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JIDF-Not so much an issue as a heads up

Jewish Internet Defense Force is currently semi-protected. I'm wanting to take advantage of this to push through some fixes that have been needed for a while. I'm cyrrently going through para by para and posting proposed changes on the talk page. I'm inviting comments ro suggestions from members of this project in good standing.

I've gone through the current talk page and most recent archive and have posted a message to each of the non-single purpose accout holders in good standing (with the exception of admins, overseers who were just dealing with single matters). If I had included the accounts thatwho are blocked or topic-banned or single purpose JIDF puppets, I woudl have had to inform three or so times as many people.--Peter cohen (talk) 17:18, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

State of Palestine

This article includes original researches and present a distorted image of the Middle East past and present. There was a decision to merge the article with Proposals for a Palestinian state, but suddenly in July 2009 the article was "revived". At first it was written in a reasonable way, but soon certain users introduced various original theses, undue weight to certain opinions and personal interpretations of historical documents. You can read my remarks here and on the talk page of the article. DrorK (talk) 18:20, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

War results

There has been an effort in several Arab-Israeli war articles, especially Yom Kippur War to change the results of all Arab-Israeli wars to simply "Israel won" always. Another is List of wars 1945–1989, which has ludicrously called the result of the Suez crisis "Israel, UK and France won, Egypt lost" (the standard and obvious view is that Egypt won significantly, Israel won something (but far from achieving its aims), of the losers, not too much happened to France, but the UK lost big.) More eyes are greatly needed.John Z (talk) 19:59, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

It also appears that Israel was involved in Black September in Jordan. – Fuzzy – 00:53, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Apartheid article again

I've noticed that editors at WP:Israel have been invited along to the following thread Talk:Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy#Undue_weight but the editor has overlooked informing other places. I'm not really interested in the thread, but somepeople here might be. I'll suggest to the editor that WP:Palestine ought to be informed.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:18, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I was not aware of this project existence. If parties are willing, perhaps IPCOLL may be a better place to search for an agreement about form and structure (rather than actual content) of that article. – Fuzzy – 00:43, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Please refer to this issue

Wikipedia:Editor assistance/Requests#The article: State of Palestine. There is also a lot of information on the article's talk page. To some it up in a few words - the article State of Palestine was edited in a way that suggests such a state already exists. These edits are based on extremely biased external sources, or on false interpretations of certain reliable sources (I gave a full account on the talk page of the article, my apologies if it is not organized enough, it was a ping-pong of remarks and counter-remarks). With regard to information, the article is very poorly written. It simply conveys false information, or, at best, present the information in a way that force people into false conclusions. Attempts to edit the article are constantly blocked by certain users, and believe me, there is plenty to edit there. DrorK (talk) 15:50, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


Matzpen

There is an ongoing dispute between me and User:Breein1007 at this article. A reference to "the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's occupation" and was previously linked to Israeli-occupied territories, but the other editor has repeatedly removed this link, claiming that the article and sources refer only to the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, while the linked article refers also to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. He has also suggested that my restoration of the original link constitutes original research. However, the sources do not make this distinction, and Matzpen consistently opposed all Israeli occupation, including that of Sinai prior to 1979. Other contributions would be welcome. RolandR (talk) 22:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I've warned you and User:Breein1007 on your Talk pages that you will be blocked if you continue to edit war at Matzpen. Please continue to discuss your concerns on the article's Talk page. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 22:35, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm, is it appropriate for Malik (an Administrator Open to Recall), to try to shut down alerts/discussion of an article on this page? First time I can think of off hand that this has happened in two years. If you feel there should be some limitations to the use of this page, please discuss on the Projects Talk page at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration. Thanks. CarolMooreDC (talk) 20:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't think I "shut down" a discussion here, and I apologize if my clumsy wording makes it seem like I did. I was trying to encourage two editors who were edit-warring to discuss their differences instead of continuing their edit war. I thought the article's Talk page is the appropriate forum for that discussion, which had already begun when I left my message, but I think discussion here can be helpful as well. Sincere apologies if you feel I stepped on your toes. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 20:36, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
I think the issue has been resolved over there anyway. Sean.hoyland - talk 20:44, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
There certainly may be situations when admins might make some sort of warnings here, but I think it's just helpful for us all to be clear on what they might be since obviously there is a lot of conflict on this issue, as well sometimes actual and suspected POVs among admins. So if anyone has any strong opinions on any possible suggestions or guidelines for the top of this page, please discuss on the Projects Talk page at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration. I myself haven't gotten deep enough into enough admin sanction situations to have a strong opinion, except perhaps when there are some sorts of blocks. But my gut feeling was others have posted when in heated debate and under various warnings so this posting seemed closer to the questionable side. CarolMooreDC (talk) 19:33, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Ben-Dror Yemini

...is an important journalist, apparently so important that Israel's Government Press Office (GPO) have recently translated and disseminated a translation of an op-ed of his in a move Amir Mizroch described as "very rare". However, his BLP has absolutely no sources whatsoever. It did have a gigantic external link farm that I've just cleared per WP:EL but I wondered if anyone fancies improving the article ? Sean.hoyland - talk 18:59, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Lydda/Lod color image from ~1895ish

I've uploaded what I regard as a high quality image from around 1895 of Lydda, Lod or whatever you want to call it, to commons. The existing categorization of Lydda/Lod related things in commons is a little troubling but the image is there if anyone wants to use it here. Sean.hoyland - talk 09:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

--copy of message posted at Talk:Lod as the image may be useful elsewhere. Sean.hoyland - talk 10:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

References for any entries above

This discussion is moved here from Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Geopolitical ethnic and religious conflicts per User:Taprobanus's suggestion (see below) DrorK (talk) 09:23, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

In the past few months, there is a trend of initiating articles or modifying existing articles in a way suggesting the existence of a Palestinian state. This is done mainly by the use of the name Palestine when referring to the Palestinian territories or to the Palestinian National Authority and by deliberately creating confusion between the term Palestine as a geographical region, as a name of a former British mandate and as a name of a proclaimed state and as the name of the non-state United Nations General Assembly observers.

  1. State of Palestine - this article basically repeat the information available on Proposals for a Palestinian state. There was indeed a community decision to merge it with the latter, but it was recently re-initiated. The current version is highly POVized. It is indeed sourced, but many sources are either very biased in nature, or misinterpreted. There were several warnings about this problem, most recently here and here, but in vain. Any attempt to modify the article was reverted mainly due to an effective cooperation between three users User:Tiamut, User:Nableezy and User:Harlan wilkerson this is one evidence of their cooperation (in which I am mentioned).
  2. Occupied Palestinian Territory - this is a classical example of POV forking of the article Palestinian territories. Despite detailed and convincing explanations here and here, nothing has been done.
  3. Outline of Palestine - this article is actually about the Palestinian National Authority and the Palestinian territories, and yet its title suggests it should be matched with Palestine which is an article about the geographical region known in English by this name.
  4. Telecommunications in Palestine - this article actually talks about the Palestinian territories (cf. Telephone numbers in Palestinian Territories). The use of the name Palestine here is confusing and I suspect the title was chosen for political reasons. DrorK (talk) 00:09, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
User Drork has spent most of his time abusing BRD to remove sourced material and conduct WP:FILIBUSTERS on the talk page to discuss his unpublished opinions. harlan (talk) 04:47, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
You took a much better approach, simply reverting anything that was not in line with your political opinions. DrorK (talk) 07:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Said the pot to the kettle. Really Drork! You have been pursuing this issue with the singlemindedness of a single purpose account. You were blocked for reverting against consensus at State of Palestine, reverting four different editors, no less than six times in 24 hours, and claiming you had the right to do so, because of the WP:TRUTH inherent in your position.
Whether you like it or not, most countries in the world recognize the existence of a State of Palestine. It is a notable subject, worthy of coverage in this encyclopedia. Whether you like it or not, the phrase Occupied Palestinian Territory is commonly used to refer to the territories occupied by Israel in the course of the 1967 war. And whether you like it or not, "Palestine" has multiple definitions, and can refer to the procaimed state of the Palestinians, Mandate Palestine or the geographical region. Having an outline cover all three definitions is rather logical, since they all exist(ed) in roughly the same geographical space.
Furthermore, while you attribute the existence of these articles at Wikipedia to 3 editors (harlan, Nableezy and I), the fact of the matter is that none of us created or restored these articles. State of Palestine was restored by User:John Z after he noticed that the discussion to redirect to Proposals for a Palestinian state involved faulty rationales, not in line with our policies. Occupied Palestinian Territory was restored by User:Ian Pitchford, who noted in his edit summary that the term deserved coverage. And Outline of Palestine was created by User:The Transhumanist as part of the Outline project. Are these editors all in on the conspiracy to delude Wikipedia readers? Or is it more likely that you are failing to assume good faith and are loathe to acknowledge that the viewpoints expressed in reliable sources indicate that there is a necessity for these articles? Tiamuttalk 08:58, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Let me put one thing clear, a group of three "Palestinian freedom fighters" is not consensus. I am glad to see that in two or three of the above mentioned article the name was changed from "Palestine" to "Palestinian territories" per consensus decision, but this also means that what you perceive as consensus is not a consensus whatsoever. John Z indeed took too much liberty to break a community decision, and yet he introduced a rather balanced version of the article. It was Harlan, Nableezy and Tiamut who made this article almost a political propaganda. Now I spent too many hours explaining why your work has nothing to do neither with truth nor with verifiability. Harlan is a knowledgeable guy, but he is also politically motivated, and therefore he keeps bringing biased sources. He brought as sources the opinions of two legal counsels to the PLO and PA. Had I based an article upon legal opinions written by Allan Dershowitz, would you approve that? Harlan even reverted the well-established and sourced fact that the British Mandate was based upon the 1917 Balfour Declaration claiming it was a POVized unsourced edit. DrorK (talk) 12:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Drork, you are treading a very thin line right now. You do not have the right to call people "Palestinian freedom fighters" simply for editing in reliably sourced information with which you disagree. Should I start calling you a Zionist diehard who denies Palestinian rights? Do you believe that would be helpful, or harmful to the discussion at hand?
I strongly suggest you start re-reading policies such as WP:CIVIL and WP:AGF. Perhaps also taking a look at WP:BATTLE might help you to understand that your attitude is doing nothing to help foster an atmosphere of collaborative editing. Take twenty steps back, a deep breath, and when you ready to discuss things colegially, please join me at Talk:State of Palestine where I have opened two sections to discuss specific problems with the information you have added there. Thanks. Tiamuttalk 13:39, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Tiamut, what about this edit of yours [1]? DrorK (talk) 14:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Very good Drork ...You found one example of exactly the type of comment I should not be making. Quite unfortunate lapse of judgement there. Notice however, that, unlike you, I am not reverting there to try to reimpose my view of what the article title should be, even though I believe the sources to support my position? I expect that in the future, you will be able to accept the will of you fellow editors, with even more grace and magnaminity than I. Tiamuttalk 14:28, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
However you do revert here [2]. Can you explain why? Have you noticed that Harlan tried to make the same revert but encountered rejection? Do you think Harlan and your POV is better than others? Why do you think the sources you bring are better than other sources? Have you noticed that whenever I tried to make an edit you and Harlan cried "sources! sources!" and when I brought you sources you said "this is just someone's personal opinion". At the same time both of you introduced biased sources of people consulting to the PLO, anti-Israeli organizations people with radical views etc. When you "heroically" defended the article Occupied Palestinian Territory you agreed (implicitly) that the source you brought to justify the forking was unreliable, and yet you refused to re-merge the article, with all kind of excuses. And I ask you again: are you here to improve the content of this encyclopedia or are you trying to "liberate Palestine" through Wikipedia? 15:02, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Anyone who thinks one can "liberate Palestine" through Wikipedia is suffering from delusions of grandeur. I'm here to share information from high quality sources of all POVs on articles in which I have a real life interest. This is, after all, a hobby for which I receive no financial renumeration, and I therefore try to make it as enjoyable it as much I can.
That said, as you don't seem to understand WP:AGF and I'm not at all interested in prolonging unnecessary discussion with someone who only wants to provoke and insult me, I will leave you to cast further aspersions in my absence. I have articles to edit. Enjoy! Tiamuttalk 22:20, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent)Drork, you have followed a consistent pattern of making culturally offensive remarks, refuting a misrepresentation of your opponent's positions, and then attempting to create as much drama as possible when you pretend that you have refuted their actual positions.

You refused to discuss your use of the neutral voice of the encyclopedia to make the editorial statement that "The Mandate's goal was designated as facilitating the establishment of a "Jewish national home"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/qpal/history.html |title=History of the Palestine Question |author=Division for Palestinian Rights, United Nations |date=2008||accessdate=6 February 2010}}</ref>.[3] The source you cited doesn't actually contain that remark. The position that you are presenting was specifically rejected by the 1922 Churchill White Paper, the 1939 White Paper, The 1939 Commission on the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, and the UNSCOP Commission. The article mentions published sources which say it was rejected by the ICJ and the Israeli High Court of Justice too. It has also been dismissed by mainstream legal and political media as a fringe theory. If you want that viewpoint included, you should at least find a published source that actually makes the controversial claim and properly attribute it to them. harlan (talk) 21:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Culturally offensive remarks? Such as? Do I know you culture, by the way? I don't know who you are, and what your background is, so even had I been a racist, as you quite rudley suggest, I wouldn't know what kind of offenses would suit you. You've also got the nerve to write that I wasn't willing to discuss. The talk pages are filled with my remarks refuting your arguments one by one. You have brought the most far-fetched sources and the most absurd interpretations to make your point, and when you saw it was futile you resorted to the easy solution of "tag-teaming" with some of your friends and revert articles in turns, As for the source you've brought here, it is only one of many brought to you to establish the aforementioned statement - the mandate charter, the Order in Council about Palestine, the letter on behalf of Churchill to the Arab-Palestinian delegation, and so forth. Whenever such source is brought to you, you dig in a book which is hardly accessible and come up with a twisted interpretation from this legal council or another. This kind of tactics are not appropriate even in courts of law, let alone WP. The UN website you refer to was brought as a contemporary source that cannot be regarded as pro-Israeli or pro-Zionist. Quite the contrary. And this source says "All but one of these Mandated Territories became fully independent States, as anticipated. The exception was Palestine where, instead of being limited to "the rendering of administrative assistance and advice" the Mandate had as a primary objective the implementation of the 'Balfour Declaration' issued by the British Government in 1917, expressing support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people" [4]. This source strongly refutes your claim that Mandate Palestine was a provisional Arab state, a claim that you've made so prominent in your version of the aforementioned article. DrorK (talk) 22:01, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
May I asuggest that such "large"issues cannot be solved at the ANI level. Is anyone "misbeaving" which requires an admin "stick", I dont think so try to use other problem resolution processes that are available such as third opion and if everything fails take to arbitration. Another approach is this that worked really well. Taprobanus (talk) 22:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC)
Why not use this place to solve your problems Taprobanus (talk) 22:42, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, I hope you're playing a more constructive role with respect to these articles than you did with respect to United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, where you bogged things down for months by introducing innovative legal theories which contradicted the basic commonly-understood mainstream widely-accepted view of the results of the resolution, and you were also rather quick to toss around semi-random accusations of "racism"[sic] on the article talk page, which had the effect of bringing discussions there about how to improve the article to a grinding halt... AnonMoos (talk) 08:59, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Yup, perhaps you should have checked whether he is or he isn't before you said anything. Sean.hoyland - talk 09:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
hi folks. will continue to watch this discussion. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 15:50, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I would like to bring some more examples of problems. These were discussed in various talk pages, quite in vain:

  1. "The Palestinian Declaration of Independence, led to Palestine's recognition by 101 states and to the renaming of the PLO mission in the UN to "Palestine." - This sentence, presented as undisputed fact is actually extremely problematic. We have a statement by the PNA Foreign Minister from 13 Feb 2009 that he can prove only 67 recognitions of states in the 1988 proclaimed State of Palestine. [5] (8th paragraph, this number should include Costa Rica which extended such recognition in 2008).
  2. The article implies that the PNA and SoP are actually the same, and they are not. True, the President of PNA also bears the title President of SoP, but these titles were not given to him at the same time, and they don't have the same content. There are many countries (including Israel) that recognize the PNA as a semi-autonomous government, but not the SoP, see for example this statement by the Swedish Foreign Ministry on behalf of the EU (cited on a pro-Palestinian site): [6].
  3. The list of countries on the article should give information about the PNA foreign relations, and yet it is entitled "States that recognise the State of Palestine". The list include 146 states, i.e. it mixes states that recognized SoP and those who have relations with the PNA.
  4. The fact that a diplomatic mission of some sort calls itself "embassy" doesn't make it an embassy, nor does it indicate recognition. An ambassador becomes one upon submission of letter of credence. For example, take a look at this official document [7], does it indicate Maltese recognition of the SoP? Maybe, most probably not. So there is a delegation in Valletta that calls itself "Embassy of Palestine". So what? I can bring more example of this kind.
  5. The UN position is carefully phrased, and yet it gives the impression as if the UN eventually recognized the 1988 declaration, and that's not the case. The UN has official lists of member-states, non-member observers, and non-state observer. Currently there is only one non-state observer (the Holy See), Palestine is listed below under the title "other entities" [8]. That means that the acknowledgment of the UN GA did not mean recognition in the 1988 declaration.
  1. The State of Palestine (Arabic: دولة فلسطين‎, dawlat filastin), officially simply Palestine (Arabic: فلسطين‎, filastin), is a state with limited recognition. - The UN is not convinced, Ban Ki-moon is not convinced [9], the EU is not convinced, the Swedish Foreign Minister says there is no such thing, the ICC is not convinced [10], the Palestinians themselves are not fully convinced [11], but for the en-wp, Palestine is a state. DrorK (talk) 17:36, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Drork, there are a number of reliable secondary sources (rather than primary sources, which you use to make synth conclusions) that directly refute the points you make above. For example,

These are just three examples. There are hundreds more. Indeed the phrase the "state of Palestine" is discussed in more than 1000 books (as evidence in a google book search). The fact that you do not like this or that you do not think it is a state is your own unsourced opinion that you support using primary source evidence, which is not the way we source things here at Wikipedia. I'm sorry that you do not want to accept that people with expertise in this subject area disagree with your personal opinion. But you are going to have get over it. We don't write according to your opinion, but according to what reliable sources have to say. Tiamuttalk 18:06, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Furthermore, this source which you are using to support your claim that the state of Palestine declared in 1988 is recognized by only 67 states, nowhere mentions the 1988 declaration. As it is the Palestinian Authority that i making this statement and they have nothing to do with the 1988 declaration which was made by the PLO, I believe this number refers to the number of governments that interact with the Palestinian Authority as though it is the representative of the State of Palestine. I say this because there is no other source that uses the number "67", while there are tens of sources which explicitly cite the 1988 declaration and give figures of about 100 countries or more.
I also find it hugely hypocritical for you to say in point #2 that the Palestinian Authority and the SoP are not the same, while insisting in point #1 on giving absolute primacy to a source citing the Palestinian authority on how many countries recognize the SoP. The relationship between the PLO and the PA is a complicated one that is discussed by a reliable source in our article which defines "Palestine" as a transitional association between the PLO and PA. That source is from 1997 and things have changed since then. It seems that the PA is moving towards making a declaration of statehood which would see it become the State of Palestine, while possibly absorbing the PLO (a potential development discussed in this RS from 2003 [12]).
About point #3, I don't know which list you are referring to. Clearly, if the State of Palestine and the Palestinian authority remain two independent but related bodies, there should be pages on the foreign relations of both. In the State of Palestine, countries that recognize the State of Palestine are clearly distinguished from those which do not recognize the state but do maintain diplomatic relations with Palestinian representatives nonetheless.
Regarding point #4, details concerning the sourcing for each entry should be discussed on the talk page of the articles concerned in specific terms, one by one. I will say however that terming a Palestinian diplomatic presence in a given country the "Embassy of Palestine" is pretty damn clear. Nevertheless, I can see how one could argue that using a primary source to support such a designation is simply insufficient. Again, I suggest these issues be discussed entry by entry on the pages concerned. Tiamuttalk 18:49, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

What role do Wikipedia editors play in determining the existence of States?

Many other States have legally recognized that a Palestinian state exists as a "person of law". See Article 1 of the Montevideo Convention. There are plenty of discussions in the mainstream press by jurists, legal scholars, and political commentators that have noted that a majority of states recognize Palestine as a state [13] [14] [15]

Drork can't complain about political decisions made by sovereign States, or the reports in the mainstream press. So, he complains instead that Wikipedia editors are "suggesting the existence of a State of Palestine."

Israeli legal expert Ruth Lapidoth recently explained that the Palestinians have already unilaterally declared statehood, and they did not need to do it again. She said "Recognition of statehood is a political act, and every state has the right to decide for itself whether to recognize another state." See Lieberman warns against '67 borders, Jerusalem Post, November 14, 2009 [16] L.C. Green discussed the Declaration of the State of Palestine and said that "recognition of statehood is a matter of discretion, it is open to any existing state to accept as a state any entity it wishes, regardless of the existence of territory or an established government."[17]

The Restatement (Third) of The Foreign Relations Law of the United States section 201.(h) says "Determination of Statehood. Whether or not an entity satisfies the requirement for statehood is determined by other states when they decide whether to treat that entity as a state. Ordinarily, a new state is formally recognized by other states". Despite those facts editors are routinely forced to endure overwhelmingly unnecessary and insulting discussions when they try to write about this topic. I don't believe that Wikipedia editors are supposed to set-up Ad Hoc tribunals on talk pages and attempt to "refute" or overrule the political decisions made by States or endlessly harass other users in that connection. harlan (talk) 20:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I would have thought that the UN (and more recently the ICJ) plays a crucial role in determining what is a full blown state. This would imply that Palestine, North Cyprus, Kosovo and Taiwan are nto states, though I must confess that I have always thought of this last as a state. Its probably its age as an effectively independent state that influences me.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
The International Bill of Rights[18] is codified in two Covenants. Both of them provide that all peoples have the right of self-determination, and that by virtue of that right they freely determine their own political status. The UN has declared that the right of self-determination, is a norm of international law with a nature of jus cogens, but only "peoples" are entitled to self-determination in contemporary international law. See Self-determination and National Minorities, Oxford Monographs in International Law, Thomas D. Musgrave, Oxford University Press, 1997, ISBN 0198298986, page 170. The ICJ has already ruled that the Palestinian people have an inalienable right to self-determination, their own territory, and their own state (see below). Here is another example: "The European Union reaffirms the continuing and unqualified Palestinian right to self-determination including the option of a state and looks forward to the early fulfilment of this right. It appeals to the parties to strive in good faith for a negotiated solution on the basis of the existing agreements, without prejudice to this right, which is not subject to any veto. [19]
In 1948, when Syria proposed that an advisory opinion be obtained from the ICJ regarding Israel's statehood. Abba Eban said the UN had no such authority: "The act of determining whether a certain political unit is a State or not is known in international law as an act of recognition; and under the Charter, no Member State has surrendered to the United Nations or to any organ thereof its unlimited sovereignty to regard a political unit as a State. See the minutes of the 340th meeting of the UN Security Council, S/PV.340, 27 July 1948, page 12[20] The fact that the United Nations does not play a direct role in the recognition of states has already been discussed on the Palestine and State Of Palestiine talk pages. In the article cited above Israeli legal expert Ruth Lapidoth explained that "it is not the UN's role, much less that of the Security Council, to confer statehood." See Lieberman warns against '67 borders, By Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, November 14, 2009. In the Kosovo case the US argued that it was doubtful that Security Council resolutions were binding on non-state actors like Kosovo and that its statehood was inevitable because it had been recognized by 45 other states. In 1950 a suggestion was made that UN membership be adopted as a form of legal collective recognition, but the Secretary-General and Legal Affairs section advised that such a measure would require the adoption of an amendment to the UN Charter. See pages 39-48 of Statehood and the law of self-determination, By David Raič, Kluwer Law International, 2002, ISBN: 904111890X.
Bengt Broms has served as a Judge with the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the ICC Court of Arbitration in Paris. He says that the record shows that, although statehood is a condition of membership in the United Nations, the fulfillment of that condition has never been a guarantee of admission. A candidate must fulfill the additional criteria set out in Article 4(1) of the UN Charter. He says in view of this it is clear that as the Members of the United Nations are not required to reveal the reasons for their negative votes, such a vote does not indicate that a candidate does not fulfill the requirements of statehood. The negative outcome of a vote may just as well result from the conclusion that, although an applicant is a State, it may not be peace loving or it may not fulfill the other requirements. See International law: achievements and prospects UNESCO Series, Mohammed Bedjaoui editor, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1991, ISBN 9231027166, page 47 [21]
Conversely many entities have been admitted as members of the United Nations while they were colonies (India), mandates (Syria and Lebanon), or not considered independent Philippines, Belorus, and Ukraine. The same holds true today for the so-called micro-states. Philip Jessup served as a representative of the United States to the United Nations and as a Judge on the International Court of Justice. During the Security Council hearings regarding Israel's application for membership in the UN, he said:

[W]e already have, among the members of the United Nations, some political entities which do not possess full sovereign power to form their own international policy, which traditionally has been considered characteristic of a State. We know however, that neither at San Francisco nor subsequently has the United Nations considered that complete freedom to frame and manage one's own foreign policy was an essential requisite of United Nations membership.... ...The reason for which I mention the qualification of this aspect of the traditional definition of a State is to underline the point that the term "State", as used and applied in Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations, may not be wholly identical with the term "State" as it is used and defined in classic textbooks on international law." See page 12 of S/PV.383, 2 December 1948

The International Court of Justice said that Israel had recognized the existence of a "Palestinian people" and referred a number of times to the Palestinian people and its "legitimate rights" in international agreements. The Court said those rights include the right to self-determination. See paragraph 118 of Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory [22] Judge Koroma explained "The Court has also held that the right of self-determination as an established and recognized right under international law applies to the territory and to the Palestinian people. Accordingly, the exercise of such right entitles the Palestinian people to a State of their own as originally envisaged in resolution 181 (II) and subsequently confirmed." Judge Higgins also said "that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State." See paragraph 5, Separate opinion of Judge Koroma [23] and paragraph 18, Separate opinion of Judge Higgins [24] harlan (talk) 23:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

A few points regarding what have been said above:

  1. We are not lawyering here, and WP is not a legal journal. A the State of Palestine was not registered as "Palestine Inc." or "Palestine Ltd." A state is much more than an artificial legal entity, it also have some natural features which we all know well.
  2. The PA took upon itself the task of getting recognition in the 1988 proclaimed SoP. It means two things - (a) that they don't believe such a state is actually recognized (otherwise, why bother? It's simple logic) (b) that it took upon itself to advocate for SoP, not necessarily that it sees itself as SoP. In 1947-48 there were Zionist bodies advocating in favor of a Jewish state or later on State of Israel. It did not mean they were the State of Israel themselves.
  3. Had the existence of SoP been obvious, the ICC wouldn't have needed so much time to investigate the issue. He would simply have taken for granted its existence.
  4. Kosovo, Taiwan, Somaliland, TR of N Cyprus etc. are de facto states, namely they function as states but lack international recognition. The State of Palestine has no existence de facto, i.e. nothing on the ground that would suggest statehood. Most, if not all, of the countries in the world (including Israel, in fact) expressed a position that such a state should exist, but that does not mean it actually exists.
  5. Harlan's often brings legal opinions of scholars and judges, but they are irrelevant here (if he cites them correctly, which is not always the case). The existence of a right for self determination does not mean this right is actually materialize.
  6. The fact that Social Soviet Republic of Ukraine was a UN-member made no one in the world think it was independent. SoP was not even accepted as a UN-member. It is not even defined as a state in the UN official listing. As per the UN, SoP is in a lower position than the SSR of Ukraine as far as statehood is concerned.
  7. There is no need to dig into US laws. The uncontested fact is that the US does not recognize a state called Palestine. Either the US government acts in an illegal way, or you misinterpret the US law. Either way, it's not our business. We are concerned with the US official position, and it is clear.
  8. The aforementioned lists of countries allegedly recognizing SoP suffer from many problems: (1) They include countries that ceased to exist, e.g. the Soviet Union, East Germany etc. (2) They include countries that did not extended explicit recognition, but merely "acknowledged" or "welcomed" the 1988 declaration, e.g. Malta, Austria, Greece (3) They include countries that underwent profound constitutional reform, such as Romania and Mongolia. It is unclear whether their recognition stands after this change. In the case of Iran-Israel relation, Iran's recognition in Israel was revoked after the Islamic Revolution.
  9. All in all, the very fact that certain users resort to complex legal interpretations, proves that SoP cannot be presented as a "state with limited recognition" on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is about verified facts, and this phrase doesn't qualify as a verified factual statement. DrorK (talk) 00:13, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
"This Is The Song That Never Ends"... The Restatement of US Foreign Relations Law reflects customary state practice. You claim this isn't a court. However, you always start by climbing up on a soapbox and rattling-off your own "legal-sounding" list of criteria, while insisting it is mandatory. You also ignore conflicting criteria published by reliable sources, like Lapidoth, Eban, Green, and the States that have recognized Palestine. They all claim recognition is a sovereign prerogative, and that it is a political act.
The passage from the UNESCO series on "Recognition of States" explains "there is no definition binding on all members of the community of nations regarding the criteria for statehood, and as long as there is no organ which could in casu reach a binding decision on this matter, the decision as to the statehood of an entity depends upon the other members of the community of nations. The governments of various states are the organs responsible for reaching individual decisions in a given case. The decision-making is called the recognition of states. The term signifies the decision of the government of an already existing State to recognize another entity as a State. The act of recognition is in fact a legal decision which depends on the judgment of the recognizing government. The underlying factors, nevertheless, are not solely legal, but in many cases they are mainly political." See "IV Recognition of States", International law: achievements and prospects UNESCO Series, Mohammed Bedjaoui editor, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1991, ISBN 9231027166, page 47-48 [25]
Like it or not, relations between States are governed by political considerations and international law. harlan (talk) 02:50, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
(1) You MAY NOT add titles that include personal attacks against me to my remarks! (I hope I am clear enough) (2) You bring all kind of sources, but none of them proves that there is a state called Palestine. Therefore, you cannot treat it as a fact. It is YOU who are introducing an original research here. May I remind you that WP uses statements based on plain straightforward sources. So many people, including Palestinians, said a state called Palestine does not exist (yet), see the sources I've brought above, and yet you want us to say it exist based on tortuous legal interpretations. (3) You are proving my point by citing "there is no definition binding on all members of the community of nations regarding the criteria for statehood". If so, and considering all the statements I've mentioned, how can we be in a position to say "Palestine is a state"? Is it just because certain editors wish it were true? DrorK (talk) 03:38, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
You've already taken this issue to the original research noticeboard, and they did not agree with you. According to the published sources cited above and in the articles, there are more than 100 states that have determined that Palestine fulfills their criteria for recognition as a State. Lapidoth and Quigley have noted that there is no doubt the Palestinian leadership has already claimed Palestine is a legal state, and they don't need to do that again. You haven't shown any reason why other States can't recognize Palestine, or why you get to constantly pester other editors who cite and quote what reliable published sources have said about this topic. harlan (talk) 05:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

Harlan, Quigley's opinion about the matter is significantly undermined by this article [26], and in any case his opinion cannot be said to be mainstream. You tend to ignore articles which you don't like. Other scholars you relied upon are legal advisors to the PA or PLO, so their opinion is biased toward their clients by definition (otherwise they would be bad legal advisors). As I showed you, the 100 figure is a myth that the Palestinians themselves don't believe. Of course, if I count countries that don't exist anymore, and interpret "acknowledgment" as "recognition", I can score many points, but they are not very meaningful. I never saw the statement of Lapidoth. I suspect you misread it. Then again, if you have to rely on so many legal interpretations and opinions, isn't it enough to say that the existence of SoP is not a fact? Do you need to bring legal opinions about the existence of France? Mexico? Luxembourg? Do you need Quigley or Lapidoth to tell you that Mongolia exists as a state? Do you reckon the UN Secretary-General and the Swedish Foreign Minister should take lessons from Quigley in order to learn what a state is? Or in other words, what makes Quigley's opinion better than the what these two figures say, as well as Salam Fayyad? DrorK (talk) 05:35, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Drork, you are still filibustering. For a guy who is complaining about other people, you sure use a lot of awkward oversights, strained semantics, and imprecise or over-reaching definitions.

John Quigley's books and articles have been cited as standard reference works on the subject by the UN Juridical Yearbook and in the written submissions of interested State parties in the 2004 Wall case. You have repeatedly been asked to take up any issues you might have at the reliable sources noticeboard.

The latest published figures say that more than 130 countries recognize Palestine. Even if we accept your arguments, there are dozens of states remaining from the list published on the PA website back in 2002. You are never going to reduce that number in any significant way. Many of the cases that you presented on the article talk page show evidence of sloppy deductive reasoning. In any case, a Wikipedia article talk page isn't the place to conduct original research.

I'm the editor who added the citation to Robert Weston Ash's journal article and Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon's quote about the non-existence of the State of Palestine to the article. Both men are entitled to their opinion, but neither raised any issues that require Wikipedia community action.

The Article 12(3) declaration that the PA delivered to the ICC constituted another unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. That is very relevant to a lot of legal scholars in and of itself as an act of state. The implications of that act seem to be Mr. Ash's chief concern. He is employed by Pat Robertson's American Center For Law and Justice/Regent University. Robertson opposes the recognition of any Palestinian entity, and claimed that Ariel Sharon's stroke was "God's punishment for dividing up the land". Among other things, Ash's article argues that a careful reading of the Geneva Convention and the works of Yehuda Blum, Eugene Rostow, and Moshe Arens made it clear to him that the Geneva Convention isn't applicable to Israel's presence in the occupied territories. To put it politely, the ICJ, the Security Council, the General Assembly, the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention, and most legal publicists have come to the conclusion that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian territory can't be justified by those old shop-worn arguments about the applicability of the Geneva Convention. Here is a typical example "Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." [27] harlan (talk) 00:25, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, you are wikilawyering, and this is not helpful whatsoever. We are not discussing here the Israeli settlements. We are not discussing the rights of the Palestinians or whether a Palestinian state should exist. We are not discussing the Geneva convention, and the fact that you don't like some of Ash's claims, doesn't make Quigsley a better source. My point is, that you cannot "establish a state" based on Quigsley, and you cannot ignore clear statements about the currently non-existence of a Palestinian state based on a legal interpretation which encountered serious objection. I don't see why I should trust all kind of lists, rather than a Palestinian declaration about the number of state recognizing the 1988 proclaimed state. The idea that the Palestinian appeal to the ICC constitute a declaration of state is your own, and it is not a mainstream idea. What you are trying to do is turning these articles into legal essays, and mislead readers to think these essays are description of attested facts. That is the problem here. DrorK (talk) 05:18, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
Drork, all of the sources cited in the article, including Quigley, Dugard, Ash, and the Today's Zaman article explain that only a state can make an Article 12(3) declaration like the one the PA submitted to the ICC. The Zaman article said

"In accordance with the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, only a state can accept the court's jurisdiction and allow such an investigation to be launched. Last month, Kashan and Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki announced that they had submitted documents to Moreno-Ocampo that proved Palestine was a legal state with the right to request such a probe. Today we came to deliver a set of documents that shows that Palestine as a state ... has the ability to present a case to the court and to ask for an investigation into crimes committed by the Israeli army"[28]

That is NOT my personal interpretation and I notice you didn't cite any "mainstream" source that disagrees about the meaning of the PA declaration or those documents. harlan (talk) 06:32, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Harlan, old habits are hard to break, but do try to stop talking like a lawyer who present a case, and start thinking about how to convey information in a clear trustworthy way. The lead of the article says Palestine is a state with limited recognition. That is a misleading phrasing that put SoP in the same group of Taiwan, TRNC, Transnistria, Abkhazia etc. In fact, the SoP is a totally different case. It was a state declared outside its proclaimed territory and never materialized the status which it unilaterally declared. Furthermore, the Palestinians themselves do not consider it an actual state, as they continue talking about establishing/creating/declaring a Palestinian state. I am not going to bring sources again, because they are already here on this page, or possibly on the relevant articles' talk pages. Now, you want to teach the English speaker what a state is according to your own criteria, and the scholars that you prefer, but it doesn't work this way. You have to use the term "state" in a clear straightforward way. DrorK (talk) 07:34, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Tiamut, in this article, Abbas himself says they are "considering" declaring a state. he does not say that they have already done so. Abbas: Only solution is to declare Palestinian state. And here is Erekat on this topic: Erekat: Palestinians may have to abandon goal of independent state, from Reuters.
Also, see these: Palestinians under world pressure not to declare state unilaterally, and Palestinian PM: Declaration of statehood just a formality. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:16, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Sm8900, there are obviously countries that consider the existing state institutions in Jericho, Ramallah, Bethlehem, Jenin, and Gaza adequate enough to extend recognition of statehood. PA discussions about rolling back the occupation and building state institutions in other areas doesn't require any new declarations.

The Haaretz headline is the only thing that mentions that Abbas is considering the possibility of declaring a state. But Abbas doesn't actually say that in the article. Haaretz is citing an Agence France-Presse report that said Abbas was considering asking for recognition. President Abbas said that the State of Palestine is already in existence and that the current battle is to have the state's borders recognized. [29] The Jerusalem Post recently did the same thing. Their headline claimed that Reuters had reported "Solana wants UN to establish 'Palestine'", but the Reuters headline actually said: EU's Solana calls for UN to recognise Palestinian state.

Statehood does not depend upon recognition by the UN or other states. Recognition by other states is the method of determining the statehood of an entity. An occupied or unrecognized state is still a state with rights and responsibilities under international law. Ironically, states that bring claims against unrecognized states are frequently the very same ones that withhold recognition. See for example International law: a dictionary, By Boleslaw Adam Boczek, page 91 [30] There are many provisions of the US code that prohibit actions to the detriment of foreign states, such as murdering their officials, that apply to foreign governments "irrespective of recognition".

The Jpost article is still in Google cache that says "Israeli legal expert Ruth Lapidot said that it is not the UN's role, much less that of the Security Council, to confer statehood. The Palestinians, she said, have already unilaterally declared statehood, and they did not need to do it again. Recognition of statehood is a political act, and every state has the right to decide for itself whether to recognize another state. Should the Palestinians seek admission to the UN as a state, she said, the Security Council would have to recommend that the matter be taken up by the General Assembly. The Palestinians would then need to secure a two-thirds majority to be accepted as a member state of the UN.[31] harlan (talk) 09:06, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing in Lapidot's words that suggest a state called Palestine exists. She said there had been a declaration. She did not say this declaration brought about the creation of a state. That is your interpretation. In fact, she contest the notion that the UN, whose resolutions you cherish so much, is the indicator for statehood. DrorK (talk) 09:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Drork, she most definitely said one declaration was enough and that "Recognition of statehood is a political act, and every state has the right to decide for itself whether to recognize another state." She didn't mention anything about Wikipedia editors having a veto. I have always advised you that the UN does not play any direct role in the recognition of states. It most definitely can impose a border settlement ala Iraq/Kuwait. You still have not answered the basic question "What role do Wikipedia editors play in determining the existence of States? I'm interested in hearing what the community has to say about that. But I'm inclined to ask the question over at the Original Research Noticeboard. harlan (talk) 10:26, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
It's a declaration that never materialized. Should they manage to establish a state, they could do without the declaration. They already paid "the fee", so they won't have to pay it again if they ever actually "join the club" (so to speak). Wikipedia has no role in determining the existence of states, hence we cannot present SoP as an existing state. We describe reality, not wishful thinking. What we have here is a declaration, and we have an article about that declaration. Declaration is not a state. It is a classical case of ceci n'est pas une pipe. It is not a state, it is a declaration of state. DrorK (talk) 12:05, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
wikipedia may not be the final authority on whether there is a state called Palestine. however, neither is a group of politicians, even if they are Palestinians. The real authority is from major world organizations. here is a link to one group which does not recognize any state called "Palestine." http://www.un.org/en/members/ --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 20:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't agree with you on this. The UN doesn't recognize de facto states like Taiwan, Somaliland and others. According to the Duck Principle these are states despite limited or non-recognition (of course the non-recognition issue should be mentioned). SoP is the opposite case: It doesn't look like a state, it doesn't make sounds of a state, but some want to term it a state. The UN recognize an political entity called Palestine, but it does not term it a state, but rather as "other entity" (as opposed to another non-member, the Holy See, which is described explicitly as a state). I think the UN is correct in this specific point, but I wouldn't make the UN lists a standard. DrorK (talk) 21:21, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) The primary organs of the UN have recognized the Palestinian people and their permanent sovereignty over the Palestinian territory. Those organs have each said that the Palestinian people have an inalienable right to self-determination, their own territory, and their own state. They have even created subsidiary organs with the permanent responsibility of insuring the exercise of those rights. "Entity" is a legal term of art, i.e. "recognition of statehood is a matter of discretion, it is open to any existing state to accept as a state any entity it wishes, regardless of the existence of territory or an established government."[32] harlan (talk) 21:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Drork, interesting reply. I appreciate your integrity in expressing a difference of opinion even on comments which support your view. However, my answer would be that the question here is how does Wikipedia handle such cases. Here is how Wikipedia describes Taiwan; the entry does not call it a state.

The Republic of Taiwan is a goal of supporters of Taiwan independence in creating a Taiwanese state unambiguously separated from [[China]],<ref>{{cite book|last=Copper|first=J.|title=Historical Dictionary of Taiwan (Republic of China)|publisher=The Scarecrow Press|date=2000|isbn=0810836653}}</ref> covering (at most) the areas currently under the control of the Republic of China (i.e., Taiwan, Penghu, Quemoy, Matsu Islands and some minor islands). In this sense, sometimes the State of Taiwan (Táiwān Gúo; Tâi-oân Kok) is used to avoid prejudging a republican polity.

that seems relevant to this issue. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:55, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Here is a speech by the Palestinian primie minister. On page 3, he talks about a "future" state. http://www.passia.org/conferences/2007/SalamFayadPaper.pdf Also, here is a quote from his entry at Wikipedia: "On August 23, 2009, Fayyad came out with a...plan for...establishing the fundamental infrastructures of a Palestinian State, ...in which he detailed a two years working plan for building the infrastructures and institutions of the future Palestinian State, ....with the purpose of establishing a "de facto Palestinian State", based on the premise that the peace talks with Israel were faltering <ref>Ali Waked, [http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3766821,00.html תוכנית פיאד: פלסטין דמוקרטית וקפיטליסטית], [[Yediot Ahronot]], August 25 2009</ref> --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 22:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) You guys are not bringing up any viewpoints or analysis that isn't already contained in the State of Palestine article. It cites and quotes sources, like Ban Ki Moon and Ash, who say the State of Palestine doesn't exist yet. It also cites a Japanese Justice Ministry decision to recognize Palestinian nationality. Japan said the PA's institutions were comparable to those of a full fledged state, and therefore it had decided to stop considering all Palestinians as stateless. The article says "The existence of a state of Palestine, although controversial, is nonetheless a reality in the opinions of the many states that have established bilateral diplomatic relations. A number of publicists and legal experts have noted that the majority of other states have legally recognized the State of Palestine." There are multiple sources provided to support that statement.

The State of Palestine article already cites Fayyad's two year plan and a secondary source, Jerome Segal, who points out that it references the 1988 Declaration of the State of Palestine as having established the foundations of the State. Fayyad's plan calls for expanding the existing jurisdiction of the PA to the entire area inside the 1967 borders, and he needs to build-up the institutions of government in order to do that, e.g. add more trained and equipped Palestinian security forces, and etc.

The article cites Israel’s representative at the United Nations who said that under agreements reached between the two sides, the Palestinian Authority already exercises jurisdiction over many natural resources, while interim cooperation and arrangements were in place for others (See General Assembly Doc. GA/EF/3219, 20 October 2008 [33]); the fact that the PA operates courts where Israeli laws are not directly enforceable; existing bilateral agreements between the State of Palestine and other states like Costa Rica; and sources like Watson's Oslo Accords and Al Haq which say that the Palestinian Authority exercises criminal jurisdiction over Palestinian inhabitants. harlan (talk) 22:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

That's very good, but the overall impression derived from the article is not in line with the aforementioned resources. It is not only an issue of what, it is also an issue of how. If the article start with the statement "Palestine is a state with limited recognition" then something is wrong. Taiwan (Republic of China) is a state with limited recognition, and it is not in the same category with SoP. Funnily enough, Taiwan has government over defined territory, citizens affiliated to it, independent army, independent legal system, independent monetary system, foreign relations with most countries in the world (though usually no official diplomatic missions), and yet no UN representation, while Palestine, on the other hand, has some kind of representation in the UN, several embassies scattered around the world, but no territory, no citizens, no monetary system, no independent legal system, no army and so forth. If you will, SoP is the mirror image of Taiwan, and yet you put them both in the same basket. The article should be deeply revised to reflect the sources which it is allegedly based upon. DrorK (talk) 22:39, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be confused. I cited the published sources that I'm using in the first post that I made at the top of the parent thread. They appear in the article too. It is you and Sm8900 who are drawing imaginary inferences from your own comparisons of Taiwan and Palestine. You are always trying to make tendentious use of a Wikipedia article about an entirely different subject, diplomatic recognition, as if that is same thing or a reliable source. Here is an article which says that the government of Israel had declared Gaza an enemy entity or hostile territory. It says that Israel was frustrated because Hamas was showing that it can govern the Strip.[34] While I'm no fan of Hamas, they did win the parliamentary elections and the US State Department says here [35] that they "violently seized power in Gaza in June 2007". The same advisory says "The security environment in the West Bank has improved markedly since June 2007, with a significant increase in the number of trained Palestinian Authority security forces deployed to urban areas such as Jericho, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jenin." harlan (talk) 01:03, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, one of us two is surely confused, and you homed in on the wrong guy. The analogy to Taiwan is very relevant here, and the status of Taiwan vs. the status of the proclaimed State of Palestine is not something that requires a source, unless you demand sources also for the claim that the Mediterranean is locked within three continents, or that English is the most widely spoken language in Australia. BTW, it is often easier to find sources claiming, for example, that JFK was killed in a conspiracy than articles that assert the common knowledge that he was murdered by a single person. This is due to the fact that people write about the unusual. Writing about obvious things is often a waste of time (not always, though). The fact that so many articles try to argue that SoP exists, is, ironically, an indication of a problem. I can't find many articles discussing the existence of the French Republic, and there aren't so many articles discussing the non-existence of SoP (other than response to the aforementioned claims).
Wikipedia does not recognize states. Wikipedia describes attested facts. Right now, Wikipedia describes a yet-existing yet-to-exist state as if it were an actual state, in a status similar to that of Taiwan or T.R. of Northern Cyprus. This is a false description that mislead readers. It misleads those who support Palestinian statehood as well as those who object it. Both factions deserve a reliable description of the state-of-affairs, whether it makes them happy or sad.
Finally, Israel does not recognize the Gaza Strip or the Palestinian Authority as states. It recognizes them as foreign political entities, and even that is debatable, because some countries claim Israel is still an occupying power in Gaza, and some Israeli organizations (most notably B'Tselem) claim that the Israeli control over the PA makes it, in fact, an Israeli-dependent entity. As for Hamas (not really relevant for this discussion, but still) - it indeed forcefully seized control over the Gaza Strip. In a democratic regime, the party that wins the elections is not entitled to shoot members of the opposition and create a one-party regime for indefinite time. DrorK (talk) 07:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
As DrorK said: "This is a false description that mislead readers. It misleads those who support Palestinian statehood as well as those who object it. Both factions deserve a reliable description of the state-of-affairs, whether it makes them happy or sad." Bingo bingo bingo. ding ding ding. Palestinians do not have a state,. they have been deprived of one by the machinations of the colonialist imperialist power of Israel and its policies which are draconian, mechanistic, and...sorry what other adjectives do you folks like to use for Israel? :-) Sorry, whatever, it is, the point is that palestinians do not have a state. they are occupied, as you guys like to emphatically make clear. Palestinians are disenfranchised and stateless. Why else are so many of them in refugee camps under UNRWA? remember them? it's not as if those refugees are being used as a political pawn, through the self-serving plans of some world organizations, is it? --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 14:53, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

As reliable sources have said, states can recognize any entity they want as a state. It doesn't matter if that makes you happy or sad, because you don't get a vote. Neither of you have been published, and you are not entitled to ask that significant published points of view be suppressed. The President of Palestine says the state already exists, and apparently, 130 other countries agree. The Foreign and Justice Ministers have provided statements to the press which say that Palestine is a legal state that can accept the jurisdiction of the ICC. Several qualified jurists and law professors agree with them. You haven't brought up any points of view here that aren't already contained in the article, much less explained what role disgruntled Wikipedia editors are supposed to play in determining the existence of states. Until you do, I think we can go on citing and quoting published sources which say there is a State of Palestine and that it does not cease to exist simply because it is occupied by Israel. harlan (talk) 09:14, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Harlan - you make several crucial errors in this discussion: (a) I, and anyone else here, are entitled to question the reliability and/or relevance and/or impartiality of a any source. You cannot just bring a source and say: accept it per the principle of Verifiability. Some sources are biased, hence not so trustworthy, some sources are irrelevant to the question at hand; even if they seem somewhat related to it; some sources are too innovative for WP's purposes; some sources treat the issue from too narrow a perspective. Most of the sources you bring are very interesting for a legal journal or as a basis for a dissertation, but they are "contaminated" with all or some of the above-mentioned problems. (b) You base you claims on uncertain or false information. How can you say 130 countries recognized SoP when the a Palestinian senior official say he can prove only 67 official recognitions (after the recent ones extended by Costa Rica and Lebanon)? I have already shown you that the list you trust are not trustworthy. Just as an example - Malta's official letter after the 1988 proclamation says nothing about recognition, and yet Malta appears in all of these lists. As of now, the ICC did not accept the PA request to be recognized as a state for the purpose of ICC jurisdiction. It issued an announcement saying it has to investigate the issue. This is hardly a recognition, and the fact that some jurists support the PA in its request is less important than the ICC's reaction to it. (c) You think that if you write in the lead of an article "There is a state called Palestine" and then in the body of the article: "but some people think it does not exist", then your work is done. No - your work is done once the article's phrasing fairly and clearly conveys the relevant information. Sources are something to be used as a solid ground, not as a hideout. DrorK (talk) 17:37, 19 February 2010 (UTC)
As i mentioned above, in this article Abbas himself says they are "considering" declaring a state. he does not say that they have already done so. Abbas: Only solution is to declare Palestinian state. And here is Erekat on this topic: Erekat: Palestinians may have to abandon goal of independent state, from Reuters.
Also, see these: Palestinians under world pressure not to declare state unilaterally, and Palestinian PM: Declaration of statehood just a formality. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 19:00, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

If you have ever challenged any of the sources cited in the article at the reliable sources noticeboard, I've not heard anything about it. You keep repeating the same flakey WP:OR and WP:Synth analysis over and over again. You waste everyone's time and fill-up the talk page with analysis that you can't source or incorporate in the article.

You don't have any Palestinian official saying that he can "only prove 67 recognitions". That is just an example of the type of exaggerated claims you've made, which only serve to undermine your credibility. The article cites a 1989 UN working document which listed 94 member states that had recognized the SoP, including the dates they extended recognition. The list was circulated to all of the members as UNESCO working document 131 EX/43 during the session that considered SoP's application as a member state. It reflected the fact that Malta recognized SoP on 16/11/1988. The article also cites other sources regarding Malta's recognition of SoP, including Tessler, Mark A. (1994), "A History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" (2nd, illustrated ed.), Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 722: "Within two weeks of the PNC meeting, at least fifty-five nations, including states as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, India, Greece, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka, Malta, and Zambia, had recognized the Palestinian state." You searched UNISPAL and cited a related working document [36]of the General Assembly and Security Council, A/43/930/-S/20320 with a different date: 12/12/1988, in which Malta "Reaffirms its recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to a state of their own."[37]. You continue to make a completely unfounded WP:Synth claim that Malta never recognized the SoP. Those ideas are the result of your own sloppy original research.

The article cites a number of scholars from non-legal fields who have written on matters related to political science or foreign relations, e.g. Avi Plascov, Sandra Berliant Kadosh, Joseph Massad, Clea Bunch, and Jerome Segal. harlan (talk) 07:13, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, I often wonder if you bother using the links people bring here. Here is one of them: [38], AFP, Feb 13, 2009 (8th paragraph - "Malki said documents were provided that show Palestine was recognised as a state by 67 countries and had bilateral agreements with states in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe". Riad al-Malki is the Foreign Minister of the Palestinian Authority. He submitted these documents to the ICC, asking it for recognition as a state. Referring to the role of Hamas in this issue, Al-Malki said: "We represent the Palestinian occupied territories. We are not going to ask permission from one faction or another". A few paragraphs above AFP report says: "Moreno-Ocampo said earlier this month he would determine whether there was such a legal entity as a Palestinian state". Apparently it isn't so obvious to him as it is obvious to you, and he is the ICC chief prosecutor.
As for Malta - a secondary source cannot be deemed reliable if it says something which is completely contradictory to a plain simple statement in the primary source upon which it is supposed to be based. The wording of the Maltese declaration is simple English. If someone wants to interpret it as recognition in SoP, much joy may he have, but it would be very hard to treat him as a reliable source. I don't need a scholar to tell me that the US Constitution's 1st Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech. It says so explicitly. Would you trust a source saying that there is actually no such protection in the US law? Similarly, can you trust a source saying Malta recognized SoP, when its statement clearly says that "Reaffirms its recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to a state of their own"? I would suggest you find better resources to rely upon. Now, I don't know where you find that list you were talking about (you didn't provide a link), but do you think such a list overrides all plain clear statements given about this issue, on behalf of the Palestinian themselves among others, and make the existence of SoP a matter of fact? DrorK (talk) 08:47, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Drork, you claimed a Palestinian senior official said "he can prove only 67 official recognitions", but the old article you cited doesn't actually say that. In fact, Al-Khashan submitted additional material in support of the declaration to the Prosecutor at a subsequent meeting held on 16 October 2009. See paragraph 10 [39] The ICC has stated that a conclusive determination on Palestine's declaration will have to be made by the judges. See the ICC Questions and Answers. [40]

You haven't produced the primary source in connection with Malta. According to the UNESCO document, Malta recognized SoP on 16/11/1988. You are performing a WP:Synth analysis on a letter dated 12/12/1988. We can't edit articles based on your original research. harlan (talk) 10:51, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's see... The list was submitted to UNESCO by Algeria, Indonesia, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Yemen. None of the countries mentioned in it approved or disproved the information as far as we can tell, except Austria, which is probably the reason for Corrigendum 1 saying that Austria should be deleted from the list. Lebanon is mentioned in the list without a date. This report from AFP Lebanon to establish ties with 'Palestine' suggest that such recognition was probably never extended before 2008. The list also includes Namibia, which was not independent at the time (the list says "SWAPO" in parenthesis, but SWAPO and Namibia are not exactly the same thing). Byelorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR, despite having voting rights in the UN, were not independent states, but part of the USSR. In any case, they ceased to exist, just as the USSR ceased to exist. Other countries in the list that ceased to exist: Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, German Democratic Republic, Democratic Yemen, Democratic Kampuchea (today Cambodia with a totally different regime), Zaire (today: Dem. Rep. of the Congo, with totally different regime). The Eastern European countries mentioned underwent radical regime change, namely overthrow of the communist regime, and some of them joined the EU, which is also a radical change in foreign obligations. Mongolia also overthrown its former communist regime, and this act has relevant consequences/
So, to sum it all up, even if I take your word about Malta, this list is still not very credible, and moreover - it is not updated. The fact that GDR and Yugoslavia recognized SoP is as relevant as the recognition of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the USSR. DrorK (talk) 11:46, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Drork, where does it say that you get to harrass editors for citing and quoting reliable published sources that represent a major viewpoint? You've been supplied with verifiable references to recent (2009) publications which say Palestine has been recognized by 130 countries. Take your arguments to the reliable sources noticeboard or shut-up. Your guesswork about continuity vs. succession of states and recognition is not useful to anybody without a published source that actually supplies that analysis.

You've stated a number of times now that you don't have to supply sources. You continue to introduce unsourced and controversial statements in the lede of the State of Palestine article after lengthy discussions in which that material has been challenged. Those statements are contradicted by the verifiable and reliably sourced contents of the article.

The article notes that Lebanon, and the other Arab League States, have always safeguarded the right of Palestinians to a state of their own. Palestine was admitted as a member state decades ago and the League amended its Constitution to stipulate that the existence and independence of Palestine cannot be questioned de jure, even though the outward signs of this independence have remained veiled as a result of force majeure. See Henry G. Schermers and Niels M. Blokker, International Institutional Law, Hotei, 1995-2004, ISBN-10: 9004138285, page 51 I've pointed out to you several times now that there is a legal difference between diplomatic recognition and recognition of states, but you still seem to be pretty clueless about the subject. harlan (talk) 14:30, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Slanders and insults won't make you look more reliable or less biased. You have nothing new out up your sleeve, just the same old arguments as if recognition of the right to self determination means recognition as a state. This is an absurd. The League of Nations recognized the right of Jews to self determination in Palestine in 1922. Would you say that the State of Israel was recognized in 1922? The EU and the US recognize the right of Palestinians to self determination in the WB&Gaza Strip, would you say that the EU and the US recognize a state called Palestine? As for the Arab League issue - Israel and Syria are both member-state of the UN and several other international organization. Would say that Syria recognized the State of Israel? Now, if you want to write an article about the difference between diplomatic recognition and recognition of states, or about the notion of statehood in various legal sources - be my guest, but you won't be kind enough to do it, because you are here only for one reason, namely promoting your political views. I have already showed you that many of your sources are not reliable, or not reliable in this specific context. A legal advisor to the PA or the PLO cannot be regarded as a reliable source due to conflict of interest. A list that refer to Namibia as an independent state before it declared independence cannot be regarded a reliable source. Suggesting that the GDR decisions about international relations are valid after Germany's reunification is nonsense, and you won't find a source to support that because it is too obvious. People don't write articles about obvious things. Actually, this is the main problem with your claims - you bring innovative sideline theories that cannot be refuted by sources because they are not deemed serious enough. No scholar would waste his time arguing with someone who suggest that a state is merely a folder of papers which includes a declaration and some letters of recognition. What I do find interesting about your last post is the idea that the Arab League considers the lack of Palestinian independence the result of force majeure. Somehow, in the UN, they claimed it was Israel's fault. DrorK (talk) 07:51, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Arbitray Break I

Drork, the ROC claimed that it was part of China and that it was the legitimate government of China. It did so long after most states had recognized the PRC as the government of China. The PRC also claims that Taiwan is part of China. All of that is discussed in "The Restatement (Third) of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States §201 Reporters note 8". It says that "If Taiwan should claim statehood, it would in effect be purporting to secede from China." and that has never happened. The Gaza Strip was part of the Palestine Mandate and has not subsequently become part of any other sovereignty. The ICJ said that the Palestinian people were entitled to their territory and their own state. Security Council Resolution 1860 (2009) confirmed that Gaza would be part of the Palestinian state. Later that month, the PA provided a declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the ICC; said they were a legal state; and asked for an investigation of war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip. The government of Taiwan does not say there is a state of Taiwan. The ICJ has not yet ruled that the ROC is entitled to the territory of Taiwan and a state of their own. The Security Council has not yet ruled that Taiwan will be part of the territory of a state of Taiwan.

Israeli historians report that the Haganah, the LEHI, and the Irgun committed massacres. Half the population of the proposed Jewish State were Arabs, but the Va'ad Leumi didn't hold general elections. They seized control by violence and declared themselves to be the provisional government. When Yehuda Blum was questioned by the US Senate about that, he testified "As far as international law is concerned, general elections are not a precondition for the legality of the state. If you look around the world you have 120 out of 150 states which have dubious elections if they have them at all." He concluded by saying that "practically all states have to assert their existence through the insistence on physical force and the will to defend themselves." [41]

Dependent states that engage in foreign relations are still states and subjects of international law. Geoffrey Watson and Quigley noted that Great Britain had delegated treaty making authority to Palestine and that, among other agreements, it had entered into a Postal treaty with the United States in 1944. Watson noted that the PLO signed an international agreement with the United States on behalf of the PA. See, Geoffrey Watson The Oslo Accords: International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreements (Oxford University Press, 2000) pages 98-99. Al Haq noted that the PA joined the International Airport Council. The US State Department Digest explains that those sort of treaties are a hallmark of statehood: "A state in the international sense is generally described as a recognized member of the family of nations, an international person. Authorities differ in respect to the qualifications for such statehood, but there is general agreement on certain basic requirements. Independence is not essential. The requisite personality, in the international sense, is seen when the entity claiming to be a State has in fact its own distinctive association with the members of the international society, as by treaties, which, howsoever concluded in its behalf, mark the existence of definite relationships between itself and other contracting parties" See Marjorie M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1963) page 223 harlan (talk) 12:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, whenever you are left without arguments, you "scream": but the Israelis committed massacres. According to you there used to be a peaceful human-loving kingdom called Palestine, that lived happily until it was brutally raided by the bloodthirsty Zionists. You know what, even with this kind of twisted logic, you haven't proven anything relevant to our discussion. Now, we do know about dependent territories that fall short of being sovereign states. There are 50 of those in the confederation known as the United States of America. There is one within Danish Kingdom called Greenland, and there is the Kingdom of the Netherlands which includes three autonomous geopolitical sections. There are other examples like these, but then again, are you claiming that the so-called State of Palestine is in the same category of the 50 US states, Greenland, the Netherlands Antilles, Catalonia or Quebec? These countries have considerable control over a defined territory, a defined population and autonomy in many fields save the right to establish an army and to have fully independent foreign policy. The proclaimed SoP has no land, no defined population and it is not even widely recognized. The Palestinian Authority is not to be confused with the proclaimed SoP, these are two different things, and even the PA enjoys much less autonomy than Catalonia, Greenland, Gibraltar or Puerto Rico. Wikipedia is not a legal journal. It is not the place to promote innovative theories and interpretations of the international law. Sources are not substitute for common sense. As I told you, I cannot find a source telling you that an entity should be independent to be called a state. That the obvious notion. There are people who try to promote innovative concepts, and therefore they write articles. It doesn't make their articles something on which to base an encyclopedic article. If their ideas become mainstream ideas in, let's say 20 or 40 years, then the picture would be different, but currently it wouldn't be serious to say "Palestine is a state" per these innovative theories. DrorK (talk) 12:42, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Drork, a few states adhere to the Montevideo Convention, but even they don't require most of the B.S. on your list. Even if you discovered a source which said a state had to be independent, it would not refute the opposing views held by the US and other governments.

Published sources say the Palestinian Authority drafted the Constitution of the State of Palestine[42]; and the PA has signed bilateral agreements with other states as the State of Palestine [43]

The Middle East studies curriculum in every US and Israeli university today includes historical material from the works of Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Shlomo Ben Ami, and et al. who say the Israeli militias committed massacres and engaged in operations that amounted to ethnic cleansing. That sort of thing has been widely reported in the Israeli press. See for example Survival of the fittest, By Ari Shavit [44]. harlan (talk) 14:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Let's put it this way - if the fact that Jewish military organizations committed massacres proves that there is a Palestinian state, then the massacres committed by Arab-Palestinian military groups throughout the years proves there isn't. So much for twisted logic - even if we follow it, we get nowhere.
The leadership of the PA is more-or-less the leadership of the PLO (especially since the Hamas revolt), and the leadership of the PLO is also the leadership of the quasi-State of Palestine. Hence the confusion that might arise between the three bodies. Nevertheless, the PA is not SoP. For example, Hamas has never been a member of the PLO and did not subscribe to the 1988 declaration, and yet until their revolt, they participated in the administration of the PA (at least to some extent). You can also read this statement about the new PA constitution adopted in 2002, made by the then-PA Minister of Justice, Ibrahim Dughmeh: "This law defines the powers of the Palestinian Authority and will serve as the constitution until the establishment of a Palestinian state" [45]. So according to him this is not the constitution of SoP, and SoP is not established yet (at least as of 2002, and there was no radical change ever since).
Now, last but not least, the Montevideo Convention - leave it aside. This is not a legal journal. The innovative ideas about statehood should be mentioned according to the due weight principle, in the article about statehood. The proclaimed SoP is many miles away from what we normally call a state. You suggested that a state can be a dependency. Fine, but then you claim that SoP is something like California or Greenland, and it isn't. You claim that a state doesn't have to be fully recognized. Okay, but then you put SoP in the same category of Taiwan of TRNC, and it is definitely not belong there. So with a bit of logic and healthy common sense you can see that your arguments lead us nowhere. DrorK (talk) 17:15, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The reason I mention the Montevideo Convention is because you keep making meaningless comments about "limited recognition" which aren't supported by any reliable sources. The Convention reflects the prevailing declarative view that the existence of a state does not depend upon recognition by other states (or Wikipedia editors). That has some application to Palestine, because it has asked for a war crimes investigation on its own initiative.

Thomas Grant explains: "Further casting doubt on constitutivism are practical disjunctions. If statehood stems from recognition and is solely a matter between donor and recipient, then a community recognized by one state but not another would simultaneously be a state and a nonstate. This indeed would present, as Brierly put it, "a legal curiosity." The illogic of constitutivism's focus on bilateral action between an existing state and a claimant community has earned ample rebuke. Chen wrote trenchantly: [S]ince recognition is accorded by States individually, and simultaneous action cannot be reasonably expected, the international personality thus recognised must, until universality of recognition is achieved, necessarily be partial and relative. The result would be that a State is a member of the international community for one State, but not for another. . . . [S]uch . . . confusion must be extremely embarrassing.

Of greater doctrinal concern is the proposition which seems to flow from constitutivism that an unrecognized community has neither rights nor duties under international law. Denied recognition, does a community enjoy a freedom from the strictures which govern the conduct of states? And do recognized states enjoy a freedom to abuse the unrecognized community in a manner which international law would bar against a state? The declaratist proposition that the state exists independent of recognition avoids these problems." -- Thomas D. Grant, The Recognition of States: Law and Practice in Debate and Evolution (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999) page 20 harlan (talk) 09:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

What exactly is the purpose of bringing this opinion? You have this habit of flooding the discussion with remotely relevant quotes (if relevant at all), hoping that the complicated terminology would make people accept your view, due to the well-known syndrome of "if I can't understand these complex phrasing, then it must be true". So there is someone who thinks that it only takes a declaration to make a state. Fine. Do you suggest it is a mainstream view? Are you suggesting Wikipedia should describe all of these entities as sovereign states? They all declared independence. You are here the one who claims that Wikipedia should act as an international tribune, review juridical opinions and decide to recognize a state called Palestine. My suggestion is to avoid any implication that there is such a state as long as we cannot see an entity called Palestine with features that normal people regard as indications of statehood. I'm not alone in this - The UN secretary-general, the PA Prime-Minister, the US State Department, the EU, the Swedish Foreign Minister and many others, all stated that a Palestinian state is non-existent at the moment. Even the ICC and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent say they cannot determine whether such a state exist, despite suggestions that they treat the PLO or the PA as a Palestinian state. There is a saying: "if you see a donkey with back and white stripes you may assume it is a zebra". Your suggestions are equivalent to the idea that we refer to all donkeys as zebras per some juridical opinion that stripes are not really necessary and they just cause confusion. When I tell you this thesis is a bit far-fetched, you answer: bring a source to prove that stripes are crucial for a zebra. DrorK (talk) 13:46, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Israeli pov pushing at several articles

This editor Gilabrand is trying to make it look like an area that is not part of Israel is part of Israel:

Israeli cuisine: [46]

Geography of Israel: [47] --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 20:34, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I've reverted both and commented on the eprsonal attack on you. Let's see what happens next.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:11, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I have reverted on one (where Gilabrand had made an exceptionally offensive edit summary); so there is clearly a lot of back-and-forth here. RolandR (talk) 22:14, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
My mistake. I didn't notice your revert there got in before mine.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
the political status of the golan heights is mentioned there in ref, I don't see why it should be repeated with every mention of the place's name. It's an article about Israeli geography. I don't see why the name of the region should be "the israeli occupied golan heights". It's called the golan heights regardless, or am I mistaken? Since this is about geography, if we agree it should be inside this article, there's no need to continually bring up the "occupation". Cumulus (talk) 22:19, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
It's an article about ISRAELI geography so no need ot mention a place not in Israel.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I removed the wording "Israeli occupied" from the cuisine article. While it's accurate, this is

not relevant information for this article. Concerned readers should get the political picture very clear immediately upon reading the Golan heights article, linked from that sentence. Cumulus (talk) 22:25, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

But it violates WP:NPOV to give the impression that the place is Israeli.--Peter cohen (talk) 22:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
I think this is silly. Many people claim Israel in general is illegitimate. Should we describe all Israeli territory as "the land held by the evil zionists"? Anyone who wants to know will have his questions answered in the relevant article. You could claim that the information regarding the golan heights should be in the syrian article, but you'd have to convince me why that makes more sense (for the reader), as the land has been under Israeli control for over 40 years, quite a bit longer than it has been under Syrian control. Cumulus (talk) 23:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)
There is nothing in the current phrasing that suggest the GH are undisputed. The word "occupied" adds no information in this context and it is a tendentious term in nature. DrorK (talk) 23:33, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually there is drork: "There are various climatic areas in Israel that allow a variety of products to be grown...... while the temperate climate of the mountains of the Galilee and the Golan Heights is suitable for grapes, apples and cherries." This implies that the area is in Israel. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 10:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

For any practical reason the territory is within Israeli borders. We gave very good explanation why Syria and other countries are not pleased with it, but there is a limit to how far we can go with this. You know, there used to be a Jewish custom to send wedding invitations written as followed: "With much joy we invite you to our wedding that will take place in Jerusalem (In case the Messiah does not come before the wedding, kindly join us at the so-and-so hall in London)". You are suggesting we write the article about the Golan Heights in a similar manner. DrorK (talk) 11:28, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
No, it is not within Israels borders. That is Israeli POV.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 12:03, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
You are welcome to try getting there via the Damascus International Airport. Don't say I didn't warn you. DrorK (talk) 12:20, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
Anyway, it's not even 100% clear that the Israeli government actually claimed to annex the Golan heights -- it only "extended Israeli law" to cover the Golan heights without a true unambiguous declaration of annexation. AnonMoos (talk) 11:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Reminder: The purpose of this "Collaboration" project is to resolve issues, not just argue the same issues from talk pages here. So alerts are to bring more voices to an article, hopefully well-intentioned to resolve issues. :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 04:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no collaboration here. There is an orchestrated attempt to make political statement through Wikipedia. How can you collaborate with people who came here to introduce political statements? Look what happened in the article about the Golan Heights. It present an accusation toward Israel as a fact based on sources like Encyclopaedia Britannica and Lonely Planet. Any attempt to make the text more balanced was violently reverted, with no respect to the work done in looking for sources and refining the phrasing. This forum is practically dead, and when issues are brought here, it is those political figures who come to make comments that would protect their tendentious edits. DrorK (talk) 05:24, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I think that's what I was describing, though which side more often brings fights here rather than solutions may be subjective :-) Obviously, it would be nice if everyone agreed on certain political principles that were applicable world wide, and then applied them to this situation, but that can be very difficult in the best of circumstances. CarolMooreDC (talk) 05:30, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

occupied

I would like to start a centralized discussion on the use of the term "occupied" as applied to the Golan Heights, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. This has come up in a large number of articles many times. The aim would be to establish some sort of style guideline so that we do not have to have the same "fight" on 30 different pages. I would also like to include the usage of the term "Israeli settlement" but I think the two combined, though related, may be something that becomes to unwieldy. Does anybody have any thoughts on how to start such a thing? nableezy - 02:51, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

"occupied" is often a judgmental term implying a certain political position. Hence, avoid it when not needed. It can be used when you can assert that the de facto regime is occupational, e.g. Paris was definitely occupied by Nazi Germany during the 1940s. Japan was definitely occupied by the US following WW2. This is due to the fact that an occupational regime was established there and none of the parties denied it. In certain cases you would like to use the term "occupied" or "occupation" when referring to the position of a certain person or body. For example, when talking about the UN treatment of the Golan Heights, you may use the term "occupied" because this is how the UN terms it. You may not term the Golan Heights or any other territory "occupied" just because you think a certain political position should be given precedence. DrorK (talk) 03:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Some useful examples:
  1. Western Sahara - "largely Moroccan-controlled territory in North Africa"
  2. Badme - "Currently the town is controlled by Ethiopia."
  3. Kuril Islands - "All of the islands are under Russian jurisdiction, although the southernmost four are claimed by Japan as part of its territory."
  4. Hala'ib triangle - the word "occupation" is not mentioned at all
  5. Hatay Province - officially still claimed by Syria, as mentioned in the article, but the word "occupation" is not used. DrorK (talk) 03:55, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Maybe it shouldn't be considered a fight. Treat it like other disputed and potentially inflammatory labels and attribute it. Make sure to give both sides and watch wording that can imply that a given statement is inaccurate without being straight up about it. WP:WORDS.Cptnono (talk) 04:04, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
A common problem is writing: "XYZ is a Narnian territory occupied by Flatland (ref: 'The Encyclopedia of Narnian History')" or "XYZ is an Elvish-occupied Ogre territory (ref: the International Council for Ogrish Rights)". I've seen it way too often on en-wp. You cannot make a POVized statement in the lead and then attribute it in the fine print. Another example is: "Flatland is a territory on the moon, occupied according to the 'Martian Association of Health', 'Federation of Jupiter Inhabitants', Inter-Galactic resolution 1234, the Agricultural Organization of the Dark Side of the Moon' and the 'Betelgeuse Grand Society'. Elfland maintains its control over the territory is legitimate". I've seen such text in one of the articles' lead. DrorK (talk) 04:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Support - I fully support centralized discussion and decision making on the use of the term "occupied" as applied to the Golan Heights, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip in order to establish a project-wide standard. It's the best way to deal with issues like this in my view. Sean.hoyland - talk 04:28, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Could you please explain what makes the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem different from Western Sahara or the Hala'ib Triangle (for example)? The Gaza Strip is a special case that cannot be defined as "occupation" (actually, it is almost an unprecedented situation, hence any term would be problematic in this specific case). The West Bank is indeed partially under occupational regime, but then again, there is no need to repeat this fact every time you mention the West Bank, just as you don't write "Cuban-claimed" whenever you mention Guantanamo Bay. DrorK (talk) 05:32, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Had I said that the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem are different from Western Sahara or the Hala'ib Triangle I would answer your question. Since I didn't, I won't. I fully support the use of non-partisan, transparent, source based deterministic methods to make decisions about terminology that people edit war over endlessly. The approach is equally applicable elsewhere but in this case we are talking about Israel-Palestine-Syria. Issues like this need to dealt with centrally. Decision procedures need to be agreed. Results needs to be repeatable and it should be easy for the reader to verify why an article uses a particular terminology. It's really no different from dealing with issues like Evolution. The article says "Evolutionary biologists document the fact that evolution occurs...(my bold) because that is the most policy compliant statement. Some people might see it as potentially inflammatory, biased or whatever but the statement is consistent with scientific consensus and maximises compliance with mandatory policies. It's true that each area is a bit different e.g. the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that the West Bank is under belligerent occupation whereas the Gaza Strip, in their view, isn't. Nevertheless, the HCJ's view is just a small part of the global consensus. For me its making the step towards centralised discussion, decision making and deployment of standardised information that is more important here. Discussions about decision methods, words etc come later but at some point we should acknowledge that the chaotic, edit-war-prone ways things are done at the moment simply don't work and aren't in the interests of the project. Sean.hoyland - talk 06:18, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
And yet the problem of using the term "occupied" is not restricted to the Levant or even to the Middle East. It is applicable whenever talking about any disputed area around the world. Would it be reasonable for us to decide on a policy for the Levant regions, while other regions, even within the Middle East, are described according to a different policy? Shouldn't we simply follow the general rules and norms already set for other places in the world? DrorK (talk) 07:25, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Drork, I wasnt proposing that we have the actual discussion right here right now. I was actually hoping to get people to say whether or not they thought such a discussion could be had and whether or not it is useful. I am well aware of your position, you dont need to add this section to the list of places where we have to fight over the issue. nableezy - 07:38, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
It would be a very bad idea if several editors would determine special rules for Levant-related articles. DrorK (talk) 09:45, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
There are no general rules and norms that specifically address the issue of occupation status presumably because like virtually every other bit of information in wikipedia it should become obvious by applying existing policies. It's just one of those bits of information that isn't handled consistently that many people seem to have trouble dealing with. If people in Western Sahara had better internet access perhaps we would be facing similar problems with some other articles. I don't see this as deciding policy or special rules for the Levant. The policies are already available. It's about managing the implementation of those policies to address specific cases in order to produce a policy compliant consensus. The result, a string of words with references could then be deployed wherever it's needed. The centralized discussion could remain open indefinitely because things change and people may come up with new ideas. It might help to reduce conflict, encourage collaboration and I think it's consistent with the spirit of the discretionary sanctions. Yes, the Levant isn't unique but it is covered by a specific set of sanctions. Other areas have strikingly similar narrative war problems and similar sanctions e.g. the entire set of Balkan-related articles. Sean.hoyland - talk 10:26, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
Can we take a first step and agree that this term, "occupied", challenges the NPOV principle? Do we all agree on that? DrorK (talk) 12:08, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
No. nableezy - 15:32, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
The first step is to state whether you agree or disagree with having a centralized discussion. It's not really clear whether you think it should go ahead or not. The second step is probably to re-read WP:NPOV. Sean.hoyland - talk 16:13, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Support I think a centralized discussion is a good idea. harlan (talk) 09:42, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Support I have previously tried to get the occupied v disputed issue addressed centrally. I am easy on whether this is dealt with as an issue concernign the trminology in purely an Arab-Israeli context or more broadly. Obviously if we were looking at more broadly we would have to escalate this discussion to the ethnic disputes board and gaude the interest there. I would not regard a lack fo interest in resolving the wider use of the terminology as suitable grounds for not tackling it in the IP context.--Peter cohen (talk) 19:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Support --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 20:11, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Strangely enough, those pushing for the use of "occupied" as a standard term are those supporting a centralized discussion, so I suspect the motives here are not entirely pure. Besides, as you've seen above, we don't even agree on whether "occupied" is an NPOV-challenge, so there is no common basis for discussion. DrorK (talk) 21:24, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
The idea would be to discuss whether or not it is NPOV to either include or exclude the word "occupied". If there was agreement we would not need to discuss it. And my motive here is to avoid another edit war with you and any number of other editors. Regardless of how the discussion turns out I would support the consensus. nableezy - 21:49, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
An agreement of whom? There are clearly some people here who really want to use the term "occupied", but that doesn't solve the problem, even if they can form an ad-hoc "consensus". If this term implies political opinion, then it should be avoided, even if there happen to be many people here who adhere to this opinion. In other word, if the term is a POV problem, then we have nothing to discuss. Perhaps you should explain how come this term is legitimate per NPOV. DrorK (talk) 23:06, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
The term is used to describe a certain legal status. It is used as a statement of fact in countless high-quality sources to describe the legal status of these territories. It carries no more political opinion than saying "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel". And there are clearly some people who want to avoid the term when used to reference Israel's occupation of these territories but are perfectly willing, even supporting, the use in other analogous articles. That does not solve the problem either. What is needed is for people to present their arguments and sources in one place and, with hopefully uninvolved editors weighing in, determine a consensus on the usage of the term "occupied" regarding these territories. And if you would like me to explain how it is a legitimate term, here goes: NPOV defines "neutrality" as including all significant viewpoints, giving due weight. Due weight is determined by the weight given in the sources. High-quality sources almost invariably agree that these territories are under Israeli occupation. It is essentially a fringe viewpoint that the territories are not occupied. The usage of the term "disputed", first championed by Israel as a way of denying that the Fourth Geneva Conventions applied to the territories, does not mean anything at all. It does not contradict "occupied" in any way, it says nothing about the legal status of the territories. It is a published, verifiable fact that the West Bank, including East Jerusalem is occupied. There is a genuine dispute about whether or not Gaza remains occupied, with many governments and human rights organizations maintaining that it remains under effective Israeli military control with some governments, and some high-quality sources as well, arguing that since Israel's "unilateral disengagement" that the Gaza Strip is no longer occupied by Israel. There is almost no dispute at all about whether or not Israel occupies the Golan Heights. It is non-neutral to disregard the super-majority viewpoint that the territories are occupied because of a fringe sized view that they are not. I was serious when I said I did not want to argue the actual issue here, but, since you asked, that is why I feel it is non-NPOV to not use the word occupied. nableezy - 00:13, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Of course, it could be that most editors believe that any discussion looking at the consensus of reliable sources will demonstrate that "occupied" is the standard explanation. (And WP:NPOV actually recquires us to reflect the balance of these sources rather than what Drork tries to claim it says which sounds rather closer to WP:IDON'TLIKE.) This might explain why those who favour the term are so keen to get this sorted once and for all. Pure or not our motivations do mesh nicely with Wikipedia policy.--Peter cohen (talk) 00:39, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
I for one think Drork's point is well-taken and backed with substantial argument and example. A political viewpoint remains just that even if it is a "super-majority viewpoint." Hamas, for example, considers all of Mandatory Palestine "occupied" territory. Why? Because it is a political statement by one side of this conflict. It is much clearer and more neutral to avoid the use of the term and stick with who controls what. Stellarkid (talk) 04:15, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Could you state whether you are or you are not in favour of a centralized discussion to establish a policy compliant consensus on this issue ? Sean.hoyland - talk 04:21, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind at all changing the names of the articles "Occupation of the West Bank by Jordan" and "Syrian Occupation of Lebanon". These names are certainly problematic. If you could bring to my attention more articles like that I would be happy to support a name change. "Occupation of the West Bank Gaza Strip by Egypt" is a different case, because here there was an actual Egyptian military regime. When a foreign army, i.e. an army which is considered foreign by all parties, governs a territory, you could indeed say that this territory is occupied.
The problem is that the term "occupation" is used much more extensively, and it is not for us to make legal or moral decisions regarding the legitimacy of a government or regime. Of course we could present different views, but that's not what we're talking about here. We are talking about saying something like: "Flatland is an Elvish-occupied Narnian territory". This is wrong. We should write: "Flatland is a territory controlled by Elfland and claimed by Narnia", then in the body of the article we can write: "Narnia's appeal to the Intergalactic Society, resulted in a resolution calling for the complete and immediate withdrawal of Elfland from occupied Flatland. Elfland rejected the resolution and maintained that Flatland was an Elvish territory since the beginning of time..."
Last point - I see many editor sanctify the principle of verifiability and consider it more important than NPOV and even common sense. NPOV is no less important than verifiability. You cannot justify an POVized term simply because it can be sourced (even when there are many sources). The verifiability principle encompasses many problems (which I'm not going to detail here now), and a reference source is not a magic rod that makes every wrong right. DrorK (talk) 07:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Drork, I really would like to discuss this in another, more structured, environment. Would you be willing to do so? nableezy - 15:13, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Of course. When and where? DrorK (talk) 21:24, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Excellent. I dont know when or where, I was hoping somebody who watches this page might have an idea as to how to set this up. nableezy - 21:27, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
To clarify, I am thinking of something like this or something like this (look at the talk archives) nableezy - 21:55, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
Now, I have never seen the pages you linked to above, but I do need to understand the purpose of that. In the UN, which is and international political body (and so it should be) terminology, like anything else there, is decided by vote. The reason the UN uses the term "Occupied Syrian Golan" is because more delegates raised their hands in favor of this terminology. Why? because of all kind of political calculations. Similarly, the UN does not know about a country called Taiwan, or Republic of China. If you look at the UN maps, you will find a Chinese province called Taiwan, and if you rely solely on these map, you are in for a surprise when you try to get there. Wikipedia is not the UN. It has different goals and purposes and hence its different methods. Now, if your idea is to start a kind of UN GA debate, it would be useless. My question remains - where do we want to get? DrorK (talk) 22:26, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
I can only answer as to where I want to get, but what I am looking for is some sort of consensus on whether or not the word "occupied" should be used in Wikipedia's narrative voice when referring to the territories mentioned above. What the consensus decides is not the issue, the issue for me is that we have this same argument on countless pages with no rational way of determining a site-wide consensus on the issue. If there is consensus to not use the word in the narrative voice I will accept that. If there is consensus to use the word in the narrative voice I will accept that. Will you? Will others? nableezy - 23:15, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

"Occupation of the West Bank by Egypt"?? Don't you mean Gaza... AnonMoos (talk) 15:49, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I stand corrected. Sorry. DrorK (talk) 21:24, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
It would seem that terminology from the United Nations which sanctioned Israel would be WP:RS, whatever that language is (and despite the many problems inherent in the colonial powers-dominated UN setting up any nation anyway). And of course there is always the option of just mentioning both names in every instance with refs for both, the first time with references, after that as XXXX/YYYY with the names in alphabetical order. (Not really paying close attention to above or working on many articles where this is an issue, I'm not sure if such a neutral sounding suggestion actually would be POV.) CarolMooreDC (talk) 16:02, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
"United Nations" doesn't mean much in itself -- do you mean the General Assembly or the Security Council (which are two very different things)?? The perfervid purple rhetoric which spouts forth with the regularity of clockwork from the General Assembly's annual ritualistic "Two-minutes-hate against Israel" sessions would not be much of a reliable source for anything except the dysfunctionality of the UN system... AnonMoos (talk) 22:18, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Does anybody have an idea on how to set this up? nableezy - 19:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

See WP:Centralized discussion. I don't know for sure, but I think you just set up a page and announce its existence at WP:Village Pump and WP:AN. There was a discussion once at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Jewish Neighborhoods versus Settlements of Jerusalem; you might want to use it to get an idea about how to set the thing up. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 20:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

A war edit is not a step to be taken when there are no arguments left

Since Harlan apparently left without arguments in this discussion, he chooses to resort to war edit in the article State of Palestine. By the way, someone removed the merge template, even though it is still relevant. DrorK (talk) 14:31, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Drork, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. On several occasions I've pointed out that Israel claims that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are beyond its sovereign territory and jurisdiction. I also noted that the ICJ said the Palestinians are the lawful inhabitants of the territory of a state [48] [49]; and that determinations of statehood are made by other states, not Wikipedia editors. [50]
Professor Alain Pellet, a member and former President of the International Law Commission, just released a legal opinion that mentions those same facts. [51] He says that it is not absurd to think that Palestine is a State within the general and usual meaning of the term (paragraph 5). He says there is no need for the International Criminal Court to decide in the abstract the question whether or not Palestine is a State, because that would only lead to the Court having to decide between the assessments of sovereign states that, in the end, have complete discretion in the matter (para 34).
He explains that, although it is only necessary that Palestine be considered a state for the purposes of article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, he nevertheless believes that Palestine also presents all the attributes of a sovereign state (even if its territory is occupied - see paragraph 35). He notes that Israel does not claim to exercise territorial sovereignty over the Occupied Territories (see para 28 of Pellet's opinion; paragraph 102 of the ICJ majority opinion and the statement of Israel in para 8 of CCPR/C/ISR/2001/2). He notes that Palestine has exhibited the attributes of a sovereign state when it made the declaration accepting the jurisdiction of the court, and when it appointed an "independent" commission to investigate the allegations contained in the Goldstone report. He observes that the ICJ clearly considered Palestine to be a state for purposes of applying the Hague Regulations, and cites para. 89 of the ICJ majority opinion which said: Section III of those Regulations, which concerns "Military authority over the territory of the hostile State", is particularly pertinent in the present case.
The Jerusalem Post had an article recently which said that Jericho has been ruled by the Palestinian Authority since 1994.[52] Ynet carried an article which said "The State of Israel gave up the neighborhoods on the other side of the separation fence"; "The municipality has internalized the message which came from the Israeli government that these neighborhoods are not a part of Jerusalem, and is acting in accordance. The Palestinian Authority is the one repairing the roads and is the one operating the social infrastructures."; "The neighborhoods are outside the realm of the State of Israel, and certainly the municipality's. From a practical standpoint, this is Ramallah. Beside the half-delusional Right, I don't know anyone who is really trying to enforce Israeli sovereignty on these areas," [53] harlan (talk) 16:17, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
Harlan, the discussion is over. You keep bringing irrelevant information in order to drag this discussion forever (and then you have the nerve to accuse me of filibustering). You are right that the WB&Gaza are not considered part of Israel, but that does not make this territory a state. We are not lawyering here. We are trying to convey reliable information, and you try to prevent us from doing so. DrorK (talk) 21:03, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
BTW, in a very typical manner, you bring sources in a misleading way. Let me cite from the link you've brought above: "(...) It raises the question of Palestine's status as a 'State' under international law. Professor Pellet argues that (...) this issue is whether or not Palestine is a State for the purposes of article 12(3), that is, for the simple purpose of giving the Court jurisdiction over international crimes, rather than for all purposes". Prof. Pellet is an honest practical person. He does not go as far as claiming there is a state called Palestine. He merely suggests that for the very limited purpose of discussing an issue before the international tribunal, we can regard the PA request as if it were made by a state. As I mentioned before, for some purposes the Israeli law regards a couple of two men as if they were a man and a woman. I would suggest we start to refer to certain Israeli men as women as per these court rulings. DrorK (talk) 21:22, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Drork, you are quoting a blog entry written by Prof. William A. Schabas. I cited the actual legal opinion written by Prof Alain Pellet and provided the paragraphs in which he explained that he thinks it is not absurd to say that Palestine is a state within the general and usual meaning of the term. He actually says that it is not the Court's job to usurp the discretion of sovereign states to recognize Palestine as a state, but only to rule on whether the conditions for exercise of its statutory responsibilities are met (para 5 and 6).

You've constantly insulted and attacked other Wikipedia editors when they cite reliable published sources, including Prof. Pellet, which express the viewpoint that a state of Palestine already exists. That is a mainstream viewpoint that has been discussed by plenty of mainstream sources. In this case, what you've "mentioned before" is nothing more than your own unpublished opinions and irrelevant analogies. harlan (talk) 00:30, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Since you insist on misleading everyone here, this would be my last response to you. This debate became futile, once you decided to play games rather than to treat the subject seriously. Here are some important examples:
  1. Your claim about the Israeli position - in the source you've brought, Israel says: "The fact that the Palestinian Council does not represent a State, does not, in itself, preclude its responsibility in the sphere of human rights protection." [54]
  2. Your claim about the ICJ ruling - there is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, in the majority opinion of this court ruling that suggests Palestine is a state. Moreover, the conclusive remarks say the following: "The Court considers that it has a duty to draw the attention of the General Assembly, to which the present Opinion is addressed, to the need for these efforts to be encouraged with a view to achieving as soon as possible, on the basis of international law, a negotiated solution to the outstanding problems and the establishment of a Palestinian State, existing side by side with Israel and its other neighbours, with peace and security for al1 in the region." Of course you have a peculiar interpretation of the word "establishment", as if it means "materializing an existing state" or something of the kind, but I think you are quite alone in this approach. As for paragraphs 82 and 102 - it says that Israel does not recognize the WB&Gaza as part of its own sovereign territory. It does not say anything about a Palestinian state, and making such a conclusion is way too big a leap.
  3. Last but not least, your reference to Prof. Pellet's opinion - Unfortunately, Prof. Alain Pellet's view is not available freely. You probably have some access to it, but it is very typical for you to bring sources of limited access, and summarize them according to your political view, knowing none of the "laymen" among editors here would be able to verify your interpretation. To phrase it more concisely: I believe William A. Schabas's account much more than I believe you, especially in light of the misleading interpretation of sources you have provided so far. DrorK (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2010 (UTC)


User:Factsontheground

I came across this editor when correcting a WP:CSD#G4 issue. A look at his contribution history indicates, at least to me, a distinct POV, which, in and of itself, is not an issue, but I am afraid that the the recent edits themselves may not be in accord with WP:NPOV as they seem somewhat cherry-picked and WP:UNDUE, but I leave it to people more involved with the conflict than I to investigate. -- Avi (talk) 14:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi Avi, I've notified Factsontheground of the WP:ARBPIA editing restrictions, and I'll add his talk page to my watchlist. PhilKnight (talk) 21:41, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Israeli_art_student_scam

See the above.Apart from my adding the afd template, all the edits have been by the creator User:Factsontheground and by User:Gilabrand making some "interesting" additions. --Peter cohen (talk) 13:49, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

No consensus to delete. CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:44, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Vote to merge Syrian village with Israeli settlement

Vote to merge Syrian village with Israeli settlement when the settlement is not even on the same location or elevation as the Syrian village: [55] --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 12:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

JIDF again

Einsteindonut and his JIDF puppets have been trying to influence the article again. It is currently fully protected and I have generated Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Einsteindonut to document the JIDF activcity on the page. There is a proposal of several month full protection as possibly less bothersome than semi-protection and dealing with a load of new puppets, but other input woudl be useful.--Peter cohen (talk) 00:45, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

On article talk page or where? Thanks. CarolMooreDC (talk) 22:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
I think that as the full protection is proposed at the SPI, that is one of the best places to indicate whether you think it is a good idea. I ahve also asked User:EdJohnston about it on his talk page. Suggestions for content changes should obviously go to the article talk apge.--Peter cohen (talk) 21:37, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

'Abud

Individuals on both sides of the debate are playing silly buggers at the above article. My attempt at a neutral version has been reverted. I tried approaching JackNassar (talk · contribs · count) who is relatively new, to encourage him to make contact with more experienced editors, but didn't get very far. Others involved should know better.--Peter cohen (talk) 13:31, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Somebody has to detail the main issue(s) on the talk page so we have a jump off point, esp. if we just want to opine, not edit article. Plus might get them to stop edit warring. CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:23, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Seems like the 'Abud/Jerusalem/Rawabi trio of articles are having a parallel problem from a succession of editors. My attempt to discuss calmly at Talk:Rawabi was not met with success:( DMacks (talk) 16:07, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
On further investigation I've decided that JackNassar is not quite as neophyte as he might seem at first glance and I have launched Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/JackNassar. In reply to Carol's point, the issue with 'Abud is that there were rival versions in which a church was either deliberately or accidentally destroyed by the IDF (both qualifications unsupported by references) and in which the Bilin demos were either more violent than or as peaceful as the 'Abud ones (again without refs supporting either claim). These were aggravated by JN referring to Israeli Occupation Forces and the Apartheid Wall and Chesdovi referring to the anti-terrorist war. I've not investigated the Rawabi issue in detail beyond checking for likely sockpuppets.--Peter cohen (talk) 01:49, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Rashad Hussain's comments on Sami Al-Arian

Yes, someone actually recently has created a whole article on this minor incident. Seems like POV pushing to extreme. If you agree, feel free to call for WP:AfD. CarolMooreDC (talk) 00:03, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Obviously I'm not going to work on an article which, doing more research, I see is not in compliance with various aspects of Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Notability (events). Busy right now but will put up for AfD in a few days, unless someone else does. CarolMooreDC (talk) 16:19, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Someone else nominated this article for deletion here writing: It's not appropriate for Wikipedia to have an article on this transient and relatively minor controversy. We're giving readers the impression that this story was much more important than it actually was. CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
No consensus to delete. Hmmm, does that mean we can now do an article about what Ariel Sharon meant when he allegedly said on radio - often quoted by numerous Arab and Muslim WP:RS - that Israel controlled America?? :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:47, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
No, because -- irrespective of the merits, or lack thereof, of this article -- Sharon actually never made the alleged comments, and the radio broadcast cited in so-called "reliable sources" never took place. RolandR (talk) 15:02, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Then it needs an article to debunk the rumor. :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 15:10, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
You mean, like Alleged Ouze Merham interview of Ariel Sharon? RolandR (talk) 15:39, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Ariel University Center of Samaria

There is a current discussion on whether this institution is in the Palestinian Territrories or not. Pleasecome and express your views.--Peter cohen (talk) 10:45, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

General discussion on Israeli-occupied territories.

I think that we need a broad discussion on use or lack of use of Israeli-occupied territory. It is likely that it will end up as an RfC but I think it would be valuable for us to discuss it less formally first. My understanding is that there is no dispute in serious sources that this is an appropriate description.

  1. government organizations like:
    1. US Dept. of State [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63].

      "U.S. Policy toward the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is unequivocal and has long been a matter of public record. We consider it to be contrary to international law and an impediment to the successful conclusion of the Middle East peace process, Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention is, in my judgment, and has been in judgment of each of the legal advisors of the State Department for many, many years, to be. . .that [settlements] are illegal and that [the Convention] applies to the territories.” Secretary of State Cyrus Vance before House Committee. on Foreign Affairs

  2. legal courts such as
    1. International Court of Justice[64][65].

      78. The territories situated between the Green Line (see paragraph 72 above) and the former eastern boundary of Palestine under the Mandate were occupied by Israel in 1967 during the armed conflict between Israel and Jordan. Under customary international law, these were therefore occupied territories in which Israel had the status of occupying Power. Subsequent events in these territories, as described in paragraphs 75 to 77 above, have done nothing to alter this situation. All these territories (including East Jerusalem) remain occupied territories and Israel has continued to have the status of occupying Power.

    2. Supreme Court of Israel[66][67],
    3. European Court of Justice[68]

      The assertion made by the Israeli authorities that products manufactured in the occupied territories qualify for the preferential treatment granted for Israeli goods is not binding upon the customs authorities of the European Union

Now, it is true that there are some who argue either that the land was not occupied from another extant country so the term doesn't apply, or that the military presence in the territories doesn't meet the threshold for an occupying force. But such arguments are clearly not recognized by the US Dept of State, International or European courts or the UN. In light of this consensus it seems that we must treat such arguments as fringe and we certainly shouldn't let our articles reflect them as being widely recognized. Your opinions on this matter are solicited. Unomi (talk) 10:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

  • Question - what sources "argue either that the land was not occupied from another extant country so the term doesn't apply, or that the military presence in the territories doesn't meet the threshold for an occupying force"? It's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison without reviewing such sources as well. ← George talk 10:42, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Please refer to International_law_and_the_Arab-Israeli_conflict#Settlement_in_territories - that particular article is a bit messy and could use better use of particular attribution. That particular claim is sourced to an Israeli government website which states

The West Bank and Gaza Strip are disputed territories whose status can only be determined through negotiations. Occupied territories are territories captured in war from an established and recognized sovereign. As the West Bank and Gaza Strip were not under the legitimate and recognized sovereignty of any state prior to the Six Day War, they should not be considered occupied territories.

As for the other argument, I am honestly not sure if anyone is forwarding it anymore. Unomi (talk) 10:59, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
If that single source, representative of the views of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), is the only one that disputes the term "Israeli-occupied territory", then I see no reason to avoid using the term, provided it's not overused just to make a point. Mentioning that the Israeli MFA disputed the status makes complete sense, in an article about settlements in such areas, but as a tiny minority view it wouldn't belong in every article where the term "Israeli-occupied territory" is used. If editors have other sources that dispute the term, I'd have to review those as well to see if the view is held more widely than by just Israel's MFA. ← George talk 11:25, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
I should note that it is my intention to have areas that qualify as Israeli-occupied territories be noted as such, not with the intent of proving a point, but in order that we accurately reflect consensus opinion of sources per WP:GEVAL and WP:FRINGE not dissimilarly as our practice when editing articles related to pseudoscience, that is, failure to note that these are Israeli-occupied territories constitutes a NPOV failure. Unomi (talk) 12:01, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
The definition of what constitutes "occupation" is unclear. There are other ways of addressing it that is not so POV, such as Israel-controlled. There are plenty of RS that use that terminology. Stellarkid (talk) 20:19, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
This is an issue that I've wanted addressed for some time. I agree with the general thrust of what you say, but please clarify your links. I can't see any mention of the occupied territories in the Knesset link you give.--Peter cohen (talk) 20:03, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
It is not possible to link to directly, here under "Public activities" it states He was in confrontation with Arik Sharon, the Agriculture Minister, regarding settlements in the occupied territories. It is a minor mention and I have removed it as being inconsequential and possibly distracting. By the way, on my talkpage I have more sources, but I have chosen to focus on the higher quality ones here. Unomi (talk) 21:16, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
This has already been the subject of a centralized discussion concerning Wikipedia Naming Conventions that was monitored by ARBCOM [69] The wider discussion regarding occupied territories was curtailed in order to concentrate on the guidelines for the West Bank/Judea/Samaria.[70].
In 1949, the Mediator accepted an armistice agreement on behalf of the UN that granted a joint Israeli-Jordanian committee "exclusive competence" to develop any future plans and agreements (see article VIII).[71] It also instructed UNTSO to enforce whatever plans and agreements the Israeli-Jordanian committee provided (see article IX). The Security Council adopted that arrangement, cited article 40 (Chapter VII of the Charter), and dismissed the Mediator (see Security Council resolution 73).[72] Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban explained the Israeli POV regarding Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine at that time: "Israel holds no territory wrongfully, since her occupation of the areas now held has been sanctioned by the armistice agreements, as has the occupation of the territory in Palestine now held by the Arab states." see "Effect on Armistice Agreements", FRUS Volume VI 1949, 1149 In its 2004 judgment, the ICJ reviewed the terms of the Oslo Accords, the Israeli-Jordanian Armistice Agreement, and the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty. The Court said that plans and agreements concluded pursuant to the Armistice Agreement remained valid. See paragraph 129 of the judgment [73]
After the Arab Palestinian Congress at Jericho and the 1950 elections, many states including the US, UK, France, and Russia considered the West Bank to be Jordanian territory. When the Security Council adopted Resolution 228 (1966), the Council observed that, "the grave Israeli Military action which took place in the southern Hebron area on 13 November 1966... constituted a large scale and carefully planned military action on the territory of Jordan by the armed forces of Israel". The subsequent assurances regarding "the territorial integrity of all the states in the region" were interpreted in accordance with the terms of the earlier Security Council resolutions (e.g. cf resolution 228 and 242). See Chapter II Background, Written Statement of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: [74] Article 3(2) of the Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement preserved the status of any territories that came under Israeli military government control in 1967. [75]
The Israeli MFA website has a page which says that the Fourth Geneva Convention and certain parts of Additional Protocol I reflect applicable customary international law. [76] Several reliable sources have reported that the Israeli government knew at the outset that it was violating the Geneva Convention by creating civilian settlements in the territories under IDF administration. As the legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron was the Israeli government's expert on international law. On September 16th, 1967 he wrote a top secret memo to Mr. Adi Yafeh, Political Secretary of the Prime Minister regarding "Settlement in the Administered Territories" which said "My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the Administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention." - cited on page 99 of Gorenberg, Gershom, "The accidental empire: Israel and the birth of the settlements, 1967-1977", Macmillan, 2006, ISBN 080507564X.
Wikipedia has many articles that contain material on the "disputed territories"/Fourth Geneva Convention, such as United Nations Security Council Resolution 446. That material is really nothing more than MFA material presented in the neutral voice of the encyclopedia. That particular article says that the government's arguments regarding the status of the territories were first advanced by Moshe Dayan in 1977. Yet when he authored a secret memo in 1968 proposing massive settlement in the territories, (then) Defense Minister Moshe Dayan wrote, “Settling Israelis in administered territory, as is known, contravenes international conventions, but there is nothing essentially new about that.” See Israeli State Archives 153.8/7920/7A, Document 60, dated October 15, 1968 - also cited on page 173 of Gorenberg's "The accidental empire". The arguments that settlement was legal came after the fact in an unsuccessful effort to blunt international criticism. I believe that NPOV requires that the declassified Meron and Dayan memos be mentioned in relevant articles. harlan (talk) 12:12, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Its really quite simple, all nations on earth (except Israel) and vast majority of international organs consider the Palestinian territories and Golan as occupied, and not part of Israel. So that is what we should call them in the articles. To not classify these regions as occupied is against npov and undue weight.--Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 23:11, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

That makes WP:SENSE. Tom Reedy (talk) 19:46, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
It would hardly be considered a "fringe" or a "tiny minority view" considering it is one-half of the conflict. At least that is how us Israeli-supporters see it. While I appreciate the invite over at the Israel project, so far this page is only representative of one view. To classify these regions as "occupied" is to take a position. Use of the word "disputed" shows respect for the alternate view, and does not take a position in law and thus is neutral. Again, we can say this or that RS says "occupied" and this or that RS says "disputed" but in the WP voice we do not take a position. Stellarkid (talk) 04:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
That is like saying that the flat-Earth idea is "one-half of the conflict" in whether or not the Earth is flat. The overwhelming majority of scholarly sources do take a position and emphatically state that these territories are "occupied". nableezy - 04:22, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
See WP:GEVAL. This is about mandatory compliance with an absolute and non-negotiable policy. Sean.hoyland - talk 04:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Not at all. The borders are yet to be determined and they are supposed to be determined by negotiation. As such they are disputed. Many secondary RS avoid using the term "occupied territories" altogether, for example [77] - [78] etc. I suggest WP and the IP collab society try to do the same. To do otherwise is taking a position in a conflict. And Nableezy, since your user page encourages the use of force against Israel as an "occupier" you really ought to bow out of this discussion as a WP:COI. Stellarkid (talk) 05:01, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Oh, and as you used AP and Haaretz, here you go: [79], [80]. nableezy - 06:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Whaw. Shall we also then demand that anyone who has served in the IDF should be excluded from this discussion, as they could also be said to have a COI? And, back to the issue in question: In addition to all the other sources, see also BBC´s Israel and the Palestinians: Key terms "It is advisable to avoid trying to find another formula [than "occupied territories"], although the phrase "occupied West Bank" can also be used." Regards, Huldra (talk) 05:32, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Sorry but a soldier does not shoot Palestinians because they are occupying land they want for themselves. The job of a soldier is to protect his country when it is threatened. Nableezy is talking about shooting people because of where they live. Not the same thing at all. To the issue at hand, the BBC is hardly what I would call a "collaborative" source with respect to the I-P issue. I am sure you are aware of that, Huldra. Stellarkid (talk) 06:06, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Uh, multiple noes. Unless you have some sort of magic glasses that allow you to see words that are not there I dont see where you find my "talking about shooting people because of where they live" and to say that is blatantly disingenuous. And I have absolutely no conflict of interest here, unless you mean my presence conflicts with your interest to force minority views and present them as fact. nableezy - 06:18, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I haven't been follow most of this discussion. Can you point out what on Nableezy's user page talks about "shooting people because of where they live"? And why do you imply that a "collaborative" source is somehow desirable? Collaborative, user-generated sources are specifically frowned upon, and generally not considered reliable. ← George talk 06:22, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
'Avoid' is a little disingenuous isn't it ? Scientific papers that examine/discuss specific instances of life on earth won't bother to mention the term 'Modern evolutionary synthesis' either. They aren't avoiding it. Absence of the term 'occupied' doesn't count as a negative instance to be subtracted from the total number of instances. It's simply an absence of information about the status in that particular source instance. If you wanted to avoid COI you should have posted it on the Venezuelan Football Collaboration page. Sean.hoyland - talk 05:45, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
In fact not using the term does not mean that it is absence of information. It may mean that people chose not to use it for a particular reason, eg they do not believe it is accurate or appropriate for whatever reason. As I do not believe it either accurate or appropriate for use in the WP voice. It is an unnecessary push of (disputed) "information" into an article. I assure you that this is not an example of I-P collaboration as it stands. Stellarkid (talk) 06:18, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Actually, that's not at all what it means. Most sources that mention Barack Obama don't mention that he is a Democrat. Does that mean he isn't a Democrat? No, it just means that this line of reasoning is illogical. ← George talk 06:47, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Consider this search of Google Scholar -- legal briefs and journals: Legal opinions and journal

  • [81] "occupied territories" & israel 2290
  • [82] "disputed territories" israel 110
  • [83] "Contested territories" 19
  • [84] "israeli-controlled territories" 5
  • [85] Include "territories" and "Israel", exclude "occupied" 14,800.

Stellarkid (talk) 06:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Consider this. Issues like this never seem to get resolved and come up again and again. Surely we have better things to do ? For example, in 1937 a bunch of exceptionally talented and hopelessly idealistic Jewish artists from Chicago produced a book of superb woodcuts called A Gift to Biro-Bidjan to raise funds for Stalins Jewish autonomous region in the Soviet Union...just before the war, just before Stalin's purges of the Oblost. And yet we don't have an article about it. We endlessly discuss terminology and manufacture controversies instead....sulk. Sean.hoyland - talk 06:15, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Alright but what exactly is your point...? Drop this discussion? I'm for it. Stellarkid (talk) 06:19, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Maybe because Stalin's little Birobidzhan experiment is perceived by many people in the know as a somewhat cynical plan with little real connection to Jewish aspirations -- in fact, largely motivated by a desire to get Jews out of the cities of European Russia (thereby partially reviving the old Czarist Pale of Settlement). I'm sure the people who wrote the book were "idealistic" in a way, but there's a very high probability that many of them were sycophantic toadying flunkies to the brutal mass-murdering Stalinist regime, and their little "idealisms" were proven to be somewhat pathetic when Stalin turned to vicious bigoted antisemitism (or "anti-Cosmopolitanism", as the Soviet government preferred to call it) in his latter years, and most manifestations of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union were crushed like a small animal under a polished shiny jackboot.
In any case, by this point it's simply faintly absurd to try to set up Birobidzhan or Uganda or whatever as a supposed Jewish homeland in contrast to Israel -- that train left the station almost a hundred years ago. AnonMoos (talk) 06:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, well, you make some interesting contextural points that you could add to an article about the book if there were an article about the book. It's a book of woodcuts, it's a beautiful piece of work produced at a interesting point in time in support of a place that has an interesting history. My point is, it's much more interesting than the terms 'occupied' or 'disputed'. Sean.hoyland - talk 07:16, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
I'll take your word for it that the book is visually aesthetically beautiful, but its main current notability would appear to be as a somewhat futile monument to historically failed dreams, and certain attitudes and opinions which are far out of the mainstream nowadays -- which may explain why people are not rushing to create a Wikipedia article about it... AnonMoos (talk) 08:34, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


That is a ridiculous comparison to try to use a google search for. You need only actually look at the first few sources to see why. nableezy - 06:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Nableezy, you find everything I say or write ridiculous or silly or stupid or nonsense. You have an immediate negative opinion on virtually everything I say and almost anywhere I might say it. It's a bit tiresome, really, and so predictable. This isn't collaboration, it's pure negativity. Stellarkid (talk) 06:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict)It seems pretty clear, after reviewing the sources above, as well as Stellarkid's misleading Google results, that the view that the areas in question are considered "occupied territories" is the majority view, the view that they are not occupied is a tiny minority view, and the view that the areas and the country of Israel are all occupied territories is an extremely minority view. ← George talk 06:28, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
The first result in the last search is US Supreme Court ruling in Alfred Dunhill of London, Inc. v. Republic of Cuba which actually does not contain the word Israel in it one time and does not discuss the territories occupied by Israel at all. The second result is another USSC ruling in El Al Israel Airlines, Ltd. v. Tsui Yuan Tseng in which the Court discusses an "intrusive" search conducted on the plaintiff at JFK airport in NYC. The decision discusses the Warsaw Convention which deals with air-travel. The case does not once discuss the territories occupied by Israel. The third result is another USSC decision in Yick Wo v. Hopkins in 1886. Do I really need to keep going? nableezy - 06:34, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
You noticed that the searches Stellarkid linked were only in the "Legal opinions and journals" subsection of Google Scholar, eh? Unsurprisingly, more standardized Google searches yield much less misleading results. ← George talk 06:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Even a general search would be misleading. There will be a ton of articles that contain the words "Israel" and "territories" without discussing any of the territories that we are. To pretend that such a comparison means something is silly, this is the type of thing where we actually need to examine the sources, not just google random phrases. nableezy - 06:40, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
It might be possible to garner some useful information from Google searches as to how often certain terminology is used. But in this case, yes, these example are dreadful, and ultimately useless. ← George talk 06:43, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this is a complete waste of time, the occupied territories are occupied territories, as the sources in the beginning of this section amply demonstrates. Ever since I came on wp nearly 5 years ago I have seen these attempt at trying to impose a minority view on wp. In the meantime, the sources have just added up, and added up. Stellarkid: please stop waisting our time. Thank you. Huldra (talk) 06:49, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Huldra, that would be "wasting." How typical of the Israel-Palestine Collaboration group to gang-bang the only pro-Israel editor to contribute to the conversation with an alternate view. Why am I not surprised? Stellarkid (talk) 15:48, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for correcting my spelling (I´m not a native English speaker). I´m not sure I like you language though ("gang-bang"), perhaps because I´m female. Having said that: I realize that the "disputed territories" -wording might not be an extreme minority view in Israel (and parts of US?); but in the rest of the world: it is. And this is not a project just for the involved parties in the Middle East. So, if your "alternate view" represents an extreme minority view...well, expect some serious opposition if you try to push it on wp. And yeah; that really should not surprise anyone, Cheers, Huldra (talk) 16:18, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Huldra if you had read my post you would have seen that I did not make a case for using "disputed" territories. In fact, I said that most RS avoid calling it "occupied" since it is a loaded and judgmental term. Thus you will see that the vast majority of links with respect to this were "Israel" & "territories" and EXCLUDING the word "occupied." Most serious scholars and RS news will simply avoid using the term because of the political implications. Stellarkid (talk) 16:37, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I don´t know what country you live in, Stellarkid, but I can assure you that around my part of the world (=Scandinavia) every single serious scholar on the Middle East use the word "occupied". Every one. So do the all the national radios/tv-stations. The only ones who do not use it, are some religious people, who mostly call the whole area "The Holy Land", and whose whole argument is that "God gave The Holy Land to the Jews". I´m not kidding...;) Cheers, Huldra (talk) 16:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Huldra, during WWII the Jews' view was also considered a "fringe" and "tiny minority" view and their pleas were ignored by the vast majority, with devastating consequences. This point is not lost on the Israelis, to be sure. To insist on naming the territories "occupied" is to take a (majority) view that also has consequences. This is a political view. It has not been adjudicated. There are enormous questions as to what is "occupied " and what isn't. Is Gaza "occupied"? Are the West Bank cities that have been turned over to the PA as a part of Oslo considered "occupied"? Is Jerusalem "occupied"? Is the whole of the Palestinian Mandate "occupied"? What happened to negotiations between the parties? It is not us to Wiki to take a position on this across the board. And Israel's voice and her supporters should be heard loud and clear, even if it isn't determined to be the majority view. How would you like it if you went to court as a defendent and you only got to squeak something out but the prosecution got to call in every witness in the world? Small wonder Franz Kafka was a Jew. Stellarkid (talk) 19:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I was wondering when you would do "a Goodwin." Yeah, well thanks. Personally I find it rather disgusting to call territories you have conquered by force as "disputed". Very disgusting, in fact. And you say it is a political view; but it is more than that: it is the international legal view. And yes; according to international law Gaza is still occupied (didn´t you read the BBC-link I gave you?). But your views must sound great for the long-term plans of, say, Hizbollah, or people like that...I mean; conquering land by force? Guess which land *they* want to conquer? Is that the world you want to support? Power/land to those with most guns? What I wonderful world we will have. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 20:30, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
I personally see an astounding lack of assumption of good faith from you, which to me is even more astounding in a group that pretends to be a collaborative group. But I digress. I was using the Holocaust to make an honest point, and you see fit to make a jest of it. As to your attempt to turn your disgust instead to the territories that Israel conquered from Jordan is telling enough. Stellarkid (talk) 06:08, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
Huldra -- I kind of agree that the search for an alternative term to "occupied" is mostly futile, but when you try to impress an Israeli with your neutral Scandinavian credentials, then you really aren't understanding what the effects of the last ten years have been, since a very large number of Israelis are now convinced that Scandinavia is one of the strongest hotbeds of pervading monolithic anti-Israeli sentiment which is not mostly motivated by malign religious bigotry (or which claims not to be, anyway). This impression dates from around that time that convicted Nazi collaborator Hanna Kvanmo started flapping her gums, issuing forth some utterances which stunned millions around the world with their asininity. AnonMoos (talk) 20:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Firstly: I have never pretended to "impress an Israeli with my neutral Scandinavian credentials". Please. But about Hanna Kvanmo, whaw! ..you must know more about her than I do. That she was convicted of treason: yes (she was 18 years old when WWII ended). But I simply cannot remember a single statement she made about Israel? It is 20 years since she was active in politics... (Jeez, you must be even older than me ;)) Are you sure you are not mixing her up with Kristin Halvorsen? ..I know there was a lot of discussion here about a year ago, as Jerusalem post reported on their web-page that Halvorsen had shouted "Death to the Jews" in a demonstration...it was of course completely false, and Jerusalem post had to withdraw it. Otherwise, I would say the opinion here is very divided on Israel, we still have a strong (mostly religious) support. This guy made headlines a couple of years ago, while he was still the leader of one of the largest political parties, by stating that "God gave Israel to the Jews". But yeah, opinion is changing. The big turning-point, I would say, was 1982, and the invasion of Lebanon. (Reading "Pity the nation" by Fisk made me understand why.) Before 1982, I think somewhere between 90-99% of the population here was 150% behind Israel. Now: nowhere near. And the Gaza war last January also really eroded support. Even the most long-lived supporter of Israel, Haakon Lie, (behind the collection for Yanuv) became critical in the end. Cheers, Huldra (talk) 22:27, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Nope, doubt that I've ever heard of Kristin Halvorsen -- but you could have found out echos of the Hanna Kvanmo controversy (which left millions wondering why in heaven's name a convicted Nazi collaborator was ever on the Nobel Peace Prize committee in the first place!) by simply searching for Hanna Kvanmo on English-language Google (which turns up an LA Times obit in the first ten results) or looking at the talk page of the Wikipedia article on her. Between the epic foolishness of Hanna Kvanmo, and millions of people who were cheering on Zvi Mazel for demolishing a so-called "artwork" whose sole and exclusive purpose was to praise and glorify Hanadi Jaradat for having killed over a dozen Jews etc. etc., the Scandinavians have have largely dissipated whatever reservoir of gooodwill they built up in Israel in the 1990s years ago. AnonMoos (talk) 06:40, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
So that's why they murdered Bernadotte!RolandR (talk) 07:07, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
And as has been demonstrated the links you provided of google searches is meaningless. And most serious scholars and news organization dont "avoid" the term, they say it is occupied but Israel disputes this. nableezy - 16:45, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

And how typical and unsurprising is the view of this "collaboration" group that the position of one of the principals in a 2-way conflict is "a tiny minority view." I guess there is no difference between this group and the "real world." God forbid any real collaboration should go on! [86] Stellarkid (talk) 15:58, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Great job answering the problems with your assertions. You say blatantly dishonest things about my userpage, then you put up these google searches like they mean something when you apparently did not even look at the results. When somebody calls you out on either you simply say we are "gang-bang"ing you. Good luck with that. The fact is that the view these territories are not occupied is a "tiny minority view". The overwhelming majority of states, international organizations, and scholars agree that these territories are occupied by Israel. nableezy - 16:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Blatantly dishonest? I think not. Yes the "overwhelming majority" would include some 25 Arab countries, some 57 who are members of the OIC who band together in their positions against Israel, and other states who are dependent on Arab oil for their economies. The only state that that consistently stands up for Israel is Israel, and sometimes the United States. Buckets of oil money is used for spreading anti-Israel propaganda and has for decades, for demonizing and isolating Israel, not sitting at the table with Israel, etc. It is not surprising at all there you would call Israel's position "a tiny minority" view. People who are totally unwilling to view something from the position of the other side ought not to sitting at the table of a "collaboration" group. Stellarkid (talk) 16:48, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes, blatantly dishonest. There is not a single thing on my page that advocate "shooting people because of where they live" and to say that there is such a thing is "blatantly dishonest". And people who insist on a false parity between positions that have been rejected as wholly without basis by the ICRC, the International Court, and countless scholars and those that nearly the entire world agrees about ought not to be sitting at the table of a "collaboration" group. nableezy - 16:56, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

This is what you advocate on your user page: "This user supports the right of all individuals and groups to violently resist military aggression and occupation by other parties." Since you have determined, for instance, that the contested areas are "occupied", you have given yourself permission to "violently" resist "occupation." In other words, shoot those people whom you consider "settlers" in what you consider "occupied." The way I read it, you are supporting your right to kill Israelis based on where they live. As for my position, it is the position of many Israeli supporters, and deserves a place at a "collaborative" table as such, as well as consideration and respect as the only one in disagreement with all your positions. Stellarkid (talk) 17:15, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

No, not in other words, in your words which oddly enough arent my words. Stop repeating that mindless drivel. It is an absolute lie to say my userpage says anything close to "supporting [a] right to kill Israelis based on where they live". Stop. Now. nableezy - 19:51, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Well why don't you explain how you meant those words to be interpreted, then? After all, this is supposed to be a collaboration project. Please relieve me of my ignorance so that I won't repeat such "mindless drivel" in the future. If you don't want to do it on this page, feel free to elaborate on my talk page. Stellarkid (talk) 20:15, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

<- Wiki editors are simply meant to behave like cooperating wiki rule based agents with a common goal of maximising policy compliance on issues like this and on most matters. When an editor isn't wiki rule based or they don't have the goal of maximising policy compliance (for whatever reason, they don't want to, they disagree with it, they don't understand it etc) the system breaks and effective collaboration isn't possible. That is what happens in the I/P conflict topic area again and again. It isn't about willingness and ability to view things. It's about willingness and ability to follow wiki rules and maximise policy compliance. Sean.hoyland - talk 17:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

For the record, and since the subject arose. Nableezy's userpage preaches for violence against Israelis. One cannot interpret his words differently. For example, he brings on his userpage a short poem in Arabic saying "May I have a gun in my hand, Take me with you to Palestine, To the sad hill like Magdalena's face, To the green domes and the brown stones". This is probably a copyright violation on the part of Nableezy, but more importantly, it is a clear call for violence against Israelis. Nacnikparos (talk) 09:48, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Drork, I already told you that is not the translation. The translation is "Now I have a gun, take me to Palestine with you", and the last line you quoted is "to the stones of the prophets". It is a song about a woman who wants to fight with the men, she later sings "O men, I wish to live or die like a man". nableezy - 14:57, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Here's my favorite Arabic slogan on my user page: المتبرجة خير من الإرهابي المنتحر -- AnonMoos (talk) 12:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


arbitrary break - General discussion on Israeli-occupied territories

Well, this section as gone nowhere. Naturally, I'm with Stellarkid on this one. It saddens me when all some people can do is yell 'the sources say, the sources say'. This collaboration project often does not show too much mature discussion and likewise this explains the lack of pro-Israel editors here. --Shuki (talk) 21:08, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I guess that about says it all. Collaboration-slabboration -- this project is a cover for its opposite. Stellarkid (talk) 05:11, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
You hear yelling and you're saddened but there isn't yelling. Unomi, who opened this discussion in good faith, behaves like a wiki rule based agent. He makes policy based arguments with the objective of maximising policy compliance. He excludes personal opinions about the real world. He's rational and unemotional. Content discussions have to be source based or they're a waste of time and obviously this isn't meant to be a forum for discussing the real world (or why Stellarkid's understanding of where the world's hydrocarbons come from nowadays is rather out of date) or for making non-policy based content decisions. Editors in a collaboration project could have a mature discussion about something like why the Formation and evolution of the Solar System article apparently seeks to exclude the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime cosmographies of the hundreds of Australian Aboriginal nations and how this is evidence of systemic bias in the sources and the editor community but there would be no point. We're meant to simply follow wiki policy on content issues. The lack of pro-Israel editors could be explained in a number of ways but personally I think it would be better for the project to have editors who self identify as pro-Wikipedia editors and who accept the potentially-unpleasant-for-them-personally consequences of taking that position. Here is an example of an unpleasant (but hilarious) consequence of following policy. I removed the addition of policy non-compliant category and asked an editor to discuss it on talk page => this message on my talk page titled "Wikipedia dictator wannabe"
"How does it feel to be an ignorant Falun Gong fan? Do you also like Hitler (most notorious communist killer) and are a blind anticommunist too? Or are you a Scientology follower? I guess that you believe in Santa Claus and flying soccers!"
For me, there is little difference between this guy's response and much of the so called 'pro-Israel' complaining that goes on here in terms of its benefit to the project and it's relation to policy no matter how polite the complaining may be. Sean.hoyland - talk 05:34, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Maybe you missed it when I first came in. If I am not mistaken, I came in in good faith, stating a position and backing it up with some references. If I recall, the first bit of lack of good faith or rudeness did not come from me. I'm not gonna "prove it" and I imagine some of you will check to see if they can prove otherwise, but Sean, please don't pretend that you are neutral, because you're not. Accusation directed at "Pro-Israel" editors; "For me, there is little difference between this guy's response and much of the so called 'pro-Israel' complaining that goes on here in terms of its benefit to the project and it's relation to policy no matter how polite the complaining may be." Right sure. The BS about the "pro-Wikipedia editors" (you) vs the "pro-Israel" complainers, here to destroy the project.. Your version is for the benefit of WP, you would have us believe. I have no doubt you believe this, as it is what you said. Stellarkid (talk) 05:56, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

The thing is that it seems that the high quality sources state quite clearly that they are occupied, I am all for collaboration but in the end we are here to represent the sources. We cannot for the sake of collaboration simply ignore what the sources say. In many matters the compromise between a correct statement and an incorrect statement is an incorrect statement. I have not been able to elucidate just what your factual, source based arguments against their occupied status are, obviously raw ghits fail to reach that bar. Unomi (talk) 09:53, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't disagree that you have high-quality sources. Nor do I disagree that raw ghits are not. However they were a mere illustration to demonstrate that it is not necessary to use to use a loaded word like "occupied" (which essentially takes a position in advance of negotiation between the parties, which presumably both sides have signed on to), even if there are plenty of sources that support your argument. I would have expanded on that had I not been jumped on and belittled by fellow members of this group. There are plenty of RS (verifiable accuracy) that refer to "contested", "disputed," or "Israeli-controlled" territories. There are other regions that are in dispute in the world, including Kashmir, Tibet, and Cyprus. In the Kashmir article, "occupation" is mentioned only once with respect to occupation by the Chinese, (though not once in connection with the Indians or the Pakistanis) and the term "disputed" is used five times. (Note that there is no POV tag on the article). With respect to Tibet, "dispute" and "disputed territories" is used 5 times, with "occupied" used only once in an external link. Yet Tibet is arguably occupied. (note there is no POV tag on this article either). The Cyprus article mentions "dispute" several times though it does refer several time to the part of the country they call "Turkish-occupied". So there are ways of expressing situations that are in dispute without necessarily slapping an "OCCUPIED" label on everything, which is apparently the intention here. Seeking to provide an ear to both sides of an issue (right or wrong) is what collaboration is really all about. Stellarkid (talk) 17:23, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
I haven't been involved with either Kashmir, Tibet or Cyprus, I am not familiar with what the sources surrounding them state. If there is a problem of sources not being represented fairly then that is a separate issue.
With respect to your objection of which essentially takes a position in advance of negotiation, I have to disagree; The land is occupied precisely because its final status has not yet been negotiated. After negotiations it could change hands, it could remain occupied or it could be annexed supported by the world consensus. That is the flow dictated by changes to Right of conquest. It does not describe final outcomes, it describes current status. The problem of 'disputed' in this case is that it is only disputed by a small minority of people and replacing 'occupied' with 'disputed' will lend undue weight to their position. Still, how would you feel about 'disputed Israeli-occupied territory' or 'Israeli disputed occupied territory'? Unomi (talk) 07:03, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Unomi, a territory with no final agreement about its status is a disputed territory. A territory populated by citizens of certain nationality and controlled by an army of another country against the population's will is occupied. This is how normal English speakers interpret these terms. There is a huge difference between legal language and common language. The word "assault" for example can refer, in the legal context, to a doctor that does his best to heal a person without his/her consent. This is not how this word is used in the common language. Nacnikparos (talk) 09:42, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
By that logic, the West Bank, which is undeniably "populated by citizens of certain nationality and controlled by an army of another country against the population's will", is clearly "occupied". While Israel within the Green Line, which is "a territory with no final agreement about its status", should be defined as "disputed". Is that what you meant to argue? RolandR (talk) 09:49, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Nice try, but it doesn't work that way. First of all, the West Bank is indeed occupied, no doubt about it, and Israeli authorities don't deny it (though they don't often use the term "occupied" in official publications for PR reasons). Secondly, there are certain areas within Israel proper that you might call disputed, like small areas on the pre-1967 Israeli-Syrian border, which Syria claims (even though they have never been part of Syria). There were also disputed territories within Israel proper along the southern part of the Israeli-Jordanian border, but this dispute is resolved since 1994. If you define the whole territory of Israel as disputed, you will have to explain where this country lies at all. Furthermore, there is no political entity that claims the Israeli territory except Hamas, which is not exactly a legitimized organization. The PA recognizes the Green Line, and countries like Syria or Iran claim Israel should cease to exist, but don't claim its territory. Nacnikparos (talk) 10:04, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Nacnik, I was hoping that you were a sock from a past user, but I'm already convinced that you are not. Given that, the PA does not recognize the Green Line at all and still insist on the 'right of return' over the Green line. Roland, the 'West Bank' is populated by Israeli nationals and people that don't really have a nationality except Jordanian, but Jordan has relinquished its claim to that land, so your argument does not hold water. --Shuki (talk) 11:37, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Well, I can't get into people's minds, all I can do is read official statements. According to the PA official statements (the most recent significant one is Fayyad's plan for statehood) they claim the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, not more than that. Nacnikparos (talk) 12:11, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
Nacnikparos has been blocked as a sock of Drork. nableezy - 16:43, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
RolandR -- traditionally the Israeli government has made a point of very specifically denying that the Gaza Strip and West Bank belong to "another country" and they have a certain limited point (though not one which would appear to materially affect whether the term "occupied" can be used), since Gaza has been in a kind of extraterritorial limbo for the past 60 years and more (it was never claimed to be annexed either by Egypt or by Israel), while Transjordan's annexation of the West Bank was only recognized by 2 or 3 other countries in the world, and king Hussein formally renounced all territorial claims about 20 years ago. The question "What other country??" does not actually have a very simple legal answer.
Nacnikparos -- If Syria is still nattering on about the 1948-1949 armistice "demilitarized zones", then that's of rather purely antiquarian interest by this point, and certainly will not have any discernible influence on any Israeli-Syrian negotiations (unless Syria chooses to dredge it up as an artificial excuse for its unwillingness to negotiate). The more substantive territorial contention between Israel and Syria is actually the British mandate ten-meter strip along the northeastern shore of the Sea of Galilee (which made the Sea of Galilee an entirely enclosed British Mandate lake, but which Syria overran in the fighting in 1948 and annexed -- even though according to a British-French agreement setting the international Palestine Mandate-Syria border, it was not Syrian). AnonMoos (talk) 12:19, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Israel and the apartheid analogy

A proposal has been made to rename Israel and the apartheid analogy. Please weigh in at Talk:Israel and the apartheid analogy#Rename proposal - first steps. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 20:19, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Sami Al-Arian and Steve Emerson articles

I have added tags to both these articles and voiced my concerns on the talk page. I haven't made any edits because I'm pretty confident that any changes I make will result in a long drawn out edit war. Life is frankly too short to get involved in another one of those and I frankly just don't have the strength right now. Basically I'm posting here hoping someone will take up the cause to make both these articles better because in my opinion there both atrocious in there current form. Thanks largely to an editor named Epeefleche Sami Al Arian has been made too look like a terrorist even though it has never been proven that he was involved in anything violent. I happen to be believe that Al-Arian is one of those people who got railroaded by the American justice system in post 9-11 hysteria and I believe it's a shame that the wikipedia article on him has become so bias against him. Epeefleche has also gone out of his way to turn the article on Steve Emerson into a puff piece. I left a post on Zero000s talk page about this and he agreed with me that the article on Emerson has essentially become an advertisement for his views, but Zero000 said he was too busy at the moment to get involved with the article. I hope that by posting on this forum that a few like a few like minded souls who have more courage than I do will be willing to make both these articles better. annoynmous 08:55, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The critical point is that most of his federal legal troubles seem to stem from the fact that influential federal officials felt that he was lying about what he knew about Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah. Past versions of the article have somewhat skipped over this, and the article should not be rewritten in such a way as to obscure it more than it is... AnonMoos (talk) 14:47, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Fine, he lied about knowing somebody, that isn't terrorism. So what if Federal officials believe that, the fact of matter is that the only thing they could prove is that he continued to associate with people from Palestine Islamic Jihad after they were designated a terrorist group helped some people with Visa issues. An that only happened because he agreed to a plea agreement in order to get out of jail. The article still has in that "he was alleged to have done this or that" even though all those charges have been dismissed. annoynmous 20:48, 27 April 2010

If I recall, you removed the part in the article that said what was the charge he pleaded guilty to. You changed this:
In 2006, Al-Arian pleaded guilty to conspiracy to help a "specially designated terrorist" organization, PIJ, and was sentenced to 57 months in prison.[1]

to-

However Al-Arian was acquitted on 8 of the charges against and another 8 were dropped after he plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to help a "specially designated terrorist" organization, PIJ, and was sentenced to 57 months in prison. No evidence was ever offered that connected Al-Arian to anything violent.[1]
Your change and attempted support of Al-Arian is inappropriate in this article on Emerson. Perhaps something of this nature might be correct in the Al-Arian article, but the fact of the matter is that he pleaded guilty to this charge and got 57 months. Whether there was evidence of violence is merely a red herring & the fact that he was acquitted on some charges and that others were dropped is simply POV filler. Stellarkid (talk) 22:01, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
I simply changed it so that it was factually correct. The fact of matter is that 16 of the 17 charges against him were dropped. He was never found guilty of terrorism. He certianly was never found to be the North American Head of islamic Jihad as Emerson claimed. If you read the plea agreement all Al-Arian admitted to was to having phone conversations and to helping certain people with there visa applications. The point is that the way it was originally phrased made it seem like Emerson was right about Al-Arian when in fact he was mostly wrong. annoynmous 21:11, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Annoynmous -- the circumstances of Al-Arian's association with Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah created great suspicion, and when he was asked about it, he maintained a blanket unwavering Sergeant Schultz "I know nothing" stance about the whole matter. As a result, some federal law enforcement officers were convinced he was lying, and that seems to have been when most of his legal troubles started to unfold. I regard it as quite likely that Al-Arian knew more than he claimed to know about Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah (though not necessarily anything very incriminating, or very "operationally useful" in an intelligence sense), and that if he had been fully open and forthcoming about Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah from the beginning, then he would have been spared most of his legal tribulations -- in which case it's hard to know whether to feel much sympathy for him, since he would appear to have brought down most of his problems down upon himself by his own actions. Of course the Wikipedia article can't speculate on counterfactuals, but it should reflect the fact that it's reasonably clear that the initial Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah investigation was the catalyst for much of what followed, as far as the federal government was concerned... AnonMoos (talk) 01:58, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Since when do we arrest and put in jail people we "greatly suspect". I thought we convicted people based on evidence, not suspicions. I could care less what federal authorities believed, the relevant issue is what did they prove and the answer is nothing.
Are you seriously saying that Al-Arian deserved to be put an jail and virtually have his life ruined because he wasn't forthcoming enough to the authorities about someone he may or not have known. I don't regard that as just, I regard that as a political witchhunt that smeared a decent man who's only crime was that he was angry about the Israel/plaestine issue. In my opinion it's clear Al-Arian was persecuted for his beliefs and not for any crimes he supposedly commited.
At the very least if we criticize Al-arian for associating with some shady people, we should at least say that it's wrong to through someone in jail for that and basically ruin there life. annoynmous 03:45, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Dude, there's a significant likelihood that when Al-Arian got caught up in the FBI investigation of the Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah affair, Al-Arian started his interactions with federal law-enforcement officers by lying to them pretty much the first thing (you yourself have admitted that this is a possibility). If this was the case, then independent of all considerations of morality and law, it was a really stupid decision which came back around to bite him on the ass. The feds couldn't prove that Al-Arian was criminally obstructing the Ramadan Abdullah Mohammad Shallah investigation, so eventually they convicted him on another charge (just like they got Al Capone on tax evasion). AnonMoos (talk) 15:21, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
So Sami-Al Arian is Al Capone now. They didn't convict him on anything, he plead guilty to one count after they failed to prove the case on all the other counts. From what I can gather Al-Arian has basically said he only plead guilty so he could get out of prison. Yes the FBI suspected him of something and there supicions turned out to be wrong. All I admitted to was that Al-Arian may have had some associations with some shady people, thats not criminal. It's like saying that if you grow up in a neighborhood with gangsters and some of them become your friends and later in life you help one of them with a lone to by a business, that somehow that means your a gangster two. Even if you know that there gonna use this lone for illegal activities, okay that's bad judgement, it's not criminal. Know if it turned out that you ran a business that laundered your friends dirty money that's a different matter, but no one ever proved Al-Arian did anything like that.
Plus I don't like this idea that Al-Arian deserved to be locked away in solitary confinement for many years because he didn't answer the FBI's questions right. annoynmous 20:42, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Annoynmous on Epeefleche

As a follow up the post above it appears that the situation is worse than I thought. Epeefleche is and editor with over 40,000 edits and until recently all his edits were sports related. He did make some edits to articles dealing with middle east issues when he first started out, but over the last 6 months sense the Nidal hassan shooting he's contributed a huge amount to articles dealing with Islam and middle eastern issues. Just about every article I can find that he's edited is in my opinion greatly slanted against muslims and islamic issues. You take your pick from the two I listed above to Moazzam Begg and the Islamic Society of North America and theres probably dozens more that I'm not aware of at this moment.

I'm engaged with him on the two articles mentioned above, but this is a crisis that can't be solved by one editor. I need help from like minded souls otherwise I'm going to give up because I don't feel like engaging in another nasty edit war. They leave you in a depressed state and aren't worth the trouble if nothing is gonna come of it. I'm sounding the alarm that people need to aware of Epeefleche's edits. I think everyone who wants a wikipedia that gives a balanced view of the Israel/Palestine debate will be as concerned as I am about this matter. annoynmous 08:46, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

First best not to use people's names/handles in subject lines and especially to draw comparisons, as frustrating as this might be. Feel free to just delete the line, and make it part of previous post, especially in light of the following.
I agree with your concern, having run into this editor on a couple of pages and I think this might be a matter to report to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement per Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles. However, you have to have a tight, factual case citing the 2 or 3 worst examples from each article. It could lead to a temporary or permanent ban from the subjects he's most biased on. If you want comments on making it more effective, make a draft talk page from your home page and ask for comments.
If others think there is someplace else to go first, do tell. But given it is the same issue over a number of articles, that would seem best thing to do. I'm sure there have been people sanctioned for less. CarolMooreDC (talk) 15:10, 27 April 2010 (UTC)
The title of this section, the way the content is presented, and the fact that it is presented here, could be taken as a personal attack or pre-emptive smear against Jayjg and Epeefleche. I would highly suggest it be removed and brought up in a more appropriate place, like AN/I. Just my two cents. --nsaum75¡שיחת!‎ 19:39, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not intending as a smear, I'm simply stating it as my opinion. I simply feel that Epeefleche has biased many articles on wikipedia dealing with Middle East issues that I felt I should warn people. I haven't accused him of violating wiki policy, I'm just stating my opinion of his edits.annoynmous 20:48, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I got rid of subject line per suggestions above. While I feel Epeefleches edits are biased, I agree that the subject line could be seen as inflammatory. annoynmous 20:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I've decided to replace the previous heading with one that just simply mentions his name.annoynmous 21:05, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

This belongs at AN/I or A/E. Using a Wikiproject talk page to "warn people" about certain editors is still a personal attack. Project talk pages should be used to discuss content, not other editors. Discussions about other editors belong on their own talk pages or on the respective administrative action noticeboards. --nsaum75¡שיחת!‎ 02:17, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


Look I posted here because I have problems with Epeefleches edits on a great many articles and I wanted to alert people to them. I'm not advocating any vendetta against him, I'm only hoping that others who have the same problems I do with some of the articles I do will go to those articles and try and improve them.
A problem with wikipedia is that often times if you have a problem with an article your often alone in your efforts because other editors don't know about it or don't want to get involved in the hassle that will result from getting involved. I can sympathize because editor wars I've been involved in have left in a depressed state and have made me want to quite wikipedia altogether. That's why I'm doing this so I'm not alone in these efforts. I not advocating that epeefleche be banned or anything, I'm just saying that other editors may want to look at his edits. annoynmous 03:54, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


I agree that Anonymous' "warning" is inappropriate. Try WP:RFC or WP:3O. Further, anytime you do something like this, you should notify the other editor. Maurreen (talk) 08:37, 28 April 2010 (UTC)


The other editor knows about it now. Plus I'm not trying to ban him or discipline him in any way. I'm merely trying to draw attention to his edits in the hope that others would take a look at the articles he's edited.
I want to ask, If I remove the title heading and make this discussion part of the one above, would that solve the problem? annoynmous 20:51, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I think you are showing good faith in that you are "not trying to ban him or discipline him in any way." This should be a place for dialogue. Thanks. Ism schism (talk) 01:47, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

As I said above, the title and reference to Jayjg inflammatory. However, the issue of whether an editor's edits across a number of articles is something that should be brought to Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement per Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Palestine-Israel_articles is something that someone should free to ask here; or to ask for help in doing it the right way. This project arose out of the Arbitration. It is recommended on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration that if people can't otherwise resolve and issue they consider Arbitration enforcement. Therefore asking for help with recalcitrant editors (especially over several articles) and discussing the possibility of enforcement on specific issues is appropriate here, IMHO. CarolMooreDC (talk) 02:38, 29 April 2010 (UTC)


I don't feel I've made any ad hominem attacks. I acknowledge I made a mistake with the Jayjg heading and I apologize for that. The strongest I've ever gotten in describing epeefleche is that I once on a talk page referred to his editing habits as a "crusade". If some people consider that offensive than I'll say I'm sorry and promise not to use such statements in the future. Other than that all I've ever done is criticize what I feel is a biased editing pattern. My opinion, I'm not claiming it as some devine truth.
As I understand it the noticeboards mentioned above are usually for discplining an editor. As I've said I'm not looking to do that. annoynmous 05:27, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Epeefleche has basically restored the Steve Emerson article to a previous version that both I and John Z rejected. John Z is busy and says he won't be available till the weekend and I'm on the edge of a 3rr and can't make any edits right now. I'm at the point where I feel this isn't worth it anymore because Epeefleche has Stellarkid supporting him and I don't feel like getting ganged up on by two editors. annoynmous 12:38, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

West Bank template image

An editor has raised concerns about the image used in Template:West_Bank.
I've uploaded a potential alternative, CIA interpreted SPOT 5 coverage of the West Bank.
See Talk:West_Bank#request_for_change for details. Sean.hoyland - talk 11:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

RfM: List of national parks and nature reserves in Israel

I have proposed a move since it contains areas in the occupied territories: [87] --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 18:14, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

UN Res 194

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 contains the Nakba template. I believe this is inappropriate as the res is about more than that with implications on both sides. I brought it up at the talk page but have got no reply. User:Dailycare has been working on a template specific to UN resolutions that might be more appropriate. I would in the meantime like to delete the template that is there as inappropriate and POV. Stellarkid (talk) 17:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Multiple articles - the founding myths of Israel

A number of articles recite well-known Zionist viewpoints in the neutral voice of the encyclopedia. Attempts to add opposing viewpoints contained in works marketed by the textbook divisions of Routledge, Cambridge University, and MacMillan-Palgrave have resulted in reverts and bizarre claims that the authors of the textbooks are misquoting sources, lying, promoting fringe theories that are out-of-the-mainstream, or have nothing new or interesting to say on the subject. The authors in question include Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Eugene Rogan, Benny Morris, and many others. There is clear evidence regarding the acceptance of their views by mainstream groups and academics outside Israel that are independent of their theories.

The published Wikipedia policy says that articles should describe all significant views in accordance with their prominence, and fairly weight the authority accorded each view in the relevant scholarly community with the aim of providing neutral, encyclopedic coverage about the issues and the positions of all the interested parties. Wikipedia policy requires editors to document the level of acceptance within the relevant academic community with reliable sources. See Wikipedia:Fringe theories, Reporting on the levels of acceptance. Wikipedia:ARBPIA requires that they utilize reliable sources to document their disputed or contentious assertions. It appears that a centralized community discussion on the New Historians and Critical Sociologists is in order. Here are some relevant sources which indicate mainstream acceptance:

  • L. Carl Brown, reviewed the controversy between Israel's old and new historians. He criticized historians who had claimed that the new historians' "point of departure was political and moralistic rather than academic." According to Brown, "One would have thought that orthodoxy and heterodoxy share politicizing and moralizing about equally." See State of Grace? Rethinking Israel's Founding Myths in Foreign Affairs Magazine [88]
  • Prof. Sanford R. Silverburg, reviewed Simha Flapan's The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities in The Library Journal and said "Though bound to create controversy, this is essential for those interested in Middle Eastern history or the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict."[89]
  • Neil Caplan wrote a review article: "Zionism and the Arabs: Another Look at the 'New' Historiography", in the Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 345-360. The works he reviewed were: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 by Benny Morris; The Israel/Palestine Question by Ilan Pappe; and The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists and Palestine, 1921-1951 by Avi Shlaim. He noted that the views of Baruch Kimmerling, the late Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Tom Segev, Avi Shlaim, Gershon Shafir, Uri Ram, Ilan Pappe and Zeev Sternhell had been incorporated into mainstream textbooks. He said that no serious student of the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict can ignore these publications; that they are important and impressive; and cannot be dismissed simply because of their unpleasant revelations or political slant.
  • Elie Podeh has written articles that appeared in the Journal History and Memory, and a book length treatment of "The Arab-Israeli conflict in Israeli history textbooks, 1948-2000" [90] which illustrated that the views of the New Historians and Critical Sociologists had been incorporated in Israeli textbooks.
  • Ethan Bonner has worked as the Jerusalem corespondent for the Boston Globe, Reuters, and the New York Times. He also served as the Education Editor for the New York Times. He wrote about the adoption of textbooks containing the views of the New Historians and said that Israel's State archives contain clear evidence of double deals, schemes to transfer Arabs out of the country and rebuffed gestures of peace by the Arab states. Bonner said Morris book was a first-class work of history, bringing together the latest scholarship and that there is no question that Shlaim presented compelling evidence for a revaluation of traditional Israeli history. See Israel: The Revised Edition [91] harlan (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2010 (UTC)


Harlan -- does this mean that you're going to stop pushing your own "fringe" historical revisionism, which involves you eternally coming up with new and innovative personal theories to somehow try to overturn the basic facts of history as accepted by the mainstream consensus of reputable scholars in the field (such as that the Arabs -- in formal public statements issued by Arab governments and the recognized representative institutions of the Arabs of the British mandate of Palestine -- REJECTED the November 29th 1947 UNGA 181 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 or early 1948, while the formal public statements issued by the recognized representative institutions of the Jews of the British mandate of Palestine ACCEPTED the United Nations Partition Plan for November 29th 1947 UNGA 181 Palestine in 1947 or early 1948)[2]? In any case, much of the school whose works you're pushing is really a phenomenon of about 15 years ago -- and since then, Benny Morris has significantly revised some of his findings, while there have been challenges to some of the conclusions of other works of the school. AnonMoos (talk) 22:54, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
AnonMoos, Wikipedia says "Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." I'd settle for a project where we can cite the material in my college-aged kid's Middle East Studies textbook without you throwing a tantrum. harlan (talk) 23:57, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
That's nice high-flown abstract idealistic sounding verbal rhetoric -- but in your concrete actions, you seem to be trying to deny the right of "every single human being" to "freely share in the... knowledge" that the mainstream consensus of basic historical fact as accepted by reputable scholars in the field is that the Jews accepted the 1947 partition plan, while the Arabs rejected it... AnonMoos (talk) 00:37, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
AnonMoos I'm not removing that viewpoint from the article, I'm trying to add the opposing view that it was a myth that the Jewish leadership accepted the plan and that it was a myth that the Arabs rejected the plan and prepared for war. You cite Wahlid Kahlidi here, but removed the background material and cites to his journal articles which discussed the partition plan: Revisiting the UNGA Partition Resolution and Plan Dalet Revisited. Sami Al-Arian doesn't have anything to do with this topic and I haven't edited any articles about him. Are you acting out again or what? harlan (talk) 02:00, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
That's nice -- however, Wikipedia is not "neutral" between the "opposing views" that the earth is round and that the earth is flat. As I said long ago, somewhere near the beginning of all the nonsense connected with the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine article, if "revisionist" historiography has achieved some degree of prominence, then it can be mentioned in the proper place in the article -- but that proper place is not the lead section of the article up at the top, and there can be no phoney symmetry or "balance" between what is accepted by the mainstream consensus of reputable scholarship and what is not accepted. I downloaded the first PDF file that you linked to ("Walid" is not spelled with an "h" by the way), and it contained a completely unscholarly ranting propaganda tirade without the slightest pretensions to objectivity or any form of serious study of history. The first 15 pages (or 3/4ths) of this document consist solely of a Jeremiad Philippic on how eeeeeeeevil the UN partition plan was, and how eeeeeeeeeeevil the Jews were continuously from 1897 to 1947, without one single moment's cessation. In the remaining 3 pages where he actually touches on matters relevant to the main point being discussed here, he nowhere says that the Arabs accepted the 1947 partition plan (and he's clearly of the opinion that the Arabs never should have considered even for a millisecond the possibility of accepting the 1947 partition plan), and he clearly says that the Jews DID actually accept the 1947 partition plan. So he actually provides no support whatsoever for your position with respect to the central issue which has been generating most of the endless tedious tiresome discussions on the talk page of United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine (as I would have predicted from what he said in the Encyclopedia Britannica article subsection which I've referenced). I'm afraid that the rather cavalier attitude you take toward "sources" (which often seem to be of rather dubious quality anyway) — as shown again by this little incident — is exactly why I haven't taken the piling on of bibliographic citations by you very seriously for a long time now... AnonMoos (talk) 08:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) The New Historians are not saying the earth is flat. There are policies and procedures in place that you can use if you want to establish that they are advancing a "fringe theory". Do you in fact have any reliable sources to support the claim that their views are not accepted by mainstream academics or that they deserve less weight? harlan (talk) 14:16, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Harlan -- the so-called "new historiography" (which is not actually all that new anymore, as I mentioned above) is not in general equivalent to a flat earth theory, but your own personal theories that the Arabs somehow supposedly did not reject the 1947 UN partition plan and/or that the Jews somehow supposedly did not accept the 1947 UN partition plan ARE in fact equivalent to a flat earth theory. There's no use in trying to move on to advanced points connected with the so-called "new historiography" until you first stop trying to push your personal fringe flat-earth theories -- a futile attempt at historical revisionism which has already generated hundreds of kilobytes of tiresome, tedious, monotonous discussions on the talk page and talk page archives of the partition plan article. AnonMoos (talk) 09:08, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
A few points:
First, the fact that the Arabs rejected the plan while the Jews accepted it is the absolute mainstream view. A sampling of sources to this can be found in State of Palestine#Background; a great multitude of them can be easily found by searching, for instance, Google books. I'm not going to bother citing dozens of books here; everyone can review this themselves.
Second, even the "New historians" (Flappan, Morris, etc.) don't challenge the basic point - Jews said yes, Arabs said no. This much is clear fact, known to everyone, present in all historical and contemporary sources.
Third, what the new historians claim is that although the Jewish leadership said 'yes', they really planned to prevent the creation of an Arab state. However, this amount to crystal-balling, a 'what-if' scenario. The basic premise is that had the Arabs accepted, it 'wouldn't have mattered'. But here it doesn't even matter if their views are accepted - their claim is irrelevant. No one can know for sure what might have happened, and all of the Jews' actions were taken in light of Arab rejection. It boiled down to a simple 'yes' and 'no' on November 1947. Thus, when saying the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected, there's no question of mainstream and minority views. This is unquestionable fact. Had we said "the Jews lovingly embraced the plan, and had every intention of helping the Arabs establish a state, acknowledging their right to one", we might have had to mention other views.
Fourth, and this is a major one - it isn't even important whether harlan's claims are completely irrelevant (as I've explained in section three), are fringe, are merely minority. In the article about a subject, we need to mention the significant viewpoints. We do not need to do so in every single article where something is mentioned (or every article would be some 10MB in length). When a subject is mentioned in another article, we merely need to use the mainstream view. okedem (talk) 07:39, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Okedem, nobody is removing the viewpoint that the Arabs rejected the plan while the Jews accepted it from articles or adding 10MB to them. Here are three mainstream viewpoints that you removed from the State of Palestine article:

  • "Simha Flapan said it was a myth that Zionists accepted the UN partition and planned for peace, and it was also a myth that Arabs rejected partition and launched a war. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, by Simha Flapan, Pantheon, 1988, ISBN 0-679-72098-7, Myth One pages 13-54, Myth Two pages 55-80.
  • James Crawford said Israel was created by the use of force, without the consent of any previous sovereign and without complying with the partition plan. Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, and Stefan Talmon, eds., The Reality of International Law: Essays in Honour of Ian Brownlie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999) 108
  • According to Clea Bunch, President Truman viewed Israel and Jordan as twin emergent states. Clea Lutz Bunch, "Balancing Acts: Jordan and the United States during the Johnson Administration," Canadian Journal of History 41.3 (2006) harlan (talk) 14:16, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
I'll reply in the article's talkpage. okedem (talk) 14:46, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
Harlan wrote: "Wikipedia:ARBPIA requires that they utilize reliable sources to document their disputed or contentious assertions." And that's why this is relevant here because this is being done at a number of articles. While it's news to me that Arabs accepted the plan, Zionist leaders from the 19th century expressed their desire to kick the Arabs off their land and expand Israel to a much larger size than the UN partition plan. But looking at the two most relevant articles Ethnic Cleansing and Greater Israel one would think that only fringes or the Likkud had promoted those views. I'm sure anyone daring to add WP:RS info on mainstream Zionist leaders expansionism would have a hard time. Anyway, have you tried WP:RSN and WP:NPOVN??? CarolMooreDC (talk) 21:18, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
It's news to you because it's Harlan's own personal innovative theory, and it's complete historical nonsense. We can discus how generally eeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil the Jews were on some other occasion, but right now this is about trying to prevent Harlan from overturning the basic accepted facts of mainstream historical scholarship (i.e. that the Jews accepted the UN partition plan in 1947 / early 1948, while the Arabs rejected the UN partition plan in 1947 / early 1948) and replacing it with his own original research fringe theory. AnonMoos (talk) 09:15, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
AnonMoos, we cannot discuss how generally "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeevil" the Jews were, and I'd appreciate you cease using that phrase in this discussion, because its not relevant and comes off as soapboxing.
What is relevant is that many historians have put forward the notion that while the Zionist leadership publicly accepted the partition plan, they had other intentions, and privately expressed their reservations and disappointments with it, looking to it as a steeping stone to larger territorial gains in Palestine. As for the Arabs, privately some in that multifaceted leadership were privately indicating their acceptance of partition to gain their own leadership advantages in the "carve-out-a-country" and "put-in-a puppet-government" colonial sale the European powers had on offer at the time.
Harlan is right to try to include these well documented and significant POVs in relevant articles on the subject. What is wrong is giving this discussion too much space is remotely related articles which becomes an issue only when some people try to pretend there is only one legitimate POV here and express it in Wiki's neutral voice. Tiamuttalk 07:17, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Tiamut, what's you're saying has nothing to do with POVs or new notions by new historians. It is a matter of level of detail.
The discussions and different views within the Jewish leadership regarding partition are well known and documented (yes, by "old" historians). Some opposed partition, but the majority supported it, understanding the need to compromise. It doesn't mean that every single Jew, or every single Zionist leadership member loved the notion, or even supported it, so you can always find quotes of this person or that against partition (often as a larger argument for it, actually) but that majority did support, and that was the official position. Some may have indeed viewed it as a "stepping stone", but that is of little importance, and their future actions are merely conjecture. All we know for sure is their actions (saying 'Yes'), not their possible intentions.
Naturally, the Arab response was not completely monolithic, though it was way more uniform than the Jewish position, and dissenters very rarely, if ever, voiced support for partition (you used the adjective "privately" twice, and "indicating" instead of "supported"). No one claims every single Jew supported, and every single Arab opposed. The question is the majority or the leadership.
Now, the complexities are certainly of interest, but in the article about the plan itself. In other articles, where the plan is mentioned, there no need or justification to go into this level of detail. Similarly, when we mention the official British (for example) position on something, we don't discuss the opinion of every single opposition member, or dissenting cabinet member. It is obvious that decisions and position are generally not supported by 100% of the people, or of the leadership (which is why we specifically mention when some resolution is passed unanimously). okedem (talk) 09:11, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Tiamut -- I really don't see what saying that there were deep-laid Machiavellian conniving aggressive expansionist secret scheming plans pursued consistently over decades is, if it's not demonization of Jews. And yes, Harlan can include references to actual real "new" historiography in the article, if he does so in a manner which reflects that some of the conclusions of the "new" historiographers have not gone unchallenged, and that not every off-hand remark by a "new" historiographer is always to be presented as absolute unassailable 100% Gospel truth. What Harlan CAN'T do is do include in Wikipedia articles his own personal version of the "new" historiography, where by means of introspective meditation on the texts of primary source documents, Harlan comes up with his own personal innovative metaphysical speculative hypothetical counterfactual theories, which attempt to overturn basic facts of history as accepted by the mainstream consensus of reputable scholars in the area -- such as that in all relevant public official or quasi-official pronouncements, the Arabs rejected the UN 1947 partition plan, while the Jews accepted it... AnonMoos (talk) 12:56, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
AnonMoos, assuming good faith is incompatible with an assumption that everyone who offers a less than glowingly complimentary assessment of the Zionist leadership's aims in Palestine (i.e. tends to be skeptical of their publicly stated aims) is secretly out to demonize the Jews. It is often the case that the political leadership of various national groups says one thing when they mean another. To point this out does not necessarily imply that the national group they represent is inherently dishonest. It would greatly help this discussion if you would stop insinuating that your fellow editors are anti-Semites. Tiamuttalk 14:34, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
"Unflattering" has very little to do with it -- they can be as "unflattering" about the Yishuv leadership as they want, as long as such unflattering assertions have some kind of remote basis in fact and/or some remote relationship to improving a Wikipedia article. However, maintaining that there was some deep-laid Machiavellian aggressive expansionistic Master Plan which the cunning conniving scheming Jews consistently followed over decades is a purely nonsensical conspiracy theory, which I'm not going to pretend is anything else other than a nonsensical conspiracy theory... AnonMoos (talk) 22:40, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
I have great difficulty understanding why, when your fellow editors point out problems in your comments, that instead of heeding their requests for you to abide by the policy, you instead to choose to continue to repeat the offensive statements in question. No one is using the phraseology you have used. Everything actually said has had source material presented (in abundance) to back it up. This is a discussion page for people interested in collaborating collegially with one another to solve longstanding problems in the I-P arena - and is not a place for hurling thinly veiled insults based on existing prejudices and inferences. Please stop. Tiamuttalk 07:32, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Ṛ

Original discussion about content restrictions

I would only point out that every time AnonMoos cites an actual example of one of my "personal theories", it invariably is contained in one or more published sources in a talk page discussion he has participated in.

The central discussion I'm trying to start deals with whether or not the final decision in [Wikipedia:ARBPIA]] constitutes a content restriction that requires editors to utilize reliable sources to document their disputed or contentious assertions. In other words, Can editors engage in endless editorial conflict across multiple articles; assert there is only one mainstream viewpoint; remove other well-sourced material that represents opposing views; and then refuse to cite reliable published sources which prove that those views are actually considered fringe theories by the relevant academic communities?

  • The Peel Commission had recommended the partition of Palestine between a Jewish State and an Arab State, including Transjordan, with a British administered Corpus Separatum. The US Consul General at Jerusalem told the State Department that the Mufti refused the principle of partition and declined to consider it. He said the Emir Abdullah of Transjordan urged acceptance on the ground that realities must be faced. The Consul also noted that Nashashibi side-stepped the principle, but was willing to negotiate for favorable modifications. See the FRUS [92] and H. Eugene Bovis, The Jerusalem question, 1917-1968, Hoover Press, 1971, ISBN 0817932917, page 26 [93]
  • Joseph Heller wrote that Ben Gurion and Shertok discussed a plan similar to the Peel proposal with members of the Grady-Morrison Commission. Heller said that Sasson went to Egypt, and that with the exception of Saudi Arabia there was unanimous support for partition among the Arab League. Sasson proposed a union of the Jewish state with Transjordan under Abdullah. See Joseph Heller, The birth of Israel, 1945-1949: Ben-Gurion and his critics, University Press of Florida, 2000, ISBN 0813017327, pages 82-83 [94]
  • On page 2 of Refabricating 1948.pdf, Benny Morris says that entire issues or large parts of serious academic journals had been devoted to New Historiography and that books and articles by the New Historians are taught in all of Israel's universities and in a variety of courses and disciplines (history, sociology, political science, etc.), not to mention in most universities outside Israel.
  • In pages 7-14 Morris says there was an agreement between the Yishuv and the Hashemites to partition Palestine between themselves. Morris says that British Foreign Secretary Bevin had given the green light for the Arab Legion to occupy the territory allocated to the Arab state, after the Prime Minister of Transjordan explained that Abdullah had received hundreds of petitions from Palestinian notables requesting protection upon the withdrawal of the British forces. Morris says Abdullah honored the agreement.
  • Eugene Rogan says that petitions requesting protection, from nearly every town and village in Palestine, are preserved in "The Hashemite Documents: The Papers of Abdullah bin al-Husayn, volume V: Palestine 1948 (Amman 1995)". see Chapter 5, Jordan and 1948, in "The war for Palestine: rewriting the history of 1948", By Eugene L. Rogan, and Avi Shlaim, Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  • Benny Morris, Simha Flapan, Shlomo Ben Ami & etc. cite statements made by Ben Gurion, Weizmann and other Zionist leaders who said they had no intention of abiding by the terms of the partition proposals that they were advancing. They also say that Ben Gurion had been meticulously preparing for war ever since the Arab Revolt and that he personally ordered the development of the Avner Plan and its successors, like Plan Dalet, in order to pursue territorial expansion beyond the borders of the partition plans in conjunction with the British withdrawal. Ben Gurion told the Zionist Executive "After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine" See Simha Flapan "The Birth of Israel, Myths and realities, page 22.
  • Flapan and Morris both cite a letter Ben Gurion had published as evidence of his intentions to use partition as a tactic in the conquest of Palestine. Ben Gurion told his son that he was in favor of partition because he didn't envision a partial Jewish state as the end of the process. According to Ben Gurion "What we want is not that the country be united and whole, but that the united and whole country be Jewish." He explained that he was organizing a first-class army that would permit the Zionists to settle in the rest of the country with or without the consent of the Arabs. See David Ben-Gurion, Letters to Paula and the Children, translated by Aubry Hodes, University of Pittsburg Press, 1971, page 153; Simha Flapan "The Birth of Israel, Myths and realities, Pantheon Books, 1987, ISBN 0-394-55888-X, page 22; Benny Morris "Righteous victims: a history of the Zionist-Arab conflict, 1881-1999", Knopf, 1999, ISBN: 0679421203, page 138.

Here are a small sample of the historical documents that are cited by Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Elmer Berger, Avi Shlaim, Eugene Rogan, & etc.

  • The US Minister in Saudi Arabia told Secretary Marshall that the Saudi's and Abdullah had warned the other members of the Arab League in March of 1948 that the partition was a civil matter and that the Arab states shouldn't take any action that the Security Council might interpret as aggression.
  • Sir Arthur Creech Jones, assured Moshe Shertok that Abdullah might enter the Arab portions of Palestine, but that the British led and subsidized Arab Legion would not seek to penetrate Jewish areas of Palestine. Shertok told Secretary Marshall that Colonel Goldy of the Arab Legion had made contact with the Haganah in order to coordinate their respective military plans and "avoid clashes without appearing to betray the Arab cause." Under Secretary Lovett reported that the Jewish Agency was no longer interested in a truce, but counted on the "behind the barn deal" with Abdullah.
  • On the 1st of December 1948 the US Consul cabled the State Department saying that the governments of Israel and Transjordan had started conducting negotiations under the guise of implementing a truce in order to protect Abdullah from criticism from the Arab League that he accepted partition and had entered into direct negotiations with Israel. see the FRUS footnote [95] harlan (talk) 17:52, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


Harlan, against, attempts to confuse by throwing as many irrelevant points as possible. As Efraim Karsh explained it better, I'm not going to repeat his words, but simply refer the readers here to his paper, discussing the level of accuracy and veracity of some of these theories (warning to weak-hearted readers - some of the examples might be truly outrageous). Crystal-balling the Jews' intentions is absurd; and example of Morris' distortions can be read in the Karsh paper, under "Pushing out the Arabs".
The Peel plan isn't being discussed here, nor is Abdullah personal position. As I've explained, the question is the response of the official leadership, not every single member of it.
Grady-Morrison is also not the topic here, and the Arabs ended up opposing it anyway.
Naturally Morris claims his views are widely accepted; would he concede he's fringe?
The Yishuv-Abdullah collusion is a very old idea, but lacks evidence.
"protection" - irrelevant.
The Ben Gurion quotes - a wonderful example of Harlan's tactics - we're discussing the 1947 partition plan, so the naive reader might assume these quotes refers to it; in fact, both of these quotes are dated 1937. I don't know if they're accurate or out of context, but they're not even claimed to be remotely related to the 1947 plan. For all we know, Ben Gurion might have completely changed his mind in the ten years between the plans. Many leaders changed from side to side, turning from hawks to doves (and vice versa). Remember - when you read Harlan's quotes, never take them at face value; never assume anything about them, and always check them yourself. okedem (talk) 18:59, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
Okedem, we don't delete material on Wikipedia because Daniel Pipes and Efram Karsh hold an opposing view. The Morris article above is a response to Karsh's article. WP:NPOV requires that all significant views be included.
  • We've discussed this before, but it is Morris, Flapan, and Ben Ami who say the Ben Gurion quotes are relevant to 1947, not Harlan. The cites from Ben Ami and Flapan say he repeated the remarks to the Zionist Executive in May of 1947. So, there is no crystal-balling involved.
  • By the way, Ben Gurion's biographer, Shabati Teveth, said that economic, social, and geographical partition were inherent in Ben Gurion's conception of Zionism. See for example pages 10, 12, 43-44, and 179-184 of Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs. Even he quotes the letter Ben Gurion wrote to his son on the subject. The idea that Ben Gurion changed his mind is your unpublished thesis.
  • The Yishuv-Abdullah connection doesn't lack evidence unless you can't read the links to the FRUS I provided above. The CAB files in the British Archives are just as revealing.
  • You are still not addressing the actual topic of this discussion. The New Historians books are being marketed by the textbook divisions of Routledge, Cambridge University, and MacMillan-Palgrave. Elie Podeh published studies about the adoption of their views into Israeli textbooks on the subject "The Arab-Israeli conflict in Israeli history textbooks, 1948-2000" [96]. Members of the academic community not connected with the theory like Neil Caplan, L. Carl Brown, and Sanford R. Silverburg say they are serious scholarly works that are essential reading. The New York Times has even discussed the inclusion of the New Historians views into textbooks and says they are first rate works of history.[97]. Do you have any evidence those are fringe theories? Because I think that is sufficient evidence to demonstrate their views are accepted by mainstream academic circles not connected to the dispute. harlan (talk) 20:46, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


Harlan, all of these claims are incredibly irrelevant. We're not discussing partition in general, or people's possible motives or plans, but their actual response to the 1947 partition plan, which was Jewish acceptance, and Arab rejection. That's it.
I'm not suggesting we ignore the claims of these "new historians". In their own articles - sure. In the article about the partition plan - perhaps. But we're talking about other articles, like State of Palestine, which only mention the plan for background. None of the new historians actually challenge the fact that Jews accepted and Arabs rejected. They only claim there's some stuff beyond it. Fine. But irrelevant for the background, especially considering I've shown what the mainstream view is.
I'm not doubting the claim that the new historians' claims are commonly discussed, but they have a whole lot of them, and even if most of what they were saying would be mainstream, that still does not imply everything they're saying is mainstream. In this case, it is blindingly obvious that the partition claims are not mainstream, and even if they would be, they still don't change the basic 'yes'/'no' responses of the sides.
As I've explained above, in response to Tiamut, at this point this isn't an NPOV issue at all, but a level of detail issue. Oh, and inferring, from comments before the partition plan, what the post-plan actions might be (had the Arabs accepted the plan) is still crystal balling. Also, I highly doubt that Ben Gurion "repeated the remarks to the Zionist Executive in May of 1947". People don't usually say the exact same thing after ten years. okedem (talk) 06:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
If one oversimplifies the response in such black and white terms when things were actuallhy more grey, it does the reader a disservice. I'm not suggesting we go into a detailed breakdown of who said what about the partition plan everytime it comes up. I do suggest however that we avoid the old "The Arabs rejected and Jews accepted" summary as it is POV in that it leaves out most of story. Its a old, tired propaganda line that as Harlan's sources point out, has since been neatly dismantled. Tiamuttalk 07:37, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, but it simply doesn't "leave out" sufficient "of the story" to be factually wrong, while the contrary assertions (i.e. Harlan's claims that the Arabs supposedly accepted, and his apparent sporadic claims that the Jews supposedly rejected) are simply factually false. Frankly, in 1947 the Palestinian Arabs pretty much had handed to them on a silver platter the possibility of a strongly externally internationally-guaranteed independent state whose land area would have been much larger than the subsequent 1949-1967 Gaza Strip and West Bank combined, and which would have confined the Jews within an area which was completely militarily indefensible. The Arabs chose to flush all of these international guarantees straight down the crapper because their inflexibly rigid narrow political mind-set would not allow them to publicly admit or recognize any slightest form of Jewish sovereignty in the slightest degree for even one millisecond -- so of their own free will, with eyes fully open, they deliberately and intentionally decided to risk their future on the uncertain outcomes of war, making a "double or nothing" gamble that they would gain everything if they conquered in the war that they chose to start, or lose almost everything if they lost the war that they chose to start. In the end, they lost, and their own poor decision-making and poor-quality leadership were largely to blame... AnonMoos (talk) 08:09, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Tiamut, it's perfectly alright to discuss the complexities of the response to partition, on both sides. The discussions leading to Jewish acceptance were long and hard, and signified the rise of pragmatism (especially in the wake of WW2) over idealism; the almost complete lack of meaningful and open discussions among Arabs are also noteworthy - the Arabs of Palestine didn't really create any "state-like" institutions or governing bodies to facilitate such discussions.
However, the claim that "Jews accepted, Arabs rejected" is "old, tired propaganda" is such a complete fallacy, that any fourth grader with an internet connection can debunk in two minutes. I'm not sending you off to dank libraries and microfilm collections for this; we have lovely tools, such as Google books, that mostly spare us such tiresome procedures. I've provided such a variety of sources using this formulation, to make your claim obviously false, but I'll add another one, just because it's interesting to read - this article by John Bagot Glubb, better known as Glubb Pasha, commander of the Arab Legion. I guess he's also struck by propaganda.
That Glubb source is interesting, but here's one a little more informative, that should end this discussion. The UN working paper, titled "The Future of Arab Palestine and the Question of Partition", dated 30 July 1949.
  • Section 5: "In accepting the Partition Plan, the Jews accepted indirectly the status of a future independent Arab State of Palestine to be its partner in an economic union. Commenting on the Partition Plan, Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, member of the Jewish Agency executive, in October 1947 expressed the following opinion on the future relations of the Jewish and Arab Palestine: "With the removal of political friction which we hope will eventually result from the setting up of these two independent States, each people master in its own home, it should be possible to usher in an era of progress and regeneration which would be a boon to all the peoples in that important part of the world. The Jewish State, when it is established, will respect the sovereignty of its neighbour states as fully as it will defend its own." (Article in "Palestine and the Middle East", Tel Aviv, Sept. Oct. 1947)"
  • Also in section 5: "The Arabs rejected the United Nations Partition Plan so that any comment of theirs did not specifically concern the status of the Arab section of Palestine under partition but rather rejected the scheme in its entirety."
  • Section 6, 7 - 27 June 1948 - A UN mediator suggests an economic union of two states in the whole of Palestine, one Jewish, one Arab (including Transjordan). The Jordanians PM rejects the idea of any such union with a Jewish state, and states their purpose is to prevent the creation of a Jewish state. The Secretary of the Arab League also rejects, demanding a unitary Arab state in Palestine, and opposing union with Transjordan. Israel supports an independent Arab state in Western Palestine, and opposes having a complex of Transjordan with the Arab state.
  • Section 9, 18 Sep 1948, the mediator writes: "As regards the parts of Palestine under Arab control, no central authority exists and no independent Arab State has been organized or attempted. This situation may be explained in part by Arab unwillingness to undertake any step which would suggest even tacit acceptance of partition, and by their insistence on a unitary State in Palestine. [...] There now exists in Palestine a form of partition, though an Arab State for which the Partition Plan provided has not materialized and there is no economic union."
  • Section 14, "To follow the recent Israeli thinking on the future of Arab Palestine, several official declarations are worth nothing. During the session of the Zionist General Council in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv between 22 August and 3 September 1948, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett made the following statement on the position of Arab Palestine: We are faced with the problem of what is going to happen to the rest of Eretz Israel. That part has no definite borders yet. Even if we suppose that no revolutionary changes occur, which is not impossible, a certain part of Palestine will stay outside the State of Israel. The political fate of the Arab part of Palestine, its annexation by any state whatsoever, the flag that it will fly and the regime it will be subjected to are all matters with which we are directly concerned. It may not be possible for us to stem every new development in that connection. There are contingencies which we shall have to oppose, or they will become a threat to us. We shall have to fight against splitting up the Arab part and annexing its fractions to various countries. We shall have to consider carefully whether the annexation of any part to any state does not constitute a danger for us, which could be avoided by a different solution. We shall have to consider carefully whether we should not prefer this Arab part to form a state of its own, if possible."
  • Section 15, "On 16 November 1948, appearing before the Political Committee of the General Assembly considering the Mediator's Report, Israeli Foreign Minister Sharett again stated Israel's views on the future of Arab Palestine: Concerning all these territorial questions, Israel would welcome the creation of an independent Arab State in Palestine..."
  • Similar quotes are in following sections, including: "Sharett declared that Israel had proposed to the Conciliation Commission to organize a plebiscite in Arab Palestine to determine whether these regions should be attached to Transjordan or become an independent Arab State...pointed out the reasons why Israel would prefer an independent Arab State...".
Sorry for the length, but I think this document is quite conclusive, on several issues. 1 - Jewish acceptance; 2 - Arab rejection; 3 - Jewish support for an independent state, and opposition to a Transjordanian take-over. I think this is the time to close this case of revisionism. okedem (talk) 13:03, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

<--back> To Tiamut, what language would you suggest in stead of "The Arabs rejected and Jews accepted" and is there a way of linking to the article that would explain the view most clearly? Like I said, it's news to me and I would like to easily find more info - or be reminded of the "grey" area if I run across it six months from now when I've completely forgotten this discussion :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 19:32, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Hi Carol. Sorry for the delay in responding ... real life stuff. But I've given it some thought and have a few a proposals:
  1. add "publicly" to preface remarks on Arab rejection and Jewish acceptance, or "tactical" or some other qualifier to preface the Jewish position. Reasoning? – privately, there were Arabs who favoured the plan ([98] [99], and Jewish acceptance has been described as tactical or begruding (While the Zionists begrudgingly accepted the partition plan, working on the principle that half a loaf was better than no loaf at all … The Jewish community's leadership knew that they did not have enough power to control the entire territory of Palestine and to expel or to rule its Arab majority so they accepted the partition plan but invested all their efforts in improving its terms and maximally expanding their boundaries while including as small an Arab population as possible within them. It was accepted with misgivings by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs. Jewish acceptance was superficial and misleading: the Jews were willing to accept publicly ...)
  2. provide some context for why there was public Arab rejection and Jewish acceptance. Reasoning? partition was not voluntary but forcible, and there was a strong Arab reaction considering that Jews only owned 6% of the land in Palestine but were being accorded 55% ([100])
  3. avoid issue in articles where it is not the main subject by writing, along the lines of this source : “In 1947 the UN recommended partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The partition plan proved to be unworkable, and in May 1948 Israel declared itself an independent state.” Reasoning? Oversimplifications mislead the reader into thinking the situation is more straightforward than it was, and tend to favour the Zionist POV (those belligerent Arabs unreasonably rejected a fine solution ...). It is more NPOV to give full space to the spectrum of views and considerations on both sides in the article on the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and simply link to that page while avoiding the whole acceptance/rejection narrative, which as the sources I provided here and those provided by Harlan above indicate is much more complex than what that one sentence portrays. Tiamuttalk 07:59, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
  1. "accepted" and "rejected" says nothing about the internal beliefs of the parties, but simply what their response was - 'yes', or 'no'; this is inherently a public issue. (Oh, not to mention the dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv when the plan was approved, and the Arab proclamations of the coming massacre of all Jews.) As I've said before, you can obviously find some Arabs who privately favoured the plan, and even if it wasn't privately, it still isn't important here. We don't say "All Arabs unanimously rejected the plan"; the overwhelming majority did, the leadership did, and the few who might have supported it mostly kept their mouths shut. We're not here to discuss their innermost thoughts, but their actions and responses. It is clear to any reader that there's always a minority, that unless the text says "unanimously", some people thought otherwise. This much is obvious. Similarly, the reason the Jews accepted isn't relevant - saying "the Jews accepted" does not imply in any way that they accepted because the loved the Palestinian Arabs and wanted them to have a state. It just means they said 'yes'; additionally, I'd like to point out that a pragmatic approach ("better a bird in the hand") isn't inferior to any other; you seem to be judging the Jews on some moral scale, ruling them not pious enough ('oh my god, they were just being pragmatic!'). This is not our job. The reasoning that led the Arabs to reject and the Jews to accept, as well as possible minorities within each group are interesting, in the article about partition.
  2. Again, level of detail. Mentioning partition and acceptance/rejection does not imply one side is good and the other bad. A reader wishing to learn more about this can go read the article about the partition plan.
  3. "Unworkable"? That's a very misleading euphemism. It became "unworkable" because the Arabs rejected it on principle. Had they accepted it, we might have had two states in Palestine, celebrating their 62nd birthday these days.
Sorry, but your argument is a mess of level-of-detail issues, wrong interpretations (saying "accepted" does not imply motives or unanimity), and wholly false claims ("Its a old, tired propaganda line"). Like it or not, a vast number of sources happily use the "accepted / rejected" phrasing, including the fascinating UN document I've quoted above. The Arabs might have thought rejecting the plan was the right thing to do, but in hindsight, they were wrong. They made a mistake. Rewriting history to make them look better is not a proper goal for an encyclopedia. okedem (talk) 12:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Original discussion about ARBCOM content restrictions (once again)

Okedem and AnonMoos, at the top of this thread I said this discussion was not about removing the POV you are describing. The discussion is about the removal of other mainstream POV's based upon the controversial assertion that they represent "fringe theories" and attempts to utilize Wikipedia to endorse one particular POV. Wikipedia describes positions, it does not endorse them.

  • There is no "level of detail" issue involved with including a simple sentence which says "According to Simha Flapan, it is a myth that Zionists accepted the UN partition and planned for peace, and that the Arabs rejected partition and launched a war." -- Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities", Pantheon, 1988, ISBN: 0679720987, page [v]
  • Citing your own unpublished analysis of a July 1949 Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC) "working document" which reflect Israel's desire to renegotiate the terms of the Economic Union that had been set-down in UNGA resolution 181(II) simply begs the central question. Neil Caplan writes that the very first "working document" of the PCC was the Lausanne Protocol (12 May 1949). It was a signed agreement between Israel and all of the Arab states to use the map from the 1947 UNGA Partition plan as the basis of their negotiations. See Futile Diplomacy: The United Nations, the great powers, and Middle East peacemaking, 1948-1954, Routledge, 1997, ISBN: 071464756X, page 82 [101]
  • Your unpublished analysis does not address the published works of actual historians on that topic, or the level of acceptance of their works by the relevant academic community. The working paper that you mention cites Israeli newspaper accounts and material obtained from information organs of Zionist agencies. Those accounts were written by individuals who had no knowledge of the on-going secret negotiations between the governments of Israel and Transjordan. That has nothing to do with revisionism. The declassified records of those negotiations have been available for decades and the published primary and secondary literature on that topic is quite abundant.
  • The PCC ground rules limited its activities to submitting questionnaires, eliciting position papers, and conciliating to bridge the gaps between the positions held by the parties "upon their request". Historians have written that the mediation efforts of the PCC left behind a treasure trove of material reflecting political philosophy, diplomatic stratagems, and the images each side had of the other. See Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities", Pantheon, 1988, ISBN: 0679720987, page 213-215; and Caplan's "Futile Diplomacy", page 81 [102]
  • Neil Caplan writes that Security Council resolution 62 and General Assembly resolution 194(III) authorized the parties to seek an agreement by negotiations conducted either directly or through the Mediator and the PCC. See "The Lausanne Conference, 1949: A case study in Middle East peacemaking" page 14. Caplan, Elmer Berger, Giora Goldberg, and others cite declassified archival documents from the US, UK, and Israeli archives which say that Israel and Transjordan opted for direct negotiations that were conducted in secret. The parties decided to present the results of their agreements as fait accomplis and not to keep the UN Mediator, the Palestine Conciliation Committee, members of the Knesset, UN Secretariat, and etc. informed about the details. For example:
    • According to Simha Flapan, in November of 1948 Israeli negotiator Sasson asked Abdullah to accelerate his annexation of the West Bank and to present the Arab states with a fait accompli. At that time Abdullah was organizing the Jericho Conference. The conferees issued a procla­mation naming Abdullah King of Arab Palestine and demanding that a joint kingdom be established with Transjordan. [103] On December 13, Sasson told Abdallah al-Tal, the Transjordanian negotiator and commander of Jeru­salem, that annexation should be implemented under the guise of "saving the Palestinian Arabs." Flapan cites Sasson's own account in the official Documents on the Forign Policy of Israel (DFPI), volume 3, doc 181, pp331-332, December 14, 1948. See Simha Flapan, "The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities", Pantheon, 1988, ISBN: 0679720987, page 145
    • By 25 March 1949 Moshe Dayan thought UN Mediator Ralph Bunche should be advised about the secret armistice agreement, since he would be tasked to implement it in early April. Dayan's superiors in Tel Aviv decided to go on concealing it from Bunche. The US State Department and UK Foreign Office knew about the secret negotiations, but they also decided not to tell the UN Mediator. Berger's account cites the official Documents on the Forign Policy of Israel (DFPI), Companion Volume (C.V.) and documents from the official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). [104]
    • Israel insisted that the Lausanne and Rhodes Conferences be conducted as affairs concerning existing states and refused to recognize any Palestinian delegations. See Neil Caplan, "A Tale of Two Cities: The Rhodes and Lausanne Conferences, 1949", Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Spring, 1992), page 16. The Foreign Relations of the United States says that Mark Etheridge of the UN PCC held preliminary discussions with Ben Guurion in April of 1949 in which Ben Gurion proposed that the status of Arab Palestine be recognized in the settlement through a federal union with Transjordan. [105]
    • Ben Gurion did not inform the Foreign Affairs or Security committees of the Knesset about the armistice agreement with Jordan in advance. See Giora Goldberg, Ben-Gurion against the Knesset, Routledge, 2003, ISBN: 0714655562, page 71 [106] he also refused to allow the Knesset to debate the armistice agreements before they were ratified. [107]

So once again, do you have any evidence to present which says these are fringe theories that are not accepted by the relevant academic communities? harlan (talk) 21:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Harlan, surely it's up to you to prove that Encyclopaedia Britannica is wrong, not up to us to show that it's right. You have your standard little spiel, which you regurgitate over and over again -- but after your past actions consistently over the last year and a half, your dubious "sources" really don't impress me, and they appear to impress Okedem (who has a greater degree of stoic patience and stolid fortitude to slog through the tedious details of your dubious "sources" than I do) even less. Frankly, after I wasted half an hour of my life reading through the Walid Khalidi ranting propaganda tirade (which did NOT say what you clearly implied that it would say), my formerly very limited remaining degree of patience with your dodgy manipulated "sources" has finally definitively expired. As for the rest, Wikipedia is not "neutral" between the "POV"[sic] that the earth is round and the "POV"[sic] that the earth is flat, and there is no requirement for such pseudo-neutrality or phoney "balance" in any Wikipedia policy, as previously explained above. -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
Does anybody else find the tone of AnonMoos's comment gratuitously offensive and extremely condescending? At least Harlan bothers to find sources to support his arguments.     ←   ZScarpia   18:38, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) AnonMoos' posts seldom pass "the straight face test". The viewpoints discussed above that he refuses to summarize in the lede are cited either as sources, or in the "Additional Reading" section of the online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica article "Palestine", i.e. Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict; Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949; Issa Khalaf, Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939–1948; Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine; and Wm. Roger Louis and Robert W. Stookey (eds.), The End of the Palestine Mandate; and etc. harlan (talk) 02:00, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

While we're talking about tests, I'd like to propose a new one, the Space Probe Test, for identifying editors who are so far up themselves that one of the space agencies would have to launch a deep space probe in order to locate where they are.     ←   ZScarpia   15:10, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
The latest example of an article which recites a well-known Zionist myth in the neutral voice of the encyclopedia is a claim made in the Israel article. It says that five Arab armies, including Jordan, attacked Israel the day after the Jewish authorities declared the establishment of their State. The discussion is located here. [108] It is a well known fact that Jordan never invaded the territory of Israel, and that the Arab states said that they were launching a counter-attack in response to more than a month of Jewish armed attacks on Arab communities in Palestine. Attempts to add that viewpoint to Wikipedia articles have always ended in reverts by editors who claim the views expressed by reliable historians, US State Department officials, and the Arab leaders (who supposedly launched the 1948 War) are "irrelevant". harlan (talk) 16:44, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
I think that the current version of the article gives false impressions:
In November 1947, the United Nations voted in favor of the partition of Palestine, proposing the creation of a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a UN-administered Jerusalem.[16] Partition was accepted by Zionist leaders but rejected by Arab leaders, leading to civil war. Israel declared independence on 14 May 1948 and neighboring Arab states attacked the next day.
  • The impression is given that approval from the two sets of leaders was sought or was necessary. It wasn't.
  • No mention is made that the Revisionist Zionists rejected the plan. Although the article doesn't say that all the Zionist leaders accepted the plan, it does give the incorrect impression that there was no significant opposition. Something related that I find interesting is that, not long before the UN Partition Plan was produced, a jointly produced American and British plan which recommended partition was ditched because of a senatorial (I think) election in the States. Neither of the opposing Jewish candidates (I think it was in New York) could afford to give his rival an advantage by coming out in favour of the plan.
  • The impression is given that the Arab states attacked because of the declaration of independence. In fact, the Arab states had announced in advance that they would intervene in the civil war, but only after the British had left. The Israelis proclaimed independence just before the last British troops left. The declaration of independence and the Arab invasion were timed to coincide with the British departure, not with each other.
  • The impression is given that the declaration of independence was made as a result of the partition plan, which therefore justified it. There was no direct link.
  • Because there is no indication given to the contrary, the impression is given that the area which was declared independent was correlated with the area set aside in the plan for a "Jewish state". It wasn't. The declaration of independence made no mention of borders and the fighting taking place was hardly affected by the territorial division proposed in the plan.
  • The impression is given that the Israelis were merely defending themselves. That is only correct if you take the view that Israel had the right to subsume all of what had been Palestine (including, for Revisionist Zionists, Transjordan).
... My two cents (I should probably have stuck this on the talkpage rather than here, shouldn't I?).     ←   ZScarpia   14:32, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
ZScarpia, you should ad this to the article if you have sources for it. --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 14:48, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
So many articles, so little time. If others are interested, I'd be willing to take it to the article talkpage and argue it out point by point. The quoted passage is interesting; it doesn't actually say anything that is untrue, but the wording and what is omitted certainly imply it.     ←   ZScarpia   16:05, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Template:Controversies related to Israel and Zionism has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. -- Avi (talk) 20:09, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Non-lethal and less-lethal weapons

Are rubber bullets non-lethal weapons?

Please see:

--Timeshifter (talk) 03:48, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Ambiguity of “village lands”

Please can I have some input at Ambiguity of “village lands”. Thanks. Chesdovi (talk) 11:55, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Sockpuppet discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (development)

Please participate:

Sockpuppets have long been a problem in the editing and discussion of Israel-Palestine articles. Also, this project talk page is semi-protected due to "Excessive sock puppetry." --Timeshifter (talk) 03:46, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

rfc on israeli settlement terminology

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Israeli settlements nableezy - 23:05, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Informal RfC request

Hey all, I'm trying to get a page moved, but am having trouble getting editors to comment on the request. If anyone has a moment to weigh in, please see Talk:Anat_Kamm#Requested_Move. Thanks! NickCT (talk) 13:51, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

AfD "Arabs for Israel"

[109] --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 12:56, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

  1. ^ a b MegLaughlin, In his plea deal, what did Sami Al-Arian admit to?, St. Petersburg Times, April 23, 2006.
  2. ^ Article "History of Palestine", Encyclopaedia Britannica (2002 edition), article section written by Walid Ahmed Khalidi and Ian J. Bickerton.
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