Talk:Palestinians/Archive 2

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Archive July 15, 2003-July 15, 2004

How often want these uninformed fools spread Islamofascist propaganda? - 212.137.33.208 14:37, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Several administrators think that stating the facts is equal with "vandalism".
It is not allowed even to mention these facts:

The term "Palestinian" as a political factor was invented by Islamfascists (check the discussion and history page of Islamfascists and you see what I mean, if it was not already deleted by "administrators") after the Six-Day War 1967 to have a new instrument to destroy the Jewish state of Israel and to create an Islamic Palestine from the River to the Sea.

"Palestinians" are no nation but ordinary Syrians and Egyptians without citizenship.

An Arabic independent state called "Palestine" never existed.
It was in fact only an underdeveloped border region of Arab Syria.

Arafat is fomenting "Palestinian" chauvinism.

"Militant Islamic groups" is an euphemism. They are in reality Islamfascist murder gangs.

Obviously truth hurts.
Check the facts and you will find it out for yourself. - 195.218.116.8 12:51, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Proof

"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. . . . Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it."

Local Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937 

"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not."

   Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946


"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." 

       Delegate of Saudi Arabia United Nations Security Council, 1956

Roman historian Dio Cassius reffering to the land as Judea not palestine


"Thus nearly the whole of Judea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, which the Jews regarded as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed. And many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into the cities. Many Romans, however, perished in this war. Therefore, Hadrian, in writing to the Senate, did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by emperors: 'If you and your children are in health it is well and I and my legions are in health.'"

The condition of Israel under foreign administration


"Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds." 

                                                                   -- English pilgrim in 1590



"The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population" 

                                                     -- British consul in 1857


"There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] -- not for 30 miles in either direction . . . . One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.


"For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee . . . Nazareth is forlorn . . . Jericho lies a moldering ruin . . . Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation . . . untenanted by any living creature . . . .


"A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds . . a silent, mournful expanse . . . a desolation . . . . We never saw a human being on the whole route . . . . Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country . . . .


"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes . . . desolate and unlovely . . . ." 

                                                                -- Mark Twain

                                                                   The Innocents Abroad, 1867

More quotes

"The fact is that today's Palestinians are immigrants from the surrounding nations! I grew up well knowing the history and origins of today's Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from Greece, Muslim Sherkas from Russia, Muslims from Bosnia, and the Jordanians next door. The civil and tribal wars between Yemmenites (from Yemen) and Kessites (from Banu Kais of Saudi Arabia) ... are well known among Palestinians. "My grandfather, who was a dignitary in Bethlehem, almost lost his life by Abdul Qader Al-Husseni (the leader of the Palestinian revolution) after being accused of selling land to Jews. He used to tell us that his village Beit Sahur (The Shepherds Fields) in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled in the area with six other families. The town has now grown to 30,000 inhabitants."

- Walid, a Palestinian Arab defector, talking about the recent immigration of Arabs to Palestine. quoted from "Answering Islam"

The concept of "Palestinians" is one that did not exist until about 1948, when the Arab inhabitants, of what until then was Palestine, wished to differentiate themselves from the Jews. Until then, the Jews were the Palestinians. There was the Palestinian Brigade of Jewish volunteers in the British World War II Army (at a time when the Palestinian Arabs were in Berlin hatching plans with Adolf Hitler for world conquest and how to kill all the Jews); there was the Palestinian Symphony Orchestra (all Jews, of course); there was The Palestine Post; and so much more. The Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" do so in order to persuade a misinformed world that they are a distinct nationality and that "Palestine" is their ancestral homeland. But they are no distinct nationality at all. They are the same - in language, custom, and tribal and family ties - as the Arabs of Syria, Jordan, and beyond. There is no more difference between the "Palestinians" and the other Arabs of those countries than there is between, say, the citizens of Minnesota and those of Wisconsin.

What's more, many of the "Palestinians", or their immediate ancestors, came to the area attracted by the prosperity created by the Jews, in what previously had been pretty much of a wasteland.

- New York Times, June 12, 2000 (via CFICEJ's ISRAEL REPORT May/June 2000)


"There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." - Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, to the Peel Commission, 1937


"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." - Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council


I'll tidy up these quotes when I not busy

Okay, that's it for me till next week. Is everyone happy? Do we have a solid definition of who is a "Palestinian"? I guess that would be the Arab and European definition of West Bank + Gaza + refugees = "stateless Arabs of Palestine". Let me know what you all think.

And remember, I'm not in charge of this article. We're all equal here, signed-in or not. We all strive for a neutral article as defined at tedious length on the NPOV page. --Uncle Ed

I don't want to comment on the content of the page, just to point out the salient point that applies to disputes over whether a text is neutral: if there is in fact a dispute over whether a text is neutral, it probably isn't. That is because one side--who cares enough to be making the point--thinks that the article is making a point that other people would want to disagree with. If so, NPOV applies. I'd put this in blazing, flashing, annoying neon lights, if I could: == That something is allegedly a fact DOES NOT make the bald statement of that fact neutral!!! ==

Neutrality is all about presenting competing versions of what the facts are. It doesn't matter at all how convinced you are that your facts are the facts. If a significant number of other interested parties disagrees with you, the neutrality policy dictates that the discussion be recast as a fair presentation of the dispute between the parties. Larry Sanger

I have temporarilly removed the following, and am explaining why:

There has always been a Palestinian/Arab presence in Palestine. For all the invasions and changes in its rulers, the core of Palestine's population has been ethnically stable for millennia, posessing for the last thirteen hundred years a culture that has been unambiguously Arab.
This is illogical. The terms Arab and Palestinian are not synonomous. In fact, Arab historical sources deny the existence of Palestinians altogether. According to pre-1950 Arab history books, newspaper, academic journals and government documents, no such people or ethnicity ever existed. Even after the Arab-Israeli wars, when Arab grovernements suddenly began speaking to westerners (in English and French) about "Palestinans", they sometimes admitted publicly to their own public (in Arabic) that Palestinians were a total fiction, created solely as a way to fight the existence of the Jewish state in Israel. What pre-1950 Arab sources note the existence of an independent Palestinian culture or nationality? None. Have all Arab governments and historians been lying for the last 500 years? RK 19:44 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Many popular images of the Zionist movement portray the land as desolate or empty of a vibrant people and culture. Golda Meir announced that they never existed as evidenced in this famous quote "There was no such thing as Palestinians...It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." This kind of propaganda could never have been really convincing outside Israel because so many people - travellers, merchants, missionaries, and soldiers - had actually seen the Palestinians and knew that they existed even if they did not know much about them.
Um, you took her quot so badly out of context that it is badly misleading. She never denied the existence of Arabs in the middle-east, including Arabs in the former Bristish Mandate of Palestine. Her quote already is examined in context within a Wikipedia article. Without context, we are only left with propaganda, and that is something we must stribe hard to avoid. RK 19:44 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)
There are now somewhere between 6.5 - 7 million Palestinians worldwide, some live as a minority in Israel proper, some live in the West Bank and Gaza portions of Palestine, most are refugees in many parts of the world (mainly the Middle East, Europe, and North and South America) living a life of diaspora, as displaced persons. Few Palestinians have assimilated to their host countries. Most feel too strong, a sense of identity, with their Palestinian nationalism.
Now this claim has some kind of data to support it, and we can work it into the article. However, note that these numbers are widely contested. In fact, even the United Nations says that the actual number of Palestinian refugees is much smaller if you use their normal definition of refugees. Curiously (many would say dishonestly) the United Nations then created a second definition of the word "refugee" which applies only to Arabs who used to live in Palestine. Hmm, why would that be?
In 1948 Palestine ceased to exist politically, however, its people remain a vital and integral part of the land, known variously as: 'the Holy land', Israel, Palestine, etc. They remain Palestinians awaiting their political and national rights.
Pure PLO propaganda. No State of Palestine ever existed, ever. RK 19:44 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

As a disinterested Wikipedian -- i.e., neither a Jew nor a Palestinian -- I take issue with RK running roughshod over other Wikipedia contributors, in this article and in other articles. I say this after reviewing many of the articles to which RK has contributed.

Sorry, but your personal attacks don't override historical facts. You can't retroactively change what is in Arab textbooks by insulting me. Please stick to the issues, do some historical research, and maybe you can help out in a productive fashion. My concern is making this a respectable and reliable encyclopedia. We are obliagted to maintain a high standard of accuracy.RK 01:20 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

When the facts are in dispute, as they are here, the only way to honor Wikipedia's NPOV policy is to present the factual claims of *ALL* parties to a dispute in a "He said; she said" fashion, taking great care to state who said what. Moreover, engaging in personal attacks in re what is or is not the propaganda of other parties and/or removing the factual claims of others from an article is just plain wrong, no matter how wrong the factual claims of others may be. -- NetEsq 23:46 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

How can something be a "factual claim" and at the same time not be a fact? And it is a violation of Wikipedia policy to report minority viewpoint claims, when no evidence exists, on an equal basis with mainstream peer-reviewed historical analysis. Anyone could come here and write "The American people have lived in the geographical area of the United States for thousands of years..." and by your logic, we would be obligated to report this as a valid opinion. But that is nonsense. This is an encyclopedia, where we report confirable facts, not political propaganda. RK 01:20 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Now, we can note that there is a historical revisionist movement in the Arab community which is making these new claims, sure. But we would then also have to note that Arab (and non-Arab) historical sources provide no support for this view pre-1950. We would also have to note that some PLO and PA spokesmen since 1950 have, on occasion, publicly admitted that no ethnic Palestinian people has ever existed. This isn't about scoring points against me, or against the Jews. This is about responsible historical scholarship. RK 01:20 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I think some scholarship is necessary on our part though: we're not obliged to report everything that's claimed as fact. If one side claims something that is generally held by historians/sociologists/etc. to be counterfactual, we should report it as such (e.g. "[blah] claim [such and such], but this is generally considered inaccurate."). We don't have to report as fact "the Iraqi Information Minister claims the US troops have not yet landed in the region", for example. And I'd argue a lot of claims in this article fall rather close to that level of ludicrousness (ludicrosity?). --Delirium 23:58 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)
<< We don't have to report as fact "the Iraqi Information Minister claims the US troops have not yet landed in the region", for example.>>

I wholeheartedly disagree. Indeed, that is an excellent example of a factual claim that should be reported concomitantly with the factual claims of other parties, such as the factual claims of embedded reporters who were present in Iraq while the Information Minister was making his bizarre assertions, ultimately leaving the reader to determine who is more credible. -- NetEsq 00:23 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps while things are actually happening we can say this, but at some point we need to make judgments as to who's more credible ourselves. Otherwise we'll be stuck with ridiculous things like reporting all the pseudo-science nonsense out there on par with real science, or reporting on the people who claim slavery never happened on par with those who claim it did, and so on. --Delirium 00:35 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
<< [A]t some point we need to make judgments as to who's more credible ourselves.>>
As long as there are noteworthy groups of people who make factual assertions that the Earth is flat and/or that the world was created in six days, Wikipedia's NPOV policy obliges us to report these factual assertions and report who is making them. Indeed, it was not that long ago that the people who made contrary factual claims -- which are now the majority consensus -- were persecuted for making them. -- NetEsq 00:54 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
No, Netesq, we do not have to report the claim that the Earth is flat in the science articles on the Earth or in Earth science. On the other hand, we certainly can report such views in our articles on conspiracy theory, or on pseudoscience. But to push such non-historical and non-scientific claims into our main articles on science and history would destroy the credibility of Wikipedia, it would be unjustifiable, and it would give a terribly distorted picture of what is accepted as factual, and what is historically provable. RK

In case you [RK] should misinterpret my future silence in response to your comments as taking offense, or as surrender, please be advised that I find your confrontational behavior quite amusing and see no point in attempting to engage you in dialogue, at least not at this time and not in this forum. Given your present disposition to engage in recklessly contentious behavior with others, it is only a matter of time before you find yourself ostracized. I've seen it happen countless times before. -- NetEsq 01:39 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Huh? I am trying to focus on our need for historical scholarship, and the need to differentiate mainstream historical views from non-mainstream views. I truly wish you would focus on the topic. Yet every few hours you come in, disrupt our discussion with personal attacks, and then (oddly) claim that I am being confrontational. It is clear to me that you do not possess the research skills and history background necessary to work on this article, and you are only contributing here because you have some dislike of me. The feeling is not mutual, but then, you seem to have your own non-academic agenda. Too bad. Bye! RK 01:44 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
And another thing! Does anyone know who did the makeup for the movie _Chicken Run_? -- NetEsq 02:15 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Depending on how one defines the word "refugee", there are now somewhere between one million to six million Palestinians worldwide. Unlike refugees from every other nation or locale in the world, Palestinians alone have a special definition of the term "refugee". According to the the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, "Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict". This means that any Arab that moved into this area and resided there for two years now counts as if they were an indigenous resident of the land who had lived there all his/her life. Israelis complain that this definition of refugee wildly exagerrates the number of Palestinian refugees, as a huge number of Arabs had immigrated into Palestine during this time period.

I removed the above text, since it is out of place in this article. It should probably be intigrated into Palestinian refugee. - Efghij 06:19 15 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I deleted the quote from Zahir Muhsein because it gives a false impression that such an opinion was common amongst the Palestinian leadership at that time. It wasn't. Zuhayr Muhsin was the Secretary General of the group Sa`iqa which consisted of mostly of Syrian Ba'athists and was established by the Syrian government in opposition to Fatah. His membership of the PLO was due to pressure from Syria even though his pan-Arab position (i.e. the Syrian position) put him at constant conflict with the mainstream Palestinian nationalists. At one point he even supported Syrian armed conflict against the PLO in Lebanon. In 1979 he was assassinated. Quoting him as indicative of Palestinian opinion is wrong wrong wrong. --bdm

This article did not claim that his view was indicative of Palestinian opinion, although it may well have been so at the time. Palestinian Arabs in the 1940s and 1950s certainly did not believe that they were part of some ancient Palestinian ethnic group that was somehow distinct from other Arabs in the region! Only their children and grandchildren, many decades later, began to believe this story. I was merely giving one example of an Arab Palestinian who admits that the Palestinians are not an ancient distinct ethnic group with their own distinct history and culture. What is the big deal? Many Arabs at the time admitted this; many still do. RK 23:56, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Before this quote was added, Wikipedia articles on this topic were biased, because they only presented propaganda-like views of Arab historical revisionsists, who were portraying Palestinians as an ancient culture or nationality. Today, millions of Arabs have been brainwashed into believing that Palestinians always existed in Israel, that "the Jews" today are not really Jewish, the Israelites never existed in the land of Israel, and that there are no archaeological sites in Israel that show any evidence of a Jewish presence in Biblical times, etc. Obviously, every one of these claims is false, and they all are rejected by mainstream historians. Even many Arab historians reject these claims as pure propaganda. RK 23:56, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The problem is that many Wikipedians assume that all Arabs fall for this conspiracry driven propaganda. They present what they believe to be "the Arab view", when in fact they only present the most stridently anti-Israel position. Wikipedia contributors somehow overlook the very sizable minority Arab positions that, while not pro-Israel, are nonetheless historically viable, non-propaganda ladden, and quite reasonable. The angry and uneducated Arab masses are often assumed to be the only "true" Arab voice, and any quote that in any way agrees with any mainstream historical view is assumed to be "pro Israel", and thus not truly Arab. Well, that is just not so. Arabs are not monolithic. There is a great diversity of views amongst them. Thus, this material should be restored, or at least similar views from other Arab statesmen or scholars should be added. RK 23:56, 1 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Of course there never was a Palestinian state, but nobody ever claimed there was. All of the many (must be hundreds) of mentions of this I've seen are claims that there is a claim, not the claim itself. In other words, it's a strawman. Actually in many circles it is a deliberate strawman which serves to confuse people who might otherwise wonder what nation states, or nationalist sentiment, have to do with the right of people to live where they are born.
What is true is that there have been people, overwhelmingly of Arab extraction, living in Palestine for centuries. They did not have a sense of distinct national identity though there were local cultural and linguistic characteristics just like there were in other parts of the Arab world. You can find these local differences described in countless sources of the time. (An illustrative aside: in 1918 Chaim Weizmann wrote to his wife that King Feisal had told him that he "is contemptuous of the Palestinian Arabs whom he doesn't even regard as Arabs".) The Arabs of Palestine shared in the growing Arab nationalism of the 19th century but it was only when the threat of Zionism became apparent (early 20th century) that a distinct Palestinian nationalism started to grow. Palestinian nationalism was a major factor in the "revolt" of 1936-1939 but even then a more pan-Arab viewpoint was common. The Nakhba of 1948 was the thing that most impressed the nationalistic viewpoint on the ordinary people, though little in the way of actual organization happened until the 1960s. The quote you had before is a minority viewpoint for the time and doesn't belong in the article when the majority viewpoint is hardly represented. If the history of Palestinian nationalism belongs in the article (not clear), that should be done properly and not by means of one or two misleading quotations. -- bdm

Overall this is a very poor article. Yes the word "Palestinian" has meant different things to different people but the differences were not really all that great. The only exception was the usage of the word by some Zionists as including only themselves. Otherwise it meant a person who lives in Palestine or whose ancestors lived in Palestine, with Israeli Jews excluded from the phrase during the years after Israeli independence. The rest of the story is just details--whether some minority ethnic groups were included and so on. Especially when it comes to the meaning of the word today, most of the "disagreement" is just huffing and puffing from people with axes to grind. In fact there is hardly any disagreement at all amongst Palestinians as to who is one of them, and that ought to be good enough. As Amos Oz wrote years ago:

He who declares on behalf of the Palestinians that they are not a group with a separate national identity but an extension of the 'greater pan-Arabic nation' is no different from Arafat, who presumes to declare that the Jews are nothing more than a religious sect and therefore unworthy of national self-determination. Just as I vehemently reject the religious decree of Rabbi Yassir Arafat in the question 'Who is a Jew,' I do not recognize the right of anyone other than the Palestinians themselves to decide for themselves, 'Who is an Arab' or 'What is a Palestinian'."

Btw, most Palestinians living in Jordan are Jordanian citizens despite the ignorant statement to the contrary in this article. - bdm

BDM writes "Of course there never was a Palestinian state, but nobody ever claimed there was. All of the many (must be hundreds) of mentions of this I've seen are claims that there is a claim, not the claim itself. In other words, it's a strawman. Actually in many circles it is a deliberate strawman ..."

I must strongly disagree. Many Arabs do claim that there was a distinct Palestinian Arab ethnicity, history, culture, etc. This is the basis of most Arab propaganda for the past 40 years. I agree with you that such claims are historically false, but these claims do exist, they are even taught in Arab school textbooks in the middle-east! This is by no means a straw-man; I myself have met many Arabs who believe that "the Jews" are trying to erase the existence of a historical Palestinian nationality! Their beliefs are paranoid and baseless, but they do exist. RK 14:04, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Is it so difficult to read what you are replying to? I wrote that nobody claims there was a Palestinian state. STATE, get it, STATE. Of course there are plenty of people who claim that Palestinians had a distinct culture and they would be right. They had distinct clothing styles, their own peculiar colloquialisms, and some differences in social customs. It is a matter of degree; do (non-French) Canadians have a different culture from Americans? The problem is not with the facts, it is the political purposes to which the facts (and distortions of the facts) are put. The only reason anyone except anthropologists and historians cares about the alleged lack of Palestinian distinctness is that it has been used by Zionists for more than a century to deny that the Palestinians had their own rights that couldn't be satisfied by doing deals with Arabs from elsewhere. The a-historical back-dating of Palestinian nationalism by some Palestinians is a defensive reaction.
You miss my thrust; I am refuting a different point. I agree with you that pre-Israel, the Arabs in the British Mandate of Palestine had their own distinct clothing styles, their own peculiar colloquialisms, and some differences in social customs. However, I am responding to a different claim: Many Arabs today - including "professors of history" at Palestinian schools - deny what you write; instead, they claim that the Arabs of Palestine had a very distinct peoplehood, and that they were a distinct own Arab nation for hundreds, if not thousands of years. (They do not claim that they formally had their own recognized nation, of course.) Their pseudo-academic historical revisionism is so extreme, that some Palestinian Authority "academics", as well as spokespeople, claim that ancient Canaanite archaeological finds are "proof" of early settlement by the same Palestinian people that exist today! It is this pseudo-historical hogwash that I am disagreeing with. All of your points I agree with. Does this make sense? RK 14:06, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)

BDM writes "What is true is that there have been people, overwhelmingly of Arab extraction, living in Palestine for centuries. They did not have a sense of distinct national identity though there were local cultural and linguistic characteristics just like there were in other parts of the Arab world."

I agree with you. No one disputes this. In fact, this is precisely my position, and I am arguing against the pseudo-historical Arab propaganda which denies what you state here. RK 14:04, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)
That's why the middle eastern articles are amongst the most useless in all the Wikipedia. Too many people think it is the place for conducting their personal crusades. It probably scares away the people who have genuine knowledge rather than political motives, and nobody is left to write straight articles. - BDM

BDM writes "The Arabs of Palestine shared in the growing Arab nationalism of the 19th century but it was only when the threat of Zionism became apparent (early 20th century) that a distinct Palestinian nationalism started to grow."

This is also my point, and this is something that even the most staunch pro-Israel supporters themselves agree with. RK 14:04, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)

BDM writes "The quote you had before is a minority viewpoint for the time and doesn't belong in the article when the majority viewpoint is hardly represented. If the history of Palestinian nationalism belongs in the article (not clear), that should be done properly and not by means of one or two misleading quotations."

I think you still don't understand my point. After all, that quote agrees with your point of view. Maybe I can try another clarification: I did not add his quote to claim that Palestinian Arabs were not interested in nationalism. Of course they were. Rather, I added that quote only to prove that Arabs admitted that Palestinian Arabs were not some sort of separate ethnicity or nationality. RK 14:04, 3 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Unfortunately you don't seem to have a concept of how history is conducted or of how it is properly written. A quote from a maverick with an ulterior motive (in this case, Syrian patronage) proves nothing. It doesn't matter whether it is correct or incorrect, it is still useless as evidence. There is a vast amount of genuine historical research on the Palestinian people that could be cited in place of sporadic nonsense. Start with the standard works of Porath and Muslih; have you read them? -- bdm
BDM, he might have been considered a maverick for his political views, but that does not mean that every statement he makes is false. His view on this particular issue was that of many other Arabs... and in fact it is the view of moderate and educuated Palestinian Arabs today. Not all Palestinians believe their own propaganda, and many of them understand that they are a new nationality in development. In any case, I am sympathetic to your concern that due to his political leanings, people might disregard the point being made. Fine; we can leave it out. I am only saying that this article should have some quotes by Arab sources which refute pseudo-historical revisionism. Would you like to offer any? RK 14:06, 4 Aug 2003 (UTC)
No, I am not prepared to play the quotations game that you seem to love so much. The only article I would be prepared to write would be one that tells a straight story as a narrative. Quotations only belong in unusual circumstances (only quotations from the main players in events are relevant and then rarely). Btw, I saw you defending Joan Peters in another place; this is positive proof that you know nothing about the subject, which is the conclusion I was tending towards. Actually you seem to be here purely for political purposes. People like you are the scourge of Wikipedia. -- bdm
I have been politely working with you in order to make Wikipedia together. Yet you always respond with personal attacks. Unless you want people to simpl revert every one of your changes, please learn to work with others, and control your anger. RK 14:40, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I'm not angry, and I'm perfectly willing to work with anyone who has the knowledge to write accurate and informative articles on mideast subjects. When I look around that section of Wikipedia, what I see is a small amount of good work that has been turned into a battleground by zealots who think they know a bit of history because they have a collection of "quotations" or read some trash like "From Time Immemorial". I'm not criticising only the zealots on your side of the fence, you just happenned to be the zealot around at the time. The zealots on other side aren't any better. The question in my mind is whether this is a permanent state of affairs that I'd be wasting my time trying to correct. -- bdm

Oh no, not another RK playground! Throughout the Mandate period there was a conflict between the the Palestinian nationalists and the pan-Arabists. This conflict continued until 1948 and to a much lesser extent even afterwards. Of course it is all too easy to find statements made by people on one side of that conflict and claim there was no other opinion. Scores of junk sites on the internet have done exactly that, for each side of said conflict. (But they don't do any actual research, they just copy off each other mistakes and all.) Wikipedia should strive for a higher standard. At a minimum we should expect writers to be at least a little informed, for example to have read a real history book on the subject such as the excellent book of Porath which RK cites but almost surely has never seen.

RK wrote (in the article, alas): Arabs who happened to live in Palestine denied that they had a unique Palestinian identity. The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (in Jerusalem, Feb. 1919) met for the purpose of selecting Palestinian Arab representative for the Paris Peace Conference. They adopted the following resolution: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds." (Yehoshua Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929-1939, vol. 2, London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1977, pp. 81-82.)
It is real chutzpah for RK to quote from a book called "Palestinian Arab National Movement" (Volume 2 even) in order to prove that there was no such thing. What RK doesn't tell us, probably because he doesn't know, is that the Palestinian nationalists had gained the upper hand by the next Congress (Dec 1920). They passed a resolution calling for an independent Palestine. Then they wrote a long letter to the League of Nations (which I have) about "Palestine, land of Miracles and the supernatural, and the cradle of religions", demanding, amongst other things, that a "National Government be created which shall be responsible to a Parliament elected by the Palestinian People, who existed in Palestine before the war." In this letter they even call themselves "Palestinians" (in which name they included Jews other than Zionists).

RK wrote (in the article, alas): According to testimony in British Peel Commission, local Arabs in the 1930s still did not have any sense of Palestinian identity; rather, they saw themselves as Syrians. "There is no such country {as Palestine}! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." (comments by Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi to the Peel Commission, Jerusalem Post, November 2, 1991)
but so you would expect the General Secretary of the minority Istiqlal party (the only significant Arab party in Palestine with a pan-Arab platform at that time) to say. What does this have to do with "local Arabs" in general? Of course it is true that "Syria" encompassed a much larger area before WW1 including most of Palestine other than Negev. However, it wasn't the fault of the Arabs that the area was divided and quite illogical to pick one of the parts and deny it characteristics that are not denied in the others.

I wonder how RK would react if someone littered the Zionism article with "admissions" from Jews that Jews were not a nation? Finding a collection of such quotes from around the time of the Balfour Declaration would be no problem at all. I guess RK would be upset and might even accuse the perpetrator of nasty motivations. He would probably be right, and I would for once agree with him. Why is it then that RK cannot see he is doing exactly the same thing? -- zero 09:10, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Please do not personalize this. I agree with you that some Arabs during the 1920s did call for the creation of an independent Palestinian Arab nation. However, I think we somehow have missed each other's point. I agree with every fact you just stated. I am not denying that in this time period a new phenomenon developed, and that some Arabs believed that Palestinian Arabs should create a new Arab nation. I was hoping to be clear that I was speaking about a different point: Most of these same Arabs did not claim that there was a distinct Palestinian Arab nationality and/or ethnicity, with its own culture and history significantly different from that of their surrounding Arab nations. There is a big differnece between admitting that a new nationalist movement was being created at the time (I admit this) and claiming that the Palestinians always had their own very distinct ethnicity, so much so that they saw themselves as some sort of separate nation (I deny this.) RK 23:34, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

No one denies that over time a Palestinian nationality has been created. I have been trying to counter, waht seems to me, a very different claim - the claim that such a nationality has been there all along. No matter how many times I have tried to make this distinction, somehow people keep mixing up these two related but distinct points. RK 23:34, 10 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, an Arab-American historian, stated "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not." (Testimony before the Anglo-American Committee , 1946) -- I removed this because I looked through the transcript of evidence given to the Anglo-American inquiry and couldn't find Hitti at all. I also tried the records of the 1937 Peel Commission and he isn't there either. Hitti might have said this sometime, but without a more sound reference this quotation is out. This example is symptomatic of the whole article, which any day now I am going to replace completely. --zero 10:47, 10 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Discussion

The term Palestinian is millenia old.

In the Arabic speaking world, Filastini has long been used to identify people from Palestine. Filastini is a "nisbah", a peculiar Arab/Muslim custom of using geographical nicknames to identify a persons origin. Thus amongst Muslims who will see the use of surnames such as "Baghdadi", "Andalusi", "Rumi", "Jawi". The famous mystic Rumi is known as such because he was born in Turkey (the old Arab word being "Rum").

Evidence for the use of filastini can be seen in the following article excerpt:

"The ascetic `Abdallah b. Muhayriz al-Jumahi al-Filastini who lived in Jerusalem (and probably died between 88-99/706/17) became seriously ill during the Byzantine summer expedition." http://www.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/IAS/HP-e2/eventreports/Lecker.html

11.49, Monday November 3, 2003 (GMT+8)

Not sure why this passage was deleted:

Before that date the state of Jordan acted as this legitimate representation. There are also Arabs in Jordan who still have not acquired Jordanian citizenship. Those Palestinians themselves don't consider Jordan a Palestinian state.

Which of the three points expressed here is disputed? --Uncle Ed 18:22, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The first sentence is meaningless because legitimate representation is not a defined concept. (Which competent body granted this legitimacy? Answer: none.) The second sentence is true but isn't connected to the first and the word "also" has no referrant. The third sentence is irrelevant to the article. Actually the Jordan=Palestine crap ought to be excised from this article in totality and I am sharpening my knife. --Zero 22:22, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)


A hopefully non-conflict creating proposal for an addition to the article: The historical origin of Palestinians. I know there is debate among Palestinians over this. (To the best of my knowledge,) some maintain a purely Arab descent, while others claim a Canaanite (yet still non-Jewish) descent. I would venture to say that Palestinians are descended (primarily) from Canaanites/Jews, Greeks and Arabs. If a paragraph is dedicated to this, it must give several different theories. I'm tired of facts being distorted in the name of conviction. --D.E. Cottrell 07:59, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This article's focus ought to be completely different. For what other ethnic group is most of the article devoted to examining the history of the name? This should be talking about (or at least linking to) Palestinian culture, cuisine, dialect, history, traditions... This needs a lot of work. - Mustafaa 18:32, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Definition of "Palestinian"

This was the intro paragraph:

A Palestinian is a native of Palestine.

Does this mean that there are Jewish "Palestinians"? How far back in history do you have to go to be an "indigenous people" as the link above says?

I don't think "indigenous people" or "native" is going to satisfy everyone. That's why I created an entirely separate article that deals with the 3 major ways the term "Palestinian" is used. --Uncle Ed 20:40, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, there are Jewish Palestinians - so the PLO calls them, anyway! I don't know if they accept that identity, but it is certainly used to describe Jews who immigrated to Palestine in pre-Zionist times. - Mustafaa 17:37, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What do we need a discussion of "Palestinian refugee" for here, when that has its own article? - Mustafaa 19:25, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm glad that the paragraph about ethnicity was deleted. I found it to be highly idiosyncratic. -- Dissident (Talk) 20:24, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

NPOV

Is this article's neutrality still under dispute? - Mustafaa 23:59, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a Palestinian. Show references to term "palestinian" pre-1967. sayyed_al_afghani Sayyed al afghani 00:32, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Regarding the article's neutrality, IMHO the following points should be addressed:

  • Instead of blaming Israel for all ills, shouldn't the article reflect the real reasons for misery of Palestinian refugees:
    • (a) inability or unwillingness of Arab leadership to compromise on any of numerous partitions,
    • (b) existential wars they waged on the Jewish state,
    • (c) using the refugees for blaming Israel or as a pawn in bargaining,
    • (d) legendary corruption of the PLO leaders.
  • Remember what late Abba Eban used to say, "The Palestinian leadership has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Despite of massive international aid (Aid to Palestinians Exceeds Marshall Plan Aid to Europe), not a single Palestinian refugee has been moved out of this status. Why?
  • IMHO, the article should mention the levels of genocidal (and self-destructing, BTW) incitement in the P. society. Results: YASSER ARAFAT AND THE PA CONDEMN A YOUNG GENERATION TO HATRED AND DEATH, 2003: 62% of Palestinians support suicide operations (81% in 2001, 24% in 1997).
  • Just as an example of successful refugee absorption program, perhaps it's worth to mention www.jimena-justice.org: "In 1945 there were nearly 900,000 Jews living in communities throughout the Arab world. Today, there are fewer than 8,000. Approximately 600,000 were absorbed by Israel".
  • There is already Palestinian refugee article. Why Palestinian#Palestinian refugees? --Humus sapiens|Talk 21:45, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I disagree with most of the above, but concur that the section Palestinian#Palestinian refugees does not belong in this article (as I stated previously). - Mustafaa 22:09, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The discussion seems to have stopped, now that the Palestinian refugees section has been put where it belongs. Is this article's neutrality still disputed? If no answer comes in the next day or so, I'll remove the tag. - Mustafaa 09:12, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

None has come, so I'm removing it. - Mustafaa 06:45, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

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