Palestinian return to Israel: what Wikipedia removed
Between 1948 and 1956, thousands of Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces attempting to return across the border. Through 2005 the opening said war crimes and atrocities were committed by Israeli soldiers guarding the border, including one occasion when 120 captured infiltrators were dumped in the Arava desert without water, killing 30 by dehydration. Today the opening carries neither the war crimes finding nor the desert incident, and the word is nowhere in the article. A reader today learns the overall death toll of the period, and not the specific 1950s incident in which 30 captured Palestinians died of dehydration in the Arava desert.
The word “refugee” appeared 3 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2005. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 14. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| refugee | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| terror | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| occupation | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| resistance | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| disputed | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- A passage describing Israeli raids on Palestinian returnees as a form of collective punishment or terrorism was dropped from the opening.
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2005 (revision 16060920):
Palestinian immigrations into Israel were numerous border-crossings by Palestinians considered illegal by the Israeli authorities, during the first years of Israeli statehood. Most of the people in question were refugees attempting to return to their homes inside the new Israeli state. Between 30,000 and 90,000 Palestinian refugees returned to Israel as a result. They wanted to return to what were their homes prior to the Arab-Israeli War , looking for their lost loved ones, harvesting crops from fields that were confiscated, and to reclaim property other than land. There were also Bedouins to whom the concept of newly established borders were foreign. During the 1949 - 1956 period the motiv…
2025 (revision 1296948241):
Movement back into present Israeli territory Palestinian from the Gaza Strip caught by Israeli soldiers at the border, 1954. Palestinian return to Israel refers to the movement of Palestinians back into the territory of present Israel . The period from 1948 to 1956 saw extensive attempts by Palestinians to cross the border, leading to violent clash between Israeli border guards and border-crossers (residential, political and criminal). Between 2,700 and 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel during this period, the vast majority being unarmed and intending to return for economic or social reasons. The Palestinian Fedayeen insurgency took place during this period. From 1967 to 1993, a perio…
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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