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Talk:1948 Palestine war/Name

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Wikipedia article history and archive debates on the name

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Background to current discussion

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Motive to change the names

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  • To have a common prefix per Wikipedia:Consistency in article titles (There is an established now consensus on this issue, see [6])
  • To ensure most readers are reading the correct article, i.e. the story which scholars focus on. The below illustrates that they are currently going the wrong way, therefore only seeing part of it. The two names “1948 Palestine war” and “1948 Arab-Israeli war” are synonyms in common speech, so our unique way of treating it causes confusion to readers, as evidenced by the pageview stats.
1947–1949 Palestine war
6,300 views in 30 days
The event, as told by historians
1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
2,200 views in 30 days
The "First Phase"		1948 Arab–Israeli War
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The "Second Phase"
  • The current situation is akin to having an article called the Great War, covering the period 1914-18, and then a sub article called World War I covering the period 1917-18, on the logic that it only became a world war after the entry of the United States.

Names under discussion

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  • 1948 Palestine War (1947–1949 Palestine War)
  • 1948 Arab–Israeli War (1947–1949 Arab–Israeli War, First Arab–Israeli War)
  • 1948 War
  • 1948 Palestine–Israel War (1947–1949 Palestine–Israel War)

Other options excluded from the discussion per previous consensus:

  • Israeli War of Independence (Israeli POV)
  • Nakba/Al-Nakba (Palestinian POV)

Scholarly quotations on the debate over the name

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  1. Caplan, Neil (19 September 2011). The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Contested Histories. John Wiley & Sons. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-4443-5786-8. Perhaps the most famous case of differences over the naming of events is the 1948 war (more accurately, the fighting from December 1947 through January 1949). For Israel it is their "War of Liberation" or "War of Independence" (in Hebrew, milhemet ha-atzama'ut) full of the joys and overtones of deliverance and redemption. For Palestinians, it is Al-Nakba, translated as "The Catastrophe" and including in its scope the destruction of their society and the expulsion and flight of some 700,000 refugees.
  2. Firestone, Reuven (2 July 2012). Holy War in Judaism: The Fall and Rise of a Controversial Idea. Oxford University Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-19-997715-4. In a study such as this, terminology can carry a lot of baggage. A classic case in point is the names that are applied to wars. To Jews, the Jewish-Arab war of 1947–1948 is the War of Independence (milchemet ha`atzma' ut). To Arabs, and especially Palestinians, it is the nakba, or calamity. I therefore refrain from assigning names to wars. I refer to the wars between the State of Israel and its Arab and Palestinian neighbors according to their dates: 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982.
  3. Benny Morris, 1948: A History of The First Arab-Israeli War, Yale University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9: "The 1948 War – called by the Arab world the First Palestine War and by the Palestinians al-nakba (the disaster), and by the Jews the War of Independence (milhemet ha’atzma’ut), the War of Liberation (milhemet hashihrur) or the War of Establishment (milhemet hakomemiyut) – was to have two distinct stages: a civil war, beginning on 30 November 1947 and ending on 14 May 1948, and a conventional war, beginning when the armies of the surrounding Arab states invaded Palestine on 15 May and ending in 1949"
  4. Ilan Pappe: The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951, p.ix: "Finally, a note on the choice of an adequate name for the first Arab–Israeli war. Arabs and Jews describe the same event in contradictory ways...I have chosen to call the war by its calendar name - the war of 1948"
  5. Naor, Moshe (21 August 2013). Social Mobilization in the Arab/Israeli War of 1948: On the Israeli Home Front. Routledge. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-136-77648-9. The changing perspectives on the war and the diverse names by which it is called – the First Israeli-Arab War, the First Palestine War, the Israeli War of Independence, and the Palestinian Nakba – thus illustrate the nature of this war and its essence as a catalyst for change in the history of the Middle East. The 1948 War erupted during a period of local, regional, and global transition
  6. Auron, Yair (4 October 2017). The Holocaust, Rebirth, and the Nakba: Memory and Contemporary Israeli–Arab Relations. Lexington Books. p. 1. ISBN 978-1-4985-5949-2. There are different names for the war that took place in the land of Israel in 1948: the Independence War, the War of Liberation, the War of Independence, the 1948 War when the State of Israel was established—or perhaps, the Nakba
  7. Carter, Judy; Irani, George; Volkan, Vamik D. (2009). Regional and Ethnic Conflicts: Perspectives from the Front Lines. Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-189428-0. For example, we consider the 1948 war as both Israel's Milhemet ha- Atzma'ut (War of Independence) and the Palestinians' Al Nakba.
  8. Bernard-Donals, Michael; Fernheimer, Janice W. (2 December 2014). Jewish Rhetorics: History, Theory, Practice. Brandeis University Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-61168-640-1. The last military operation of the 1948 War —the First Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli War of Liberation and Independence, the Palestinian Nakba or Catastrophe—was concluded merely six months earlier.

Detailed review of options

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Background to the war

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  • The War was fought between 1 December 1947 to sometime in 1949, depending on the sources
  • The War is treated unanimously by historians as single topic, albeit divided into two distinct phases:
    • a civil war phase between the militias of the Jewish settlement of Palestine and the militias of Palestinian Arabs including Muslims and Christians, beginning on 1 December 1947 and ending on 15 May 1948, and
    • a conventional and international war phase, fought between the newly declared State of Israel and its new army, and the armies of all surrounding Arab states, especially Egypt and Jordan. This phase concluded with the war itself in 1949.
  • The War took place in a territory known as Palestine and was under the British Mandate. On 15 May 1948, Israel was declared on part of the territory; it was recognized by Western countries only after the end of the War in January 1949 (some Soviet-aligned and third world countries extended recognition beforehand)
  • The term "Arab" is complex; Palestinians consider it to be sensitive.

1948 Palestine War

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This name is used by several historians of several opinions, sides and narratives.

Why choose this name:

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  • The War was fought on a land known politically as "Palestine", as it was part of a League of Nations Mandate given to the United Kingdom.
  • The War was fought on a land known historiographically in English as "Palestine"
  • There are many sources that use it.

Why not to choose this name:

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Sources

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Secondary sources
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Primary sources
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1948 Arab–Israeli War

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Why choose this name:

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  • It is used by some sources to refer to the entire war
  • Although Israel was not declared until May 1948, it is not a problem. The Invasion of Poland is the beginning of World War II despite the war not being a "world war" yet.
  • It is straight forward for readers.
  • It has been the title for the second phase for years and draws most of the readers already.

Why not to choose this name

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  • Few sources use this title as their primary name for the event as a whole
  • When the war began, and throughout the first phase of the war, there was no "Israel" as it was declared only in May 1948

Sources (Usage definitively referring to the "Whole Period")

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Note: Because the second phase of the conflict was accurately described as Arab-Israeli in nature, care must be taken to avoid sources which are referring to the second phase (we are trying to identify an appropriate name for the whole period). The below shows only sources which are definitively referring to the whole period.

  • Dan Kurzman: Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War": "This book tells for the first time the full epic story of the initial Arab- Israeli war and the events leading up to it. Lasting from November, 1947, to March, 1949 , that conflict gave birth not only to the State of Israel after 2,000 years of Jewish dispersion, but to one of the most explosive international problems since World War II"
  • Kirsten E. Schulze: The Arab-Israeli Conflict p.v: "The first Arab–Israeli War"

1948 Palestine–Israel War

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This name was proposed by Wikipedians.

Why choose this name:

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  • It is purely geographic. The territory of the war was named Palestine, and during the war Israel was declared

Why not to choose this name

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  • It is not widely used in the sources
  • It implies a war between Israel and Palestine but Palestine, as an Arab entity, didn't exist yet, just like Israel.

1948 War

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Why choose this name

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  • It is, by far, the most common title for the War.
  • It is straight forward
  • It is completely neutral and solves all POV disputes
  • The War is the most known war fought in 1948

Why not choose this name

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  • It is not specific enough and relevant only to the context of the Israeli-Palestinian or Israeli-Arab conflicts and Middle Eastern history.
  • The war was fought also in 1947 and 1949.
  • There are other wars fought in 1948 such as the Costa Rican Civil War and the First Kashmir War

Sources (in title only, not in passing as a nickname)

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Note: Because of the simplicity of this name, some sources use the term as a shorthand rather than a title. The below shows only those who use the term in the title.

1948 or 1947–1949

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Why 1948

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  • This is the most common way to refer to the general date of the war by historical sources:
  • This is the most common way to refer to the general date of the war by primary sources (politically motived sources).
  • The war lasts from December 1948 (1 month), the whole of 1948 (12 months) and up to either late March (Last military actions, 2 and a half months) or June (Armistice, 6 months), so at best the official time of the war is between 1.3 years or 1.7 years, and most of it is in 1948.
  • The armistice agreement is not relevant to the end of the War, because the warfare ended in March and the armistices came gradually after, and not with all fighting parties, as Iraq never signed an armistice with Israel.
  • Regardless of the official dates to the end of the warfare, the main months of warfare were between late March 1948 (during the civil war phase) and March (during the conventional war phase) so the War mostly refers to less than a year, most of it in 1948.
  • Most of the big battles were fought in up to the third truce in October 1948.
  • There are other examples, most prominent is War of 1812, starting officially in mid-1812 and ending officially in 1815. Another similar example is the Hundred Years' War (116 years).

Why 1947–1949

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  • This an article about the War which began in late 1947 and officially ended in early 1949. All of the reasons above don't change it.
  • Changing the title to this might make readers realize the war was not only fought in 1948.

Appendix

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Arab—Israeli War: Ambiguous usage which may be referring to the "Whole Period" or just the "Second Phase"

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Arab—Israeli War: Usage definitively referring to just the "Second Phase"

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1948 War: Usage in passing (as abbreviation or nickname)

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