Talk:Palestinian exodus - Definition

I got the opposite feeling after reading it: it's pro-palestinian. Danibo

This article seems, at least at first glance, pro-Israeli. Let's take a closer look and try to balance it out. --Ed Poor

I agree. Uri suggested to merge this article with Palestine refugee (equally biased), which I support, so we have to work on two articles. Suggestion of an outline:

• short abstract what happened (carefully worded)
• a little bit of historical details about the war 1948 with the different flight and expulsion movements (If I trust Morris there happened both: spontaneous flight and direct expulsion)
• what happened after the war, confiscation of the property, conference of Lausanne, right of return, UN-resolutions, creation of UNRWA etc.
• at the end of the article a resumee of the ongoing debate:
  • Israeli view: flight encouraged by Arab leadership and surrounding Arab countries, mention of "New historians".
  • Arab view: systematic expulsion
  • Arab demand: granting of right of return
  • Israeli fear of the demographic consequences for Israel as a Jewish state

• second refugee wave 1967...

And as a basis for rewriting the article, I think we should adopt a view that it is totally normal human behaviour for civilians to move out of an area in a war. This is directed against extremist views and arguments on both sides "total systematic expulsion" vs. "but they left on their own free will!" which I consider both as rubbish and which should be clearly marked as views. In history there is no "one single truth". --Elian

Well, certainly. People who flee a war zone are usually called "refugees" because they are seeking refuge from danger. But I don't know if the "exodus" and "refugee" articles ought to be completely merged, as this would blur the distinction (if any) between non-combatants fleeing a battle zone and migrants lured by politicians' promises.

It might be easier to say how many people went, where they started from and ended up, and when all this happened -- then to account for why they moved.

I tried one time to find this out and ended up with "there is no one single true answer". I think we should avoid a discussion of the "why". --Elian

As for who has a "right of return", that is another kettle of fish (hm, I shoudn't have skipped breakfast - it's another food metaphor!). I propose right of return as a separate article. --Ed Poor

I support Elian's proposal, it is realistic and sensible to all sides. I think that we should leave right of return, though, as it'll make no sense to re-write the whole introduction about who Palestinian refugees are. --Uri

I wrote a short paragraph in Right of return. If nobody objects we could regard the article as finished and work on merging exodus and refugees. Maybe it would also be a good idea to protect pages where all parties agree as non-biased, so we don't have to do the sisyphus-work of removing and rewriting over and over new added biased statements. What do you think about it? --Elian

The quote from Le Monde Diplomatique is quite interesting in the regard that it conveys only a part of Benny Morris's conclusions. Elsewhere, he writes that exiling Arabs was never a leadership policy. I therefore opt for the shortening of the quote and adding mentioning of his conclusions from the Righteous Victims. --Uri

The article makes apprearance of that the Israeli version is the commonly agreed upon version. That is, the propaganda that says the Palestinians was called out by Arabs. That is not right. --BL

added quite a lot. now the other side is at least represented. --BL

This is one of Martha's edits that I'm going to leave. It seemed considerably POV before, maybe less so now. -- Zoe

I removed the section quoting this webpage (http://mondediplo.com/1997/12/Palestine). It seems a bit beyond fair use to quote so much -- sannse 07:04 Mar 29, 2003 (UTC)

Soon after the cease fire Israel adopted a unique law that allows it to take over land if the owner is vacant for a certain amount of years (it is the only country in the world with such a law). This allowed Israel to settle the millions of immigrants arriving.

-- That's not true, two different things are being confused. One is that a type of land holding inherited from the Ottoman system (called miri) was a type of perpetual lease where the land reverted to the state if it wasn't worked for a three consecutive years. That was not a new Israeli law though much land was seized using it (a practice that continues in the West Bank). The other thing was the Israeli "Absentee Property" law which passed the property of "absentees" to a state official (effectively making it available for Jewish use). An absentee was defined as anyone not in their normal place of residence in Palestine on a particular date, even if they were just in a nearby village. I'll correct this part of the page after I check a reference book or two for the details. -- zero UTC 14:00 7 Aug 2003

Shouldn't this page be combined with the one on Palestinian refugees? They seem to be precisely the same topic. Also, this article makes it seem as if all Israeli historians suddenly have decided that Israeli is almost totally at fault for the large Arab exodus However, these Israel "new historians", many of whom have a leftist political agenda, are not the sole voice of Israel academia, and some of them have been accused of bad scholarship on occasion as well. Let us be careful, and not fall for the standard Wikipedia bias - being politically left-wing doesn't make one automatically right, and being centrist or right-wing doesn't make on automatically wrong. I would like to look into this issue further. RK 22:56, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This page is about the creation and reasons behind the creation of the 750,000 Palestinians in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Palestinian refugees is more about that group of people and the second and smaller refugee wave in 1967. Both topics are so broad that they deserve separate articles imho. You are welcome to mention other Israeli historians, provided they are printed in other languages then Hebrew ofcourse. :-) BL 23:49, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I replaced the Morris quotation by a longer version, and also mentioned Rabin's famous admission that the Arabs of Lydda and Ramle were expelled by force. (Morris quoted the actual expulsion order, btw). I also slightly cleaned up the part about abandoned property but it is still pretty sketchy--I'm not sure if it belongs on this page. I also deleted "Recent studies have showed that 80-90% of the refugees from arabic villages were expelled by the israeli army while the remaining 10-20% fled because of the fightings." because it has no source and I think every contentious thing on this page should be sourced. Finally, I don't like the last paragraph but didn't try changing it yet. The actual situation is more complex than that. -- zero 12:38, 24 Aug 2003 (UTC) In regards to all issues relating to Israel and Arab nations, and especially with regards to Palestinians, there is a tendency to hold that Israel's "New Historians" are somehow to be much more trusted than others. Just a reminder - the same rules of scrutiny that applied to traditional historians, also should apply to historians on the left. Consider the article Benny Morris and the Reign of Error (http://www.meforum.org/article/466), by Efraim Karsh, professor of Mediterranean studies at King's College, University of London, and editor of Israel Affairs. In regards to israeli "New Historian" Benny Morris, he writes:

So successful has this effort been that what began as propaganda has become received dogma. It is striking to see how popularity has widely come to be equated with veracity, as if the most commonly held position must by definition be the correct one. I personally learned this when some critics rejected my exposure of the New Historians methods not on scholarly grounds but because my work ran counter to the popular view. Thus Joel Beinin of Stanford University questioned my conclusions on the grounds that "many of the arguments of the `new historians' are widely accepted today in liberal Israeli intellectual circles." ...I shall focus on a key charge: the claim by Benny Morris of Ben-Gurion University, a leading New Historian, that the Zionist and Israeli establishments have systematically falsified archival source material to conceal the Jewish state's less-than-immaculate conception...Morris engages in five types of distortion: he misrepresents documents, resorts to partial quotes, withholds evidence, makes false assertions, and rewrites original documents.

Benny Morris and the Reign of Error (http://www.meforum.org/article/466)

Interestingly, Benny Morris is no longer anti-Zionist (if he ever was one), and he no longer holds to the rosy view of the Palestinian Authority he once had. He has repudiated many of his old views on this subject.

Israel's Freedom Fight (http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~steing/conflict/oped/israelsfreedomfight.htm)

The stuff just added (which I am going to revert when I complete these comments) is nothing other than a standard set of discredited propaganda distortions that has been going around for decades. I am confident that this anon editor has never seen any of the sources he claims to be quoting. Nor have any of the hundreds of web pages and assorted articles and books (just don't call them history books) that present them.

I'll illustrate the nature of these "quotations" using the example from Edward Atiyah. The sentence in Roman text is what was quoted and the part in italics is what immediately follows in the same source.

This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to reenter and retake possession of their country. But it was also, and in many parts of the country, largely due to a policy of deliberate terrorism and eviction followed by the Jewish commanders in the areas they occupied, and reaching its peak of brutality in the massacre of Deir Yassin.

There were two good reasons why the Jews should follow such a policy. First, the problem of harbouring within the Jewish State a large and disaffected Arab population had always troubled them. They wanted an exclusively Jewish state, and the presence of such a population that could never be assimilated, that would always resent its inferior position under Jewish rule and stretch a hand across so many frontiers to its Arab cousins in the surrounding countries, would not only detract from the Jewishness of Israel, but also constitute a danger to its existence. Secondly, the Israelis wanted to open the doors of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration. Obviously, the fewer Arabs there were in the country the more room there would be for Jewish immigrants. If the Arabs could be driven out of the land in the course of the fighting, the Jews would have their homes, their lands, whole villages and towns, without even having to purchase them. And this is exactly what happened.
--Atiyah, The Arabs, p183.

Reading the whole passage makes it clear that Atiyah's opinion was actually close to the opposite of what we were intended to believe. Whoever extracted the first sentence alone (not this anon editor who never thought to check the source) did so with the deliberate intention of deceiving his or her readers.

More of this comment to come later. --Zero 03:12, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

All true, but please do not just revert it. Those quotations has to be confronted and there has to be some kind of "myth debunking" section or something. I'm not sure how to write that NPOV but otherwise those quotes will just return every two weeks. BL 14:02, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I don't like myth debunking sections because they attract people who want to add to them endlessly and in the end the article starts to look like a chat-room transcript. In the interests of "NPOV" people will want to add counter-quotes and counter-debunkings. For example, someone might want to add things like this:

I don't suggest that we should trample on others' rights, but one must call a spade a spade: Zionism and rights don't always go hand-in-hand. The very establishment of this state is an affront to the Arabs' rights. Arabs lived in Jaffa. They didn't leave; they were expelled. We went into the villages and said 'Get out.' And they got out. Yes, it's important for me and others that this state be a democratic one, but you still have to consider the difference between ourselves and the other countries and remember that democracy is not an end in itself but rather an instrument. Zionism takes precedence over everything.
-- Limor Livnat, member of the Likud Central Committee, quoted in Tikkun, Sep/Oct 1991, p14.

Sorry, couldn't resist;-). But seriously, we should stomp on this idea that history can be reduced to a series of carefully selected quotations. I want to record here what is wrong with these particular quotations so that the explanation can be referred to easily in the future. Incidentally, one of the quotations is going to stay with some modifications because it raises a serious issue that needs an answer; can you guess which one? --Zero 14:16, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Ok let me rephrase what I meant. In itself quotes like "We will smash the country with our guns..." not very relevant. They don't tell anything about what actually happened. But I don't think writing about history is just writing about what happened but also write about what others have written happened. Otherwise the article shouldn't even need to mention the "called out-theory". If you google for some of the quotes you'll find hundreds of pages defending the Israeli thesis by using them, even some governmental sites. That is, I think, interesting and worthy of a whole topic on itself imho. And I'll be damned if the quote in the question isn't King Abdullah's. :-) BL 05:45, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Next, a quick look at what Habib Issa said in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). Who is Habib Issa? The answer is that I don't know, and it seems that nobody else knows either. Some web sites claim he was Azzam Pasha's successor - he wasn't. Years ago I looked in the indexes of about 100 books of Middle East history and none of them mentioned "Habib Issa". Presumably Al Hoda identified him, but the collector of this "quotation" chose to remove that information. If he isn't anyone significant, why is his testimony of what Azzam Pasha is supposed to have said interesting? Anyway, why is there no contemporary evidence of what Azzam is supposed to have said? Why do we need to quote from some unknown person in an American Lebanese newspaper years later? Enough said! --Zero 14:09, 20 Oct 2003 (UTC)

One more quotation for today, Monsignor Hakim:
Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al Janub (August 16, 1948): "The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
Read it carefully and you will realise that the quotation says nothing about why the refugees left. All it says is that the refugees hoped that they could return soon with the help of the Arab armies. They were mistaken. Hakim has confirmed this interpretation and clarified his opinion of why the refugees left:

There is nothing in this statement to justify the construction which many propagandists had put on it...
At no time did I state that the flight of the refugees was due to the orders, explicit or implicit, of their leaders, military or political, to leave the country... On the contrary, no such orders were ever made... Such allegations are sheer concoctions and falsifications.
The truth is that the flight was primarily due to the terror with which the Arab population of Palestine were struck in consequences of atrocities committed by the Jews... These brutalities were the cause of the flight of the inhabitants of Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem.
But as soon as hostilities began between Israel and the Arab States, it became the settled policy of the Government to drive away the Arabs...
- George Hakim, Archbishop of Galilee, quoted in E. B. Childers, The Wordless Wish, in I. Abu-Lughod (ed) Transformation of Palestine, Northwestern University Press (1971), 197-198.

In 1947, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri is quoted as having said, "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."
-- That one is supposed to appear in a book published in Arabic in 1952. I'm not going to try locating it, because it is perfectly likely that Nuri Said said something like that. However, just suggesting to someone to move their families to a safe place is sensible advice and irrelevant to this issue. I don't think he would have said "safe areas" if he meant "other countries" anyway. --Zero 14:56, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Incidentally, this same 1952 book is the first printed source for the claim that there was a major massacre of Arabs at Tantura. --Zero 11:43, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Jordan's King Abdullah,
writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem: "The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue."
--This does not appear in the edition of Abdullah's memoirs that I have (American Council of Learned Societies, 1954), but it's plausible that extra material might be in the 1978 Longman edition. The meaning of the quotation (assuming it is genuine) is clear from the memoirs. Adbullah is scathing in his attack on the other Arab states, who he says "looked idly on" in 1948 rather than giving full support to the military effort. He blames the Arab states for the refugee problem in the sense that the Palestinians would not have been "uprooted" if the Arab states had united in a serious effort to stop the "Jewish aggression" by military force. The "false and unsubstantiated promises" were that the Arab states would do what they said they would do. This is hardly the interprettation that the collector of this quotation wanted us to make. --Zero 14:56, 22 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Open questions

How many were there in 1890

About 431,800 arabs and 42,900 jews and 57,400 Christians. (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

How many were there in 1920

In 1915, approximately 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs. According to the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000, while the Arabs numbered 643,000. Thus, the Arab population continued to grow exponentially even while that of the Jews stagnated. However, throughout the British occupation, Arab immigration was unrestricted. In 1930, the Hope Simpson Commission, sent from London to investigate the 1929 Arab riots, said the British practice of ignoring the uncontrolled illegal Arab immigration from Egypt, Transjordan and Syria had the effect of displacing the prospective Jewish immigrants. The British Governor of the Sinai from 1922-36 observed: “This illegal immigration was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Transjordan and Syria, and it is very difficult to make a case out for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining states could not be kept from going in to share that misery.” The Peel Commission reported in 1937 that the “shortfall of land is...due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.” (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

The figures for 1915 are incorrect. See McCarthy "The Population of Palestine". For 1914: 602,000 Muslims, 81,000 Christians, 38,700 Jewish Ottoman subjects and 20,000 or slightly more Jews who were not Ottoman subjects. The claim attributed to the Hope Simpson report does not appear there. In fact all the many British reports that considered Arab illegal immigration concluded that it was very small. The last sentence is irrelevant to the immigration question. --Zero 02:13, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

In response this text was copied from the Hope Simpson report (End of chapter X):

(Start Quote) Importation of other than Jewish labour.—Further, it is clear that if unemployment is a valid reason for preventing Jewish immigration, it is also a reason for preventing importation of labour of other nationalities. At the time of writing, even with marked unemployment among Arabs, Egyptian labour is being employed in certain individual cases, and its ingress has been the subject of adverse comment in the Press.

Prevention of illicit immigration.—Finally, in closing the front door, steps should be taken to ensure that the backdoor should not be kept open for would-be immigrants into Palestine. The Chief Immigration Officer has brought to notice that illicit immigration through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material. This question has already been discussed. It may be a difficult matter to ensure against this illicit immigration, but steps to this end must be taken if the suggested policy is adopted, as also to prevent unemployment lists being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania.

Arab unemployment as a political pawn.—The question of un-employment and immigration has been treated solely from the economic standpoint. It has immediate political repercussions with which this enquiry is not concerned, but which must receive consideration from His Majesty's Government in arriving at a decision. Two of these repercussions will require particular attention :

First, Arab unemployment is liable to be used as a political pawn. Arab politicians are sufficiently astute to realise at once what may appear an easy method of blocking that immigration to which they are radically averse, and attempts may and probably will be made to swell the list of Arab unemployed with names which should not be there, or perhaps to ensure the registration of an unemployed man in the books of more than one exchange. It should not prove difficult to defeat this manoeuvre.

Article 6 of the Mandate and its effect on immigration.—Second, there is the repercussion on the policy of the Jewish National Home. It is evident that any interference with freedom of immigration is a limitation to the admission of Jews who desire to take part in the local constitution of that Home. Article 6 of the Mandate, how-ever, directs that the rights and position of other sections of the population shall not be prejudiced by Jewish immigration. Clearly, in cases in which immigration of Jews results in preventing the Arab population obtaining the work necessary for its maintenance, it is the duty of the Mandatory Power, under the Mandate, to reduce, or, if necessary, to suspend, such immigration, until immigration will not affect adversely the opportunities of the Arab for employment. Elsewhere in this report the exclusion of Arab labour from the land purchased by the Jewish National Fund has been discussed, and it is pointed out that this exclusion is liable to confirm a belief that it is the intention of the Jewish authorities to displace the Arab population from Palestine by progressive stages. This belief, which, however unfounded it may be, is unfortunately very widely held, will be confirmed when it is realised that the immigration of Jewish labour is permitted while the Arab cannot earn his daily bread. On general grounds, therefore, as well as in order to carry out the terms of Article 6 of the Mandate, it is necessary that the existence of Arab unemployment should be taken into considera-tion when determining the number of Jews to be admitted at the time of preparation of the Labour Schedule. (End Quote)

From here it would seem the that immigration/population game was being played by both sides. The Palestinian exodus article only mentions one side of it. (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

Nothing in the extract above says that Arab immigration was large, nor that it was of significant economic consequence. The symmetry you speak of did not exist. The illicit immigration across land borders was mostly Jewish. The "front door" is immigration by sea which was almost entirely Jewish. The report is saying that if Jewish immigration by sea is restricted then other avenues will have to be closed as well. Only as an afterthought does it add that controlling the other borders will have the added advantage of restricting Arab immigration from Transjordan. As I said before, all the British reports that investigated Arab immigration concluded that it was a minor issue, quite unlike Jewish immigration. Take the Peel Report for example: "... unlike the Jewish, the rise [of Arab population] has been due in only a slight degree to immigration" [page 125]. --Zero 02:59, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

So you would say that this page of articles The Refugees (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf14.html) has little or no merit to it. I think that it is well documented and gives a better and clearer picture of what actually did happen. The same applies to the rest of the site. (unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 11)

Some of the articles at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org are quite good. The page you mention, on the other hand, is one of the worst I've seen. All full of strawmen and distortions. --Zero 01:37, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

How many people left?

between 1,000 and 1,000,000 -- everyone agree with this range?

Depending on estimate, 700-850,000.

Why did they leave?

• Forced at gunpoint (immediate danger)

Yes

• Scared of being caught in crossfire (future danger)

Yes

Where did they go?

• Gaza

25%

• West Bank

39%

• Jordan

<10%

• other - please specify

Lebanon 13%. A smaller amount came to Iraq, Egypt and Transjordan. Mostly middle and upper-class families that had money to spend on travel. Most refugees fled by foot and therefore didn't get very far. Numbers from my head so dont take it to seriously.

How have they lived?

• lives of splendor and freedom - no one says THIS, right?

Some has ofcourse. There was not only poor people in Palestine. Jordan's king's wife, for example, is a Palestinian refugee.

• ordinary lives, but they'd rather go back

It seems that most does very much want to go back. See the guestbooks on www.allthatremains.com for examples.

• hard lives, but they have schools and jobs and property

Depends on where they ended. Most of Gaza is a refugee camp and so is also southern Lebanon. The West Bank is a "real society", atleast it was 10 years ago.

• squalid tents, malnutrition, disease

Yes.

(unsigned addition by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9, 2004): (They lived like that before, and they continue to live that way. This manner of living is not limited to Israel either. The living conditions of the arab populations in other arab states is the same.)

BL 15:45, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Usually I don't make full reverts since such things often ignite edit wars. But in this case I think it was the best thing to do:

...events surrounding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

The name "1948 Arab-Israeli War" is a subtle POV name. First of all the war lasted from 1947 to 1949. And it wasn't "Arab-Israeli" before May 15, 1948 when Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon invaded Palestine. And it certainly wasn't "Israeli" before that point either.

Perhaps not other war in history has produced such a long lasting refugee problem as the events surrounding the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Therefore other factors must have played a role forming and preserving the refugee problem.

The "preservation" of the refugee problem is off topic for this article that deals with the refugee flight 1947-1949. And even though other wars has produced numerically larger refugees, no other wars (that I know of) produced sugh a massive refugee flight compared to the population (90-95%).

yet areas such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and its surroundings a Jewish majority was established by 1931.

The city Jerusalem had a Jewish majority, the Jersualem district had not. BL 20:47, Feb 3, 2004 (UTC)

Regarding recent edits:

1. Writing "Palestine", with the quotes is a cheap propaganda ploy.
2. It was not sparseley populated and underdeveloped. In comparsian to other Arab countries it was densely populated and well developed. The main reason for that was that the British invested alot of money in Palestine due to its strategic location.
3. 12 counted cases of rape. Historians therefore assume that many, many more took place because both the perpeutrator and the victim would prefer the crime to remain unknown.
4. I thought we had dealt with the "the Arabs told them to leave" myth properly before. Guess I was wrong.

BL 14:26, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

Nakba

While this page is protected, a parallel page Nakba is being written up about the same subject. An initial attempt to turn it into a redirect was reverted. Can this be discussed?? JFW | T@lk 01:03, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Arabs never developed the land, they wouldn't fight for the land. The independence war was fought primarily with Israel's neighbors not with the Arabs who lived there. Also, a lot of them had recently come for work and so then left when things got too hot. It doesn't sound like they ever had much ties and therefore claim to the land.

The most important issue is from whom did all the Arabs who did own land in Israel buy it from? I would like to see deeds of sale from all the Jews who owned the land before the Romans expelled them.

(unsigned by 67.130.2.26, Aug 9)

Expelled? The truth is the left for similar reasons that the Palestinians did. The difference being this was about 2000 years ago whereas the Palestinians left about 50 years ago. The Jews made a successful living in many other countries. Which is something the Palestinians have not been able or willing to do.

Sadly, for a number of reasons, they were massacared by the Nazis during WW2. It is perhaps understadably that they want to form there own land. However it is not acceptable for them to steal land from others in doing do. Unfortunetely, this happened and Israel clearly should not be destroyed now. There are clearly two options. Give a decent amount of land back and pay them for the lost land, houses and property or leave and find a new land. No one can deny that the Arabs who fought Israels creation were doing it for xenophobic and racist reasons. However, similarly no one can deny that the Israelis took land which already belong to others in the formation of Israel.

Unprotected

I've unprotected the page. I encourage everybody to discuss changes, avoid revert wars, be civil, and try to reach consensus so that the page does not need to be protected again. Snowspinner 14:12, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)