Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/1948 Arab–Israeli War

1948 Arab-Israeli War
I recently assessed the article and was thinking of nominating it for GA-status. Thoughts? Cheif Captain 03:07, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin
It's not a bad start, but it still needs a substantial amount of work: Aside from that, a number of more technical points: Hope that helps! Kirill Lokshin 03:35, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * The lead should be significantly expanded, to at least two/three full paragraphs; it needs to briefly summarize the entire article.
 * All quotes need to be introduced, in the text, with some indication of their source; e.g. "According to X, '...'" or "Y wrote that '...'" rather than simply "'...'". Footnotes are the correct place for the full citation, but they're not sufficient from a prose standpoint.
 * There's a pile of empty sub-sections under the "Political objectives of the protagonists" section that need to have something done with them.
 * The extremely choppy sub-sectioning by country/operation/etc. should be avoided. The prose will be much more cohesive if the material is collected into naturally-sized blocks, even if they cover multiple topics.
 * There are still many [citation needed] tags that need to be dealt with; beyond that, a number of other points need citations, per WP:MILHIST. Topics such as this one tend to be quite controversial, so thorough citation from the beginning will typically save a great deal of effort later on.
 * I'm not terribly enthused by the title of the article, as it's not really in the form that most military history articles follow. I'd suggest Arab-Israeli War of 1948 (or Arab-Israeli War of 1947-1949, if you want to get really precise) or Arab-Israeli War (1948) as a better placement of the date in the page name.
 * The infobox should be placed at the very beginning of the article, such that it winds up to the right of the lead section rather than below it.
 * Dates in section names typically parse better in parentheses; thus, "First phase (29 November 1947–1 April 1948)" instead of "First phase: 29 November 1947–1 April 1948".
 * Footnotes should generally be placed after punctuation, not before it.
 * The image sizes should be standardized as much as possible; as it is, they're all over the place.
 * The "See also" section should be eliminated. Anything important can be linked in the text; conversely, if it's not worth linking in the text, it's generally not worth linking at all.
 * The "External links" section needs to be trimmed of things that don't provide an additional resource about this war beyond what is (or should be) available on Wikipedia.
 * I would suggest looking into turning the huge navigation template at the bottom into a Portal:Arab-Israeli conflict; that's what was done for the similar WWI (and, soon, WWII) templates.

LordAmeth
A rather controversial subject, and one which we can hopefully convince to be not only of high quality, and relatively neutral, but also stable. We're off to a good start, at least.

Major issues:
 * The opening section names "The Catastrophe" in bold, but nowhere in this section is the term "Israeli War of Independence" to be found. This, too, should be included and bolded as an alternate name for the conflict (and, incidentally, a far more common one than the pseudo-neologism "1948 Arab-Israeli War" which is obviously the forced product of some attempt at political correctness). Also, I think it might be better to put Al Naqba / Al Nakba in bold, with "the Catastrophe" as the translation, rather than the other way around. Is it commonly called "The Catastrophe" in English, like that?
 * Numerous Citation Needed templates need to be handled.
 * The Political Objectives of the Protagonists section lists only the mufti. What happened to everyone else?

Minor ones:
 * "The United Nations recommended to partition Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state, which the Arabs rejected." Might sound better grammatically to insert ..."a suggestion..." or "a recommendation... which the Arabs rejected."
 * Is "Jewish Leadership" a proper noun?
 * In the Background section, it is mentioned that the British Mandate was called Palestina (E.I.) in Hebrew. It might be good to elucidate on this a bit, either in the text or in a footnote. Which one of those two terms was applied? Were they interchangable? Why is Eretz Yisrael abbreviated (and why with an I instead of a Y)?
 * The subject of calls for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine seems to be a bit rushed over, with no mention of the Balfour Declaration or other related events & circumstances. I think that considering the prevalent misconceptions and antagonistic attitudes towards Zionism today, a bit more explanation of the attitudes and reasoning behind its origins might be helpful.
 * If you're going to cite comments about the "excessive and indiscriminate force" used by Jews against Arabs, it might be good to balance it with equivalent value judgments about the Arab attacks.
 * There's a struck-out bit under "Military assessments". Should that be just deleted, or...?
 * The very next section says that the Haganah had existed since 1921, 1929, and 1936-39. Which is it? If it originated in 1921, and developed, grew, since then, explain it out a little bit.
 * Later, in the details of the war: "The 9 April Deir Yassin massacre, by Irgun and Lehi forces, of at least 107 Arabs was denounced by Ben-Gurion. Some claim the denouncement was part of an attempt to distance himself and the Haganah from the attackers, possibly to gain political advantage in the struggle to lead the as yet unformed Israeli state." - this personal attack on Ben-Gurion, accusing him of crafty politics, isn't really necessary or NPOV.
 * The Aftermath section mentions that Israel ended up with 50% more land than the UN Partition plan would have given it, but fails to reiterate that the Arabs rejected that plan, and that had Israel chosen to fall back to those borders, they would have been completely indefensible in the absence of peaceful Arab cooperation.

Some of the sections on the actual fighting seem to leave out details, talking about plans but not the extent of the success of their execution. Overall, however, a well-written, extensive, and largely POV treatment. The Aftermath section is particularly surprisingly balanced, for which I thank those who've worked on this. Keep up the good work, try to stay level-headed, and this could come out being a very good article. LordAmeth 20:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)