Talk:Mandatory Palestine
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"Land Ownership" Section is Misleading, Needs Clarification and Neutral Sources
The information in this section is misleading and needs clarification as it often omits percentage calculations or relative comparative information for accurately distinguishing Arab-owned land, thereby reducing the overall perception of Jewish-owned land in comparison to Arab-owned land.
The article states "Official statistics show that Jews privately and collectively owned 1,393,531 dunams (1,393.53 km2), or 5.23% of Palestine's total in 1945" while failing to mention the Arab-owned land ownership percentage. This may potentially mislead the reader to believe approximately 95% of the non-Jewish land was solely Arab-owned. As it is, the entire section provides no ability to accurately determine the total Arab-owned land.
Following this, the figure entitled "Land Ownership of Palestine in 1945 by district" shows that approximately 85% of Beersheba is publicly owned. What isn't shown is that this area represents approximately 10,000 km2 of publicly owned land in that district and approximately 40% of the then total area of Palestine. This may potentially mislead the reader as there is no mention of public ownership under the "Land ownership" section, and accordingly, no mention of the total square kilometres of public land to which the reader may conceptualize the percentages and relative ownership.
Suggestion: Adding a demographic map
Hello, I have made a map based on the 1945 census and perhaps it may be helpful to add under the demographics section. [1]https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MandatoryPalestineReligion1945.png Regards Tomislav Addai (talk) 07:31, 13 March 2025 (UTC)
The adjective Mandatory
On Wikipedia, every mention of Palestine pre-1948 always has the adjective "Mandatory" patched in front of it, from the British Mandate for Palestine. In practice, the territory was called "Palestine" more often than anything else. I don't remember ever reading "Mandatory Palestine" outside of Wikipedia, and my gut feelings tells me it's a WikiNeologism meant to avoid casting the raw spell "Palestine".
Is "Mandatory Palestine" attested outside of Wikipedia and its distributaries? Google ngram shows that its usage exploded in the 2010s, perhaps fueled by this site. Shoshin000 (talk) 18:14, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
- Think you are right. Having edited here just before that time, it was a struggle to get any page titled "Palestine" to exist at all. It always had to be qualified somehow. Now that it has been established that the sources support using Palestine, there are efforts to claim "Palestine" as Israeli. But I digress. This is a wikiNeologism. Still, we do need a way to distinguish Mandate period Palestine from the many other Palestine pages, like Hellenistic Palestine and Roman Palestine. Tiamut (talk) 19:38, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
- Nobody thinks that Ariel Sharon was born in Roman Palestine.
- And there is the page Palestine (region). Shoshin000 (talk) 21:50, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
- What you are proposing is in violation of Wikipedia:Piped link. Jon698 (talk) 22:22, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
- Your statement of "Is "Mandatory Palestine" attested outside of Wikipedia and its distributaries?" is instantly disproven by IOHANNVSVERVS here. Jon698 (talk) 22:28, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
- My question of "Is Jon698 a stalker?" is answered by your edit history. Shoshin000 (talk) 22:30, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
- Your statement of "Is "Mandatory Palestine" attested outside of Wikipedia and its distributaries?" is instantly disproven by IOHANNVSVERVS here. Jon698 (talk) 22:28, 11 January 2026 (UTC)
- On this page you can see a reference to Mandatory Palestine as used in Wikipedia in a book from 1956. Finalities (talk) 20:30, 19 January 2026 (UTC)
"Mandatory Palestine" was never an official name. It does not appear even once in the Palestine Gazette or the reports to the League of Nations. However, as an informal phrase for "Palestine at the time of the mandate" or "the region of Palestine covered by the mandate" it is moderately common and nothing to do with Wikipedia. Zerotalk 04:18, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
- Its better than British Mandate Palestine. Its just a way to differentiate it from the other temporal episodes in Palestine's existence.Tiamut (talk) 13:20, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
- Shoshin000, to explain my comment at your ANI post (
"all of undos improve the articles"
, referring to removing your piping/hiding Mandatory) the problem with piping is that: I initially thought simply Palestine is confusing as Palestine refers to a different entity; linking to Palestine (region) is imprecise; and piping like Palestine under British mandate (as you did here) is going to take readers an article with a different name (Mandatory Palestine) where they learn the term anyway. As Tiamut says, we need a way to distinguish. As you point out, Ariel Sharon does pipe it and when I see that I wonder how someone was born in a country that did not exist at the time. Perhaps piping can be the correct course of action. It is a tricky situation and I am not certain about everything, so accusing someone of stalking isn't not helpful. You can certainly try to convince, as you are doing here :-). Commander Keane (talk) 13:50, 12 January 2026 (UTC)- Can you kindly provide a link to the conventions regarding piping on Wikipedia?
- Because it is common, particularly concerning birth places, to do [[Nazi Germany|Germany]], [[Second Polish Republic|Poland]], [[Third French Republic|France]] and so on and so forth. I am far from the first person to use this practice. Shoshin000 (talk) 14:56, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
- That is a very valid point. And I often describe titles like Roman Palestine as "Roman rule in Palestine". Tiamut (talk) 15:03, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
- Yes Germany is interesting. Looking through 1940 in Germany#Births, the articles either don't wikilink, or link to Nazi Germany with a pipe using Germany or German Reich. Another article, Deuter links to Germany. I guess I never clicked - I know what Germany is (or thought I did). I don't see anything in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography#Birth date and place. A quick search of the Village Pump archives for Nazi Germany didn't turn up anything, so the decision must be natural (and occasionally inconsistent). I would say confusion would arise with a border change, but Ariel Sharon copes. Although piping can lead to a surprise, it seems acceptable for a birth place. Commander Keane (talk) 16:10, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
- In such uses, "Nazi", "Mandatory", "X...Republic" often function as temporal disambiguators for a particular political entity or even a particular geographical region, whether they are official terms or terms of historiographical convenience. Whether to include the disambiguator in text likely depends on whether the use is ambiguous in-context. Given birth is a specifically temporal event, I don't think piping birth places in such a way raises any WP:EGG concerns. CMD (talk) 16:45, 12 January 2026 (UTC)
- no need to click, hovering is enough :) Shoshin000 (talk) 11:07, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
courtesy ping
On Talk:Yitzhak Rabin there is an ongoing discussion relevant to the one taking place here. @Commander Keane @CMD @Zero @Tiamut Shoshin000 (talk) 11:06, 13 January 2026 (UTC)
Edit request 19 January 2026
Description of suggested change:
Diff:
| − | Mandatory Palestine, officially known as Palestine,[a][5] was a British administrative territory that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine. The territory was | + | Mandatory Palestine, officially known as Palestine,[a][5] was a British administrative territory that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations' Mandate for Palestine. The territory was administered by the British, who deemed it presently unfit for self-governance. |

