Talk:Israeli Declaration of Independence

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

Include the Declaration?

An entire wiki page for the declaration but it doesn’t include the declaration itself…

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/israel.asp ~2025-39938-61 (talk) 10:20, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a collection of primary source documents. The full text of the declaration is already available at wikisource:Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, which is properly linked in the infobox. CamAnders (talk) 19:34, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Needed balance in summary.

Suppose if you are a Zionist, you will see this day as only a celebration. If you are a Palestinian advocate, you would want to describe the event as beginning of nakba and remembered as a historic atrocity. A balanced article however would do both. Nonetheless the article had leaned to an overly Israel-centric and reads like a celebratory summary of Israeli independence with only a brief mention of Palestinian perspective at the end. It largely omits the historic context and dispossession of Palestinian Arab. A more balanced approach would be to simply give the most minimal summary of what nakba is, and acknowledge that the declaration and subsequent events are part of a deeply contested historical period. So I have made this adjustment. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 00:45, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

+1, this article is badly in need of a major rewrite. I should have some time next week to deal with it and I'll tag the page in the interim.

Major issues:

• Excessive reliance on connected sources, particularly Israeli government websites. I count 8 separate citations to Israeli gov sites. This is not even considering other WP:NIS, like then-future prime minister Benny Morris and "eretzisraelforever.net" (a defunct Greater Israel advocacy site).
• Excessive reliance on primary sources
• Secondary sources, when used, are generally badly out of date. I see no secondary sources from the last 20 years, with many sources being much older.
• Pervasive dead links

CamAnders (talk) 22:24, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

I agree. Lower parts of background section (Borders) seems heavy on quoting Ben-Gurion’s perspective, which frames Israel's decisions as inevitable or morally justified, and focuses exclusively on Israeli perspectives. On a related note, I noticed there was only one sentence (barely) in background section that stated Arabs opposed the partition plan. And that's it. No providing of further details or reasoning, despite the Palestineans certainly had substantive objections, including the partition plan violated UN principles of self-determination etc. So I added a dedicated subsection summarising the Arab Palestineans perspectives on the UN partition plan to help address imbalance. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 15:16, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

@JaredMcKenzie You need to first introduce your changes to the body. NorthernWinds ❄️ (talk) 10:00, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

You are right. I disregarded the body. The current (aftermath) section is almost entirely about Israel aka military success, diplomatic recognition, immigration, careers of signatories and UN membership.

But palestinian Arab consequences are merely mentioned at the very bottom with incredibly pathetic presentation despite displacement of Palestinian Arabs are one of the central historical consequences of 1948. The Aftermath section in body should proportionately summarize both major outcomes; we already got how Israel gained international recognition and absorbed Jewish immigrants.

There should also be at the very minimal; mention that among the approx 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who became refugees during the war, most are not allowed to return to their homes and they commemorate this as the Nakba (catastrophe). I already added it to lede but it indeed equally deserves same mention in body. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 13:45, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done - PREVIOUSLY at the end, it was merely a chunky paragraph saying not much at all but acknowledging there's Arab refugees and that's it. SO MUCH MORE HAPPENED and so that paragraph is just pathetic. It also used an incredibly old source that is out of date and no longer match modern data of 21st century sources. Wikivoice in nakba article and modern BBC articles says 750k, not 711. So I have removed that flawed paragraph after adding a paragraph above that details Arab Palestineans consequences properly and proportionally. JaredMcKenzie (talk) 14:27, 14 June 2026 (UTC)