Talk:1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine

This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Change to lead to be discussed and reviewed

I changed the lead from:

[...] demanding Arab independence and the end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases with the stated goal of establishing a "Jewish National Home".

to

The movement sought independence from British colonial rule and the end of the British authorities' support for Zionism, which sought the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine by means of mass migration and displacement of the local Arab population.

- IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 03:29, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Edit Request: Change biased text

Please, change

The movement sought independence from British colonial rule and the end of the British authorities' support for Zionism, which sought the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine by means of mass migration and displacement of the local Arab population.

to

demanding Arab independence and the end of the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases with the stated goal of establishing a "Jewish National Home".

The current version is:

1) biased. Is sounds like the Grand Replacement conspiracy theory.

2) incorrect. Only some types of Zionism seek displacement of Arabs. Socialist Zionism, the most popular at that time, demanded one state for Arabs and Jews.

3) Also, the current version doesn't clearly tell the exact aims of Arabs (end migration and ban land purchases).

Thank you! CEO of NYC (talk) 14:14, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

All of the early Zionist leaders explicitly stated that they were going to replace the indigenous population, and transfer it elsewhere. This was done openly, not conspiratorially. But I suggest you read Matthew Hughes, Britain’s Pacification of Palestine: The British Army, the Colonial State, and the Arab Revolt, 1936–1939, Cambridge University Press 2019 ISBN 978-1- 107- 10320-7, starting with its incipit:

'The Arab revolt from 1936 to 1939 – al-Thawra al-Kubra, ‘the Great Revolt’ in Arabic – was a popular uprising by Palestinians battling British Mandate rule in Palestine and Jewish immigration to the country.' p.1

From the second aliyah onwards, socialist Zionism implemented the substitution wherever possible of Arab labour with Jewish labour recruited from the immigrants. It was intrinsically ethnosocialist, despite a scattering of nice statements.Nishidani (talk) 17:09, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Not done. Also the requested edit offers no sourcing. Selfstudier (talk) 17:27, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I tried to remove "sought the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine by means of mass migration and displacement of the local Arab population," but was reverted. However, I think it should be removed. It's POV, and it's not necessary for the summary of this article. Also, it's an oversimplification of what Zionism was or is. First of all, there were many strains of Zionism and it's not at all clear that displacement was sought, as CEO of NYC said, the dominant type of Zionism was labor Zionism at the time. Andre🚐 18:41, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

While it is true that there were many strains of Zionism, the revolt was against the strain that was mainstream in Palestine at the time (as perceived by the Palestinians). The existence of other strains that had minor influence is irrelevant. Zero^talk 10:37, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

False information in lede

In the lede for this article, it states, "the end of the British authorities' support for Zionism, which sought the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, whose concomitant effect was to marginalize and displace the Arab majority". To this, it cites a single source. However, here is a non-exhaustive list of sources that disproves that claim. (Thank you to DancingOwl for the original table)

Table

Source	full quote	time	"as many Jews"	"as few Arabs"
Cohen 2017	P. 75: “Some historians, such as Ilan Pappé (2006) and Nur Masalha (1992), claim that the Zionist movement from the very beginning sought to expel Arabs from the Jewish national homeland, and that in 1948 the Jewish military forces followed an existing plan to implement this goal. One source that Pappé (2006) uses to support this argument in his book is a widespread survey of the Arab villages undertaken by the Haganah’s intelligence services between the end of the 1930s and the eve of the 1948 war. This does not, in my opinion, constitute an irrefutable evidence base, as armies are known to prepare contingency plans for worst-case scenarios without intending to implement them unless forced to do so. I would argue that the Zionist leadership had considered several possible scenarios and that an all-out war was only one of them." P. 77: “In my view, it would not be unrealistic to deduce that the Zionist leadership prepared itself – among other options – for a peaceful implementation of the partition resolution and for the existence of a significant Arab minority in the Jewish state. Moreover, in such a scenario, there were elements within the Jewish leadership who pushed toward improving Arab conditions and Arab– Jewish relations in the new state. Such an analysis would become even more plausible if we consider a parallel committee that was established by the Yishuv leadership to deal with the Jewish settlements situated in areas designated to be incorporated into the Arab state. This view should not come as a surprise, as it goes hand in hand with what remained official Zionist policy for years. In 1943, i.e., after the Jewish Agency had adopted the idea of a Jewish state as an urgent political demand, Ben-Gurion said that the Zionist aspiration was to reach a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel in the shortest period possible." p. 78 "One should bear in mind, though, that the democratic, equality-oriented, inclusive position was not the only one considered by Zionist activists. As was suggested by Masalha (1992), Morris (1987), and other scholars, many preferred a state without Arabs or with as small a minority as possible, and plans for population transfers were considered by Zionist leaders and activists for years. However, in the post–World War II political context, the Zionist leadership was prepared to accept (though not happily) a large Arab minority in the Jewish state and its declared position was that it would enjoy civil equality, collective rights, and the allocation of resources as outlined by the UN Partition Plan"	"from the very beginning" and "for years" are not Cohen's own claims, but are attributed to Pappe/Masalha/Morris, and most of the article is dedicated to critically assessing their claims	N the goal is formulated as "Jewish majority", not "as many Jews"	? Cohen disputes Pappe/Masalha claims about existing plan to expel. He does recognize the fact the having a large Arab minority was not "ideal', as far as Zionist leadership was concerned, but at the same time points out preparations for existence of such large minority.
Lustick & Berkman 2017	pp. 47–48, "As Ben-Gurion told one Palestinian leader in the early 1930s, 'Our final goal is the independence of the Jewish people in Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan River, not as a minority, but as a community numbering millions" (Teveth 1985:130). Ipso facto, this meant Zionism's success would produce an Arab minority in Palestine, no matter what its geographical dimensions.";	early 1930s	N the goal is formulated as majority "numbering millions", not "as many Jews as possible"	N "Arab minority", not "as few Arabs as possible"
Morris 2004	p. 588, "But the displacement of Arabs from Palestine or from the areas of Palestine that would become the Jewish State was inherent in Zionist ideology and, in microcosm, in Zionist praxis from the start of the enterprise. The piecemeal eviction of tenant farmers, albeit in relatively small numbers, during the first five decades of Zionist land purchase and settlement naturally stemmed from, and in a sense hinted at, the underlying thrust of the ideology, which was to turn an Arab-populated land into a State with an overwhelming Jewish majority" p. 44: “Hence, if during the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century Zionist advocacy of transfer was uninsistent, low-key and occasional, by the early 1930s a full-throated near-consensus in support of the idea began to emerge among the movement’s leaders. Each major bout of Arab violence triggered renewed Zionist interest in a transfer solution.” p. 59: “The bouts of Zionist reflection about and espousal of transfer usually came not out of the blue but in response to external factors or initiatives: In the early 1930s, Zionist meditation on the idea of transfer was a by-product of Arab violence and the frustration of efforts to persuade the British to allow Zionist settlement in Transjordan; in the late 1930s, it was triggered by the Arab revolt and the Peel Commission’s recommendation to transfer the Arab population out of the area designated for Jewish statehood;”	"inherent" or "underlying thrust"≠ explicit "want", therefore temporality of "want" is not defined in the currently used quote On the other hand, two additional quotes from p. 44 and p. 59 point to early 1930s as the time when such explicit near-consensual "want" began to form	N the goal is formulated as "overwhelming Jewish majority", not "as many Jews as possible"	N - "piecemeal eviction" or "displacement" ≠ "as few Arabs as possible" - claiming they are equivalent would be SYNTH.
Morris 2009	p. 351 " the idea of transfer was never adopted as part of the Zionist movement's platform, nor as part of the programme or platform of any of the main Zionist parties, not in the nineteenth century and not in the twentieth century. And, in general, the Zionist leaders looked to massive Jewish immigration, primarily from Russia and Europe, as the means of establishing and then assuring a Jewish majority in Palestine or whatever part of it was to be earmarked for Jewish statehood.	until 1929	N the goal is formulated as "a Jewish majority"	N Jewish majority was expected to be established through massive Jewish immigration, not "transfer"
Laqueur 2009	p. 232: “...the idea of a population transfer was never official Zionist policy. Ben Gurion emphatically rejected it, saying that even if the Jews were given the right to evict the Arabs they would not make use of it. Most thought at that time that there would be sufficient room in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs following the industrialisation of the country and the introduction of intensive methods of agriculture…”	pre-WWI period		N mainstream rejection of transfer proposals "sufficient room in Palestine for both Jews and Arabs"
Ther 2014	p. 191: “The extent to which the Zionists advanced the idea of population transfers during World War II is much disputed in the secondary literature. Palestinian authors such as Nur Masalha and advocates of “new history” in Israel have supported the argument that the Zionists had a master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from the start. There is little evidence to support this claim.”	WWII		? This source casts doubt on the claims about "master plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine", which is closely related to the "as few Arabs as possible" claim
Heller 2006	p. 573: “In spite of its realistic base we see a two-fold weakness in Morris’s thesis. First, it goes back to Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism, as the supposed creator of the idea of transfer. In reality, like everybody else in European politics in his day, Herzl was ignorant of the existence of Arab nationalism. At one point he noted briefly that transfer of the poor native population was possible for economic reasons, only to reject it a little later…" P. 574-575: “...one must conclude that it was the partition plan that was at the top on the Zionist agenda, and not transfer, even though both plans were inspired by the Peel Commission… ‘The fundamental dimension refers to the principles which determine the final goals and grand vistas in which the ideology is to be realized, while the operative dimension concerns the principles which guide concrete political actions’. I argue that both transfer and partition were expressions of ‘operative ideology’ not of ‘fundamental ideology’. Arab ethnic cleansing was therefore not more than an option of last resort in the event of war." P. 584 “Morris’s concept of transfer of the Arabs as the focus of Zionist decision making has no basis in political reality. “			N Heller disputes the framing of "transfer" (which is closely related to the "as few Arabs as possible" claim) as one of Zionist core goals
Galnoor 1995.	pp. 179-180 “The commission investigated the possibility of voluntary populations and land exchanges and the prospects of finding solutions for those who would be moved and reached the conclusion that it is "impossible to assume that the minority problem will be solved by a voluntary transfer of population." Incidentally, the commission also concluded that the Jews opposed forced transfer. Transfer as a concrete political possibility never exceeded the bounds of the 1937 royal commission report - it was born and buried there. It was not even mentioned in the United Nations partition plan of 1947. Had transfer not been included in the Peel commission report, it would not have been placed on the political agenda of the Zionist movement, even though the idea itself had been mentioned occasionally in the past.”			N According to Galnor, transfer wasn't seriously considered by Zionist leadership either before Peel Commission's proposal or after it, and it wasn't an inherent part of mainstream Zionist thinking.
Karsh 2010	p. 5: “...the recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British mandate and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the “new historians,” paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record, and one that is completely at odds with the anti-Israel caricature that is so often the order of the day. They reveal … that the claim of premeditated dispossession is not only baseless but the inverse of the truth; and that far from being the hapless victims of a predatory Zionist assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who, from the early 1920s onward, and very much against the wishes of their own constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate the Jewish national revival which culminated in the violent attempt to abort the UN partition resolution. Had these leaders, and their counterparts in the neighboring Arab states, accepted the resolution, there would have been no war and no dislocation in the first place, for the simple reason that the Zionist movement was amenable both to the existence of a substantial non-Jewish minority in the prospective Jewish state on an equal footing, and to the two-state solution, raised for the first time in 1937 by a British commission of inquiry and reiterated by the partition resolution.”			N "the Zionist movement was amenable ...to the existence of a substantial non-Jewish minority in the prospective Jewish state "
Gorny 2006	p. 6: “Therefore, national values such as return to the soil, Jewish labor, the renaissance of Hebrew culture, and the aspiration to a Jewish majority became political fundamentals in Zionism... Zionist policy from Herzl’s time to the establishment of the State of Israel had three dimensions… The second dimension, the intercommunal, included Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine in all their senses. In an attempt to work out joint arrangements, if only partial and provisional, that would allow them to coexist with the Arab population of the country, the Zionists aspired to cooperation in municipal government, an arrangement for relations between Jewish and Arab labor organizations, general agrarian reform, and other matters. The third dimension was reflected in the Zionist Movement’s political plans and its ideas for the shaping of fair and enlightened relations between Jews and Arabs, who were embroiled in struggle for the same piece of land. By the very fact of having such plans, the movement signaled its intention to replace side-by-side existence with coexistence." p. 102: “In his background remarks to the proposal, Jabotinsky based himself solely on examples of federative regimes that had passed the test of political durability and met human and social moral standards. He disputed the argument that the Arabs of Palestine would become a nationally oppressed group after they became a minority of two million amid five million Jews, as his proposal envisaged.” (description of Jabotinsky’s 1940 constitution proposal)		N "aspiration to a Jewish majority"	N "the Zionists aspired to cooperation" "Zionist Movement’s political plans and its ideas for the shaping of fair and enlightened relations between Jews and Arabs" constitution proposal envisioning two million Arabs in future state - double their number in 1940, when the proposal was written
Rubin 2019	p. 497: "Jabotinsky’s commitment to minority rights in Europe also shaped his outlook on the future of Palestine. From 1917 until the outbreak of the Second World War, Jabotinsky envisioned a majority Jewish state in Palestine with elaborate guarantees for the protection of the Arab minority. This vision was premised on a major moral leap that characterized many Zionist leaders – conceiving of Palestine’s Arab majority as a future minority subject to minority protections" p. 506 "...Jabotinsky also rejected the plan on moral grounds, fiercely opposing the idea of transferring the Arab population from Palestine. Jabotinsky underscored this point in several letters and speeches from 1937..." p. 508 "Zionist leaders had mocked Zangwill’s proposal for the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine during the First World War"	Jabotinsky's position until the outbreak of WWII	N "a majority Jewish state"	N "elaborate guarantees for the protection of the Arab minority" "fiercely opposing the idea of transferring the Arab population from Palestine" "mocked Zangwill’s proposal for the expulsion of Arabs from Palestine"
Penslar 2023	p. 67 "There is a deep divide, however, between scholars who do and do not conceive of Zionism as a variety of colonialism. Debates about virtually every aspect of the history of Zionism and Israel boil down to clashing conceptions of the essence of the Zionist project—whether it has been one of homecoming and seeking asylum or one of colonial settlement and expropriation. Two key questions run through the debate over Zionism and colonialism. First, is Zionism inherently inclusive or separatist, open to the coterminous exercise of Jewish and Arab self-determination within historic Palestine, or determined to drive the indigenous Palestinians out of the land?..."			N points out that the narrative of "as few Arabs as possible" is just one side of the scholarly debate about Zionism and is far from being a consensus

Pyramids09 (talk) 09:27, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Using quotes this large from published works probably strays into copyright violation territory. It would be well advised to trim the quotations down to the essentials. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:52, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Doubtful, it's clearly fair use for academic and critical commentary. As far as the merits of the table, it looks promising, though I haven't perused it closely yet. It's the same or similar table to the one from Talk:Zionism, and I agree, it pokes a lot of holes in the idea that Zionists were inherently oriented to Arab removal. Andre🚐 10:03, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Ftb, we have a recently concluded RFC that nevertheless supports exactly that conclusion. So poking holes is insufficient. Selfstudier (talk) 11:16, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Well, the RFC finds that the sentence in the lead of Zionism should remain and doesn't violate NPOV. A different question is whether Zionism, which sought the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, whose concomitant effect was to marginalize and displace the Arab majority" is DUE for the 1936-1939 Arab revolt article. Editors could find that it doesn't belong or should be rephrased even without getting into the Zionism article and that specific sentence. Andre🚐 11:25, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

RFC here or there, don't care which, according to that argument, needs an RFC in both. Selfstudier (talk) 11:28, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

I didn't say we should have a new RFC, I'm not sure there's much of an appetite for that or any evidence that the consensus is there at the moment. I think it's fine to discuss the merits and propose things which may or may not lead to anything. Andre🚐 11:37, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

It says in the article body "In private, however, David Ben-Gurion was unequivocal: the Arabs, he said, were "fighting dispossession ... The fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn into the homeland of the Jewish people." sourced to Morris. So there's that as well, if you are saying we need more stuff about it in the article so as to make it due for the lead. Selfstudier (talk) 11:47, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

The conclusions drawn in the table don't always follow from the quotations, and the quotations don't always fairly represent the opinion of the writer. For example, it is clear that Lustick & Berkman support the sentence, and the argument that they don't is just playing on words. As a second example, Penslar writes in the conclusions section of that chapter, "Our comparative examination of colonial indigenization places Zionism within a settler-­colonial matrix while allowing for its particularities". Zero^talk 13:05, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Infobox images

I made the infobox to display multiple images.

If anyone would like to replace any of the images please feel free to do so. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:22, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 23 September 2025

Change

"It caused the British Mandate to give crucial support to pre-state Zionist militias like the Haganah, whereas on the Palestinian Arab side, the revolt forced the main Palestinian Arab leader of the period, al-Husseini, into exile."

to

"The revolt caused the British Mandate to provide crucial support to pre-state Jewish nationalist militias like the Haganah, while forcing the Palestinian Arab leader, al-Husseini, into exile." SL7tlimited (talk) 01:44, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: No reason was provided for the proposed change, and I don't see how it's an improvement to change "Zionist" to "Jewish nationalist". Day Creature (talk) 14:58, 23 September 2025 (UTC)