palestinians have long known what happened to them in 1948 and its very human costs. However, the work of the ‘new’ (or revisionist) Israeli historians from the late 1970s also challenged the official state narrative of a miraculous wartime victory through access to material in the Israeli archives. This has established what Ilan Pappé has summarised as the ‘ethnic cleansing of Palestine’, a process involving massacres and expulsions at gunpoint. In light of the ever-growing historiography, serious scholarship has left little debate about what happened in 1948. [...] However, Nakba denial remains a political issue of the highest order.}}{{sfn|Slater|2020|p=350, "It is no longer a matter of serious dispute that in the 1947–48 period—beginning well before the Arab invasion in May 1948—some 700,000 to 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled their villages and homes in Israel in fear of their lives—an entirely justifiable fear, in light of massacres carried out by Zionist forces."}}{{refn|Khalidi, R. R. (1988). Revisionist Views of the Modern History of Palestine: 1948. Arab Studies Quarterly, 10(4), 425–432. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41857981 — "Segev's was the first account published in book form to use the Israeli archives to show that mass expulsions of the Palestinians by the Zionist forces, before May 15, 1948, and in succeeding months by the Israeli army, were the main cause of their flight."}}{{refn|{{cite book |title=Peace Philosophy in Action |editor1-first=Candice C. |editor1-last=Carter |editor2-first=Ravindra |editor2-last=Kumar |chapter=3. Retooling Peace Philosophy: A Critical Look at Israel’s Separation Strategy |first1=Kristofer J. |last1=Petersen-Overton |first2=Johannes D. |last2=Schmidt |first3=Jacques |last3=Hersh |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |date=27 September 2010 |isbn=978-0-230-11299-5 |doi=10.1057/9780230112995 |page=49 |url=https://www.academia.edu/37602648 |quote="As scores of historical documentation has since revealed, the Yishuv encouraged the flight or directly forced {{gaps|750|000}} Palestinians (more than 80 percent of the population at the time) from their homeland in 1948 and destroyed 531 Palestinian villages"}}}} Many historians consider that the events of 1948 fit the definition of ethnic cleansing.{{refn|Laila Parsons, McGill University, 2009, Review of Ilan Pappé's 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine', "Ilan Pappe has added another work to the many that have already been written in English on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. These include works by Walid Khalidi, Simha Flapan, Nafez Nazzal, Benny Morris, Nur Masalha, and Norman Finkelstein, among others. All but one of these authors (Morris) would probably agree with Pappe’s position that what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 fits the definition of ethnic cleansing, and it certainly is not news to Palestinians themselves, who have always known what happened to them." [https://www.mcgill.ca/islamicstudies/files/islamicstudies/parsons.pappe_.review.pdf]}} -IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:44, 30 May 2025 (UTC)

אקעגן wrote: "of all the 369 Palestinian towns and villages surveyed in Morris 2004, residents were expelled from 41 (11%)". This is a false statement, and not just because the number of localities giving "E" as one of the causes is actually 54. The main reason is that the claim misunderstands Morris' key. He only uses "E" for cases where the Jewish forces captured a village with its inhabitants and then expelled the inhabitants. If the villagers fled ahead of the Jewish military assault and then weren't allowed back, Morris gives it the "M" classification even though this is also an example of expulsion in its ordinary meaning. The same is true of "C" (influence of nearby Jewish attack) and "F" (fear of the fighting) if the villagers wished to return but could not. The essence of "expulsion" is not the departure but the inability to return. (If I go abroad on a holiday but am refused reentry to my country, that's expulsion despite the fact that I left voluntarily.) By contrast, the number of localities with "A" (abandonment on Arab orders) is 6, I think. Another problem, which Morris obfuscated after his "conversion", is to count temporary evacuation of non-combatants as voluntary abandonment. Of course it is nothing of the sort and the Jewish side did the same thing extensively. Zero^talk 06:47, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

:{{quote|The essence of "expulsion" is not the departure but the inability to return.}}

:This has never been the usual understanding of the term. This is precisely the reason that "E" is "expulsion by the Jews," which would in fact cover virtually all the categories if your understanding were that of Morris{{emdash}}neither before his so-called "conversion," nor after. Likewise, "temporary evacuation of non-combatants" is not expulsion.

:Anyways, here he is essentially defining the term:

:{{quote|The obvious, logical solution lay in Arab emigration or ‘transfer’. Such a transfer could be carried out by force, i.e., expulsion, or it could be engineered voluntarily, with the transferees leaving on their own steam and by agreement, or by some amalgam of the two methods}} אקעגן (talk) 01:13, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:: None of the cases I called expulsion were "by agreement". All of them were achieved by force, so in fact my definition agrees with Morris. Zero^talk 06:20, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::You'll have to explain to me how, throughout all his books, and throughout this entire article, a distinction is made between expulsion and flight, when, by your lights, they are virtually the same thing. Again, this has never been the understanding of the term. If it had been, why did Morris only make the "E" category entitled expulsion, when all of it was expulsion? How do you understand a quote like "Those who had remained behind were expelled" in regards to Abu Shusha, when those who left were also expelled, by your lights? This is real semantic blurring. אקעגן (talk) 13:10, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

:::: That's an easy question. Morris is a stickler for detail and makes fine distinction between events according to what he believes happened in each case. Getting driven out with a gun to the head is not the same experience as fleeing an incoming army and being forcibly prevented from returning, so he classifies them differently. Reading his text on each case will uncover additional details that differ between them. It is open to us to also make such fine distinctions. What is not open to us is to leverage his word choices to make claims that don't follow from his work. In both these cases, people lost their homes by the use of force and it would be wrong to describe it in a way that hides that fact. Zero^talk 14:12, 2 June 2025 (UTC)

I reverted your edit @אקעגן. There is no NPOV issue with this article. The exclusion/minimizing of the views of Anita Shapira, Yoav Gelber, Efraim Karsh and aspects of Benny Morris' work is not a violation of NPOV but is following WP:FRINGE. These authors all engage in some degree of Nakba denial, but that is still a fringe position. For example we say rightly that the Tantura massacre was a real event, even though Gelber denies it and calls it a "blood libel.

In the lede of this article we rightly say:

"Although the causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus remain a significantly controversial topic in public and political discourse, with a prominent amount of denialism regarding the responsibility of Israeli/Yishuv forces, most scholarship today agrees that expulsions and violence, and the fear thereof, were the primary causes.[13][14][15] Scholars widely describe the event as ethnic cleansing,[16][6][17] although some disagree.[18][19][20]"

We can discuss details of this further - especially if you have better (and more recent) sources - but please refrain from making further large edits without at least attempting to get consensus first. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 12:26, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

:That is your opinion, which again has not been demonstrated. You found some sources that are against Morris, and Karsh, that is true. I could find sources that argue against the positions and books of Pappe, Finkelstein, Khalidi, Masalha and the like, who are, in the views of some, maximalists and ideologues. Do not revert the edit until this matter has been resolved. אקעגן (talk) 14:22, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

::I've already asked you to provide more sources if you can.

::And actually it is the user who is seeking to make significant changes who needs to seek consensus for their edit per WP:ONUS, and so I'll once again ask you to self-revert. You're likely to ignite a multi-party edit war here if you do not self-revert and seek consensus for your changes. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 14:36, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Take a look at WP:TEMPREMOVE. This is not a controversial addition.

:::The change that you are trying to remove only added tags, and one sentence that is not a controversial one (unless you doubt that there were any instances of Arab commanders instructing locals to flee; if so, you have never articulated that).

:::More to the point, if Benny Morris is so fringe, why is he cited approvingly in some cases by the likes of PappeAs one of many examples, he writes "For most Palestinians, the date of 15 May 1948 was of no special significance at the time: it was just one more day in the horrific calendar of ethnic cleansing that had started more than five months earlier" with a footnote "In fact some of the books we have mentioned, notably Khalidi (ed.), All at Remains, Flapan, Birth of Israel, Palumbo, Catastrophe and Morris, Revisited prove this point very convincingly", by KhalidiIn Palestinian Identity: "The standard work on the subject is now Benny Morris [...]. Based on Israeli sources, this work has put to rest some of the most tenacious fabrications regarding the Palestinian refugee problem. See also Morris's 1948 and After [..]. For problems with some of the conclusions Morris draws from evidence he presents, however, see Norman G. Finkelstein [...]." He continues to cite Morris' works numerous times., MasalhaE.g. in Imperial Israel: "Israeli historian Benny Morris argues that in the 1950s Zionist territorial maximalism and expansionism had been espoused for both ideological and strategic reasons: " followed by a lengthy quote.. אקעגן (talk) 19:41, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

::::I never said Morris was fringe in entirety. All three of those writers you cite as praising Morris are also highly critical of his work in certain aspects. Which only supports my point that Morris is not entirely reliable / has fringe elements.

::::Could you please share the additional references you've said you have and that I've now repeatedly requested. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 20:03, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::I'm not totally sure what you want these "additional references" to say, but here are some that corroborate Morris or his approach, regarding the reasons for Palestinians leaving and reasons for their non-acceptance into Israel. These are modern and critical of Israel:

:::::* Israel/Palestine (2023), by Alan Dowty: "Who was responsible for creating the refugee problem? Did the refugees flee on their own, or did Israeli forces expel them? The most complete answer to this question has been provided by Benny Morris [...] In some cases refugees fleg before enemy forces arrived, as often occurs in war; in some cases they were expelled by Israeli forces; and there are murky cases with elements of both situations. [...] For a critique of Morris from a pro-Palestinian perspective see Masalha 1991 and Finkelstein 1991; for a pro-Israeli critique, see Karsh 2003. [...]
"As for the refugee question, "

:::::*Atlas of Palestine (2004), by Salman Abu Sitta (a former PNC member(!)), creates his own enumeration of the Palestinian towns that were depopulated, and follows Morris' schema. Here, he increases the percent of villages that were subject to expulsion to 24.6%, the percent who fled on military assault at 54.4%, psychological warfare accounted for 2.4%, fear of attack 7.7%, influence/fall of nearby towns 9.9% and abandonment on Arab orders at 1%. Even from an ideological source like this, expulsions are still not the dominant of reason for leaving.

:::::* William L. Cleveland, Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East (2024): "The Arab flight from Palestine began during the intercommunal war and was at firs the normal reaction of a civilian population to nearby fighting - a temporary evacuation from the zone of combat with plans to return once hostilities ceased. However, during spring and early summer 1948, the flight of the Palestinian Arabs was transformed into a permanent mass exodus, as villagers abandoned their ancestral soil and city dwellers left behind their homes and businesses. Once the Arab flight had started, the Haganah encouraged it. "

:::::* Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Arthur Goldschmidt Jr., A Concise History of the Middle East (2018): "At the end of 1948, Palestinian refugees numbered around 725,000. Some had voluntarily left their homes even before the war started, while most had to flee during the fighting. [...] Israel, busy absorbing European Jewish survivors and unwilling to take in a 'fifth-column' of implacable foes, would not readmit the Palestinian refugees."

:::::* Alexander B. Downes, Targeting Civilians in War (2011): "In short, if expulsion was not Zionist policy at the outset, it became such over time, and at the heart of this strategy was the fear that leaving the Arab population in place would pose a permanent danger of a fifth-column in the Israeli rear"

:::::* Marte Heian-Engdal, Palestinian Refugees after 1948 (2020): "In essence, Morris’s conclusion is that ‘war, and not design, Jewish or Arab,gave birth to the Palestinian refugee problem’. With the flights of the third and fourth waves of Palestinian refugees, the total number to an estimated 700,000 to 750,000 people had fled their homes since December 1947. [..] One of Morris’s main antagonists was Shabtai Teveth, the author of a biography of one of Israel’s founding fathers, David Ben-Gurion. But this was not the only position from which Morris’s work was attacked. From the other end of the spectrum, representing the Palestinian narrative, historians Nur Masalha and Norman Finkelstein took issue with Morris’s ultimate conclusion – that the refugee problem was a product of war – rather than Zionist design.[...] Shlaim elsewhere points out that Masalha undermines a good case ‘by over-stating it’ and focusing too narrowly on one aspect of the thinking within a multifaceted and complex Zionist movement. [...] There is little added value in a detailed blow-by-blow account of every article and op-ed published in relation to this debate. Suffice it to say that at some point the debate was no longer stricktly about what had happened, it was highly charged, accusatory and political dispute. However, despite the disagreement over the degree of responsibility and the interpretation of the meaning of Plan D, Morris’s version and the Palestinian narrative had much in common." She goes on to use Morris as her primary reference in this chapter.

:::::אקעגן (talk) 21:41, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

::::@אקעגן, the changes you made are not merely adding a tag. This discussion is ongoing and it is not apparent that you have consensus for your changes. TarnishedPath^talk 22:23, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::I didn't say it was merely adding a tag. I said it was adding tags and an uncontroversial remark about how in some cases, Arab leadership told Palestinians to leave their residences.

:::::I restored my tags, and left off the latter. I will ask you both though—do you not think this is a fact? אקעגן (talk) 23:21, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

::::::There's no consensus for the NPOV tag either. What exactly do you suggest should be changed to comply with NPOV? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:37, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

::::::Also we probably should say something along the lines of "Many Palestinians fled or evacuated to avoid the escalating violence, planning to return after the cessation of hostilities, but they were then prevented from returning to their homes after the war by the newly established State of Israel."{{refn|Pappe 2006: "Members of the Palestinian urban elite were leaving their houses and moving to their winter residences in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. This was a typical reaction from the urbanites in moments of stress - moving to safety until the situation calmed down. [...] But they left with the full intention of returning to their homes again later, only to be prevented by the Israelis from doing so: not allowing people to return to their homes after a short stay abroad is as much expulsion as any other act directed against the local people with the aim of depopulation."}}

::::::You say your remark is uncontroversial, but I believe it is promoting the Arab leaders' endorsement of flight" explanation:

::::::"Israeli officials, sympathetic journalists, and some historians have claimed that the refugee flight was instigated by Arab leaders, though almost invariably no primary sources were cited. Since the 1980s, historians have increasingly dismissed the claim as devoid of evidence." IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:41, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

::::::@אקעגן, your most recent edit is a breach of WP:1RR. Please remedy. TarnishedPath^talk 02:51, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::::Done. Please restore my tag, which you removed in violation of WP:DETAG. אקעגן (talk) 14:08, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

::::::::I don't see that tagging articles in order to push for your preferred version is appropriate, so no. TarnishedPath^talk 14:26, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::::::To be clear, you can remove any tags you like when you don't like the requests or discussion? אקעגן (talk) 14:34, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

::::::::::You’re the only one claiming this neutrality issue. إيان (talk) 20:39, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:::::::::::Is that enough? Could you show me where that principle is outlined? אקעגן (talk) 20:57, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:There was also the survey the Israelis did themselves, in June (July?) 1948, showing why each village was depopulated. It was "secret", until the late 1980s, when it was published by Benny Morris, if my memory is correct. User:Zero0000; do you have the ref? There was also a Haaretz-article, Huldra (talk) 23:05, 4 June 2025 (UTC)

:: Morris' article "The causes and character of the Arab exodus from Palestine: the Israel defence forces intelligence branch analysis of June 1948" was published in the journal Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 5-19. Available [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263208608700647 here] or [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4283093 here]. That article does not reproduce the report itself. After Morris' article was published, the document was withdrawn from availability (as often happened with documents that didn't support the official narrative). The full report was published by Akevot: [https://www.akevot.org.il/article/intelligence-brief-from-1948-hidden-for-decades-indicates-jewish-fighters-actions-were-the-major-cause-of-arab-displacement-not-calls-from-arab-leadership/?full Hebrew], [https://www.akevot.org.il/en/article/intelligence-brief-from-1948-hidden-for-decades-indicates-jewish-fighters-actions-were-the-major-cause-of-arab-displacement-not-calls-from-arab-leadership/?full English]. Zero^talk 01:05, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

Regarding the disputed text: (1) citations are not needed in the "See also" section. (2) The wikilink to Hebraization of names could move to the "See also" section as it wasn't central to the expulsion and flight. (3) The text "In some other cases, Arab commanders instructed locals to flee combat areas or potential combat areas." is completely unacceptable as it is actively misleading. The sources speak primarily of temporary evacuation of non-combatants, but readers will not understand that from the text. There is only one sentence in the two quotations that refers to complete evacuation in "several areas". "Several" means what? It isn't clear that temporary evacuation of non-combatants is even relevant to the page, as all sides in all wars do that if they can and the Jewish side did the same in 1948. The only relevance I can see is that most such temporary evacuees were not allowed to return, but that needs a source to support it. Zero^talk 01:27, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:(1) I don't remember asking for citations for "See Also"; what are you referring to? (2) This is fine with me. (3) This is a statement of fact, and your framing is not accurate. See, for example, in this quote from Morris: "And, starting in December 1947, Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ‘treacherously’ acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments." "Several," in this case, means at least 5 towns in which people were unable to return after. אקעגן (talk) 14:20, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:: To argue, in 2025, that the majority of Palestinians who were cleansed from their homes did NOT due so due to direct violence or threat of violence is beyond bad faith. Morris agrees with the facts now? Well, bully to him. The overwhelming majority of scholarship disagrees with him. As does the historical record.Dan Murphy (talk) 18:16, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:::Morris never argued this position, not now, nor in the 1980s. אקעגן (talk) 18:50, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

:::@אקעגן, to make this discussion more productive, what exactly would you suggest changing in the article?

:::I think that no one argues here that the expulsion and flight were not due to the conflict, but there were important differences in how events unfolded in different places which should be reflected in the article. Alaexis_¿question? 21:30, 5 June 2025 (UTC)

{{reftalk}}