Talk:Israeli–Palestinian conflict/Archive 16

Latest additions
I've added important missing information, mainly to the "2000 - until today" section. Any feedback to my latest additions would be gladly appreciated. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 11:30, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I know some of you disagree with the way the Historical outline section is currently phrased. Therefore, I need your feedback here in order that we would be able to discuss it in a civil matter in order to reach a more balanced version. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 06:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

The factual accuracy of the article is disputed...
The inclusion of extremist web history versions has left the article fundamentally flawed with factual inaccuracies littered throughout...Ashley kennedy3 (talk) 11:33, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Please state exactly which facts aren’t accurate/biased/unbalanced in the article so that we’ll be able to discuss it here and resolve it. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 15:03, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * hi. i'm trying to watch this debate as well. I do see some material of ambigous value. will try to review more thoroughly and to be a bit more detailed and specific. thanks for your efforts though. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 15:09, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Take a look at this terrible SYNTH section:


 * Without the West Bank, Israel would be only nine miles across at its narrowest point, close to its greatest population center.[146] Many fear that this would leave it vulnerable to any future attacks by an Arab alliance. Moreover, such an army would be fighting from the higher ground of the West Bank,[147] and would find its invasion made easier, since it would not have to cross the Jordan River.

The threat of Qassam rockets fired from the Palestinian Territories into Israel is also of great concern. In 2006—the year following Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip—the Israeli government recorded 1,726 such launches, more than four times the total rockets fired in 2005.[148] Many Israelis see this as evidence that greater Palestinian autonomy necessarily comes at the expense of Israel's ability to defend itself against threats from the Palestinian territories.[149]

Many believe that Israeli concessions will result in reduced friction between Israelis and Palestinians and that this will in turn bring about a reduction of violence.[149] This claim has been disputed by experts on counterterrorism. David Kilcullen has argued that removing Israel from the West Bank or complying with all Palestinian demands would not remove Palestinian insurgency. Instead Palestinian terrorists would seek new targets in Israel proper.[150]


 * None of the sources provided verifies the information given. One of the sources is taken from religious 'nut' quoting Bible passages on current events.  This source - http://www.grantjeffrey.com/article/rusisrl.htm


 * Also is ridden with weasel words like 'Many'.


 * "This claim has been disputed by experts on counterterrorism" yet only 'one' 'expert' is quoted.


 * "The threat of Qassam rockets fired from the Palestinian Territories into Israel is also of great concern." By who? who is making this claim? by the sheer numbers of rockets alone on the source given?


 * I will be removing this whole section as soon as I type this. This does not stand to even the lowest of wiki standards. Cryptonio (talk) 15:16, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Cryptonio that the section was badly cited. I did restore two sentences ("The threat of ... fired in 2005.") and added a source for who is "concerned." I ask that the section be expanded with better sources.  --GHcool (talk) 16:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The section was a bit poorly worded, doubtless by someone trying to put in a whole set of beliefs which they thought had to be reworded for NPOV. in fact, they would have been better stating them outright. for example:


 * "'The threat of Qassam rockets fired from the Palestinian Territories into Israel is also of great concern...many Israelis see this as evidence that greater Palestinian autonomy necessarily comes at the expense of Israel's ability to defend itself against threats from the Palestinian territories.[149]'"


 * This could simply be rewritten as: "After Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians attacked Israel by firing Qassam rockets from Gaza towards Israeli cities. In 2009, Israel invaded the Gaza Strip for the stated purpose of halting such attacks."


 * "'Many believe that Israeli concessions will result in reduced friction between Israelis and Palestinians and that this will in turn bring about a reduction of violence.[149] This claim has been disputed by experts on counterterrorism. David Kilcullen has argued that removing Israel from the West Bank or complying with all Palestinian demands would not remove Palestinian insurgency. Instead Palestinian terrorists would seek new targets in Israel proper.[150]'"


 * This is a bit ridiculous, especially since there are other sections which cover this much better. see further down, in the section on core issues, regarding mutual recognition. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 16:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I will do my best to fix the problems mentioned so far within the next few days. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 05:05, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * ok, keep us posted as you do. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 14:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

early history
Ashley Kennedy, much of what you wrote needs to be in the Zionism article. This is not about the history of the settlement of Israel. The impact of pre-1948 history should be given here as a summation; not as a history of the time. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 14:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
 * well, I withdraw my comment. If others here are ok with it, no problem. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 15:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Israeli–Palestinian conflict
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Israeli–Palestinian conflict's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Guardian20091105": From List of rocket and mortar attacks in Israel in 2008:  From 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 09:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * AnomieBOT, have you met Cadie yet? Could you say hello to her for us? thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 13:58, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Operation Susannah
Please stop including the info on Operation Susannah. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinians were not even involved at all. It would be better suited for some esoteric article such as History of Egyptian-Israeli relations or something. --GHcool (talk) 20:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

The incident, was cause for Jews to leave Egypt. Cryptonio (talk) 20:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

And stop asking me to not include information. This is what you should have done before your third revert. Cryptonio (talk) 21:00, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Cryptonio, I agree with GHcool. please work with him more. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:25, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As I wrote before, I fail to see the relevance of a rough spot in Egyptian-Israeli relations to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As far as I can tell, not a single Palestinian was affected by Operation Susannah.  There are plenty of places where this information might possibly be relevant (History of Israel, History of Egypt, etc.).  This is not one of them.  --GHcool (talk) 22:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The article, AND the brief mention of the incident was already in the article. it was merely moved when i edited. Egypt was allover Palestine-interest.  And if Israel had any interaction with Egypt, it was due to Palestine.  The Arab-Israeli war is mentioned, how does it deals with Israel-Palestine? it simply does doesn't it? Cryptonio (talk) 23:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I encourage Cryptonio to take a deep breath and write coherently so that whatever points he or she seems to be trying to make can be understood clearly. Thanks.  --GHcool (talk) 23:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, didn't see this going on. I moved some essential info from the persistent deletion into the previous sentence as counter balance NPOV. Please check if the second ref needs to be brought along too, but don't think so. Event was significant to American administration at the time and diplomatically tied to the I/P conflict then. CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 10:40, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Chronology
The first phase of the 1947-1949 war began before the May 15 invasion by the regular Arab armies. A civil war, if you can call it that, had been raging for months, beginning right after the UN partition vote - as you can see in the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine article. The events of Deir Yassin were just that- an event in the larger framework of a civil war which is dealt with, in detail, later in the article. We don't call out Deir yassin any more than we would call out the Convoy of 35, or the The Battle of Mishmar HaEmek Canadian Monkey (talk) 20:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Where is Deir Yassin discussed 'later in the article'? Cryptonio (talk) 20:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The war it was a part of is dicussed later in the article, in the proper chronological order. Individual events of that war, like the Convoy of 35, or the The Battle of Mishmar HaEmek, might not be discussed in detail in an overview article such as this, but have their own articles on Wikipedia. Canadian Monkey (talk) 21:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * It was included as part of a summary(where violence between jews and arabs occurred between '20 and '48. it was not discussed in detail, it was merely mentioned.  this appears to be a technicality based on how the article appears right now.  to argue this is to be short-sighted. specially when the battle of Mishmar(civil war) should be included as well(it is currently not even mentioned).  some solution should arise shortly.


 * My question is repeated then. Where is Deir Yassin discussed 'later in the article'? Cryptonio (talk) 22:26, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * And my answer is repeated as well: This is an overview article, which does not mentioned every individual event or battle, and doesn't need to, when that event/battle is part of a larger occurrence (the war), which is discussed in more detail. It certainly doesn't need to call out events in a one-sided, POV way. Canadian Monkey (talk) 22:32, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * So if the Civil war article is somehow included it would be one-sided POV?. Why(in your opinion) is the reason that the Hebron massacre is included in the same space where we are attempting to include Deir Yassin? wouldn't that be POV? one-sided? and the reason that you give me would be your opinion(pov) wouldn't it?...It seems as if one argument at the time-clause should be

in place in here, failed to address "It was included as part of a summary(where violence between jews and arabs occurred between '20 and '48. it was not discussed in detail, it was merely mentioned."  which was stated first(as in order of importance, the question was last). Cryptonio (talk) 22:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I encourage Cryptonio to take a deep breath and write coherently so that whatever points he or she seems to be trying to make can be understood clearly. Thanks.  --GHcool (talk) 23:12, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * So if the Civil war article is somehow included it would be one-sided POV?. Why(in your opinion) is the reason that the Hebron massacre is included in the same space where we are attempting to include Deir Yassin?  Cryptonio (talk) 15:07, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
 * What is a one-sided POV edit is to insert mention of one event (e.g Deir Yassin) which is part of a broader occurrence (the 1947-1949 war, or the first phase of that war, from dec 47 until the Arab invasion). Canadian Monkey (talk) 18:44, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Israeli–Palestinian conflict infobox table
Does anyone object to using this infobox table in the article? 24.12.234.123 (talk) 05:36, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't object to the idea of an infobox, but I do object to the wording of the proposed infobox, specifically to the following:
 * The map is POV as it showcases the Palestinian territories (and strangely names them "Palestine"). This map is much better.
 * "Location: Palestine" — try "Location: Israel and the Palestinian territories"
 * The "History" section only details milestones in the peace process. Please change the heading to "Peace Process." --GHcool (talk) 07:03, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * As you might see on the infobox to the left I have done the following changes:
 * I have changed the image - now it says "West Bank & Gaza".
 * I have changed the heading from "History" to "Peace Process".
 * Is the infobox good enough now ? please keep in mind that all infobox have to start from something and I am sure it would be heavily modified and become much better with time. 24.12.234.123 (talk) 07:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, this seems fine to me. Thank you for being so cooperative.  :) --GHcool (talk) 01:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Just a warning, the term "Israeli Occupation" is under dispute in the Israel article, so it might shift over here at some point. Goalie1998 (talk) 02:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Great. In that case I'll add the infobox back to the article. 24.12.234.123 (talk) 04:50, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * GHcool, what do you think it should say instead of "under Israeli Occupation"? 24.12.234.123 (talk) 04:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps that can simply be deleted without anything replacing it. Isn't it enough that it just identifies the West Bank and Gaza Strip? --GHcool (talk) 07:28, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The greening area does in no way represent the actual area under PNA control or administration. The map is misleading.Nishidani (talk) 11:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

The map (as Nishidani has already mentioned) is very misleading. The map (if it's accurate) would show the present status of what was once Palestine. It implies that Israel is a country like any other .. this is not true! I hope what i have to say helps with many of the disputes I've seen raging on between different editors. I won't simply talk without giving evidence, it'll lead to no where .. I'll provide a reference from a UN page that discusses the history of Palestine (from before Israel was established).

OK, here it goes: Palestine is an Arab country. Palestinians are simply the citizens of Palestine.

(this is why the Palestinian-Israeli conflict eventually progressed to an Arab-Israeli conflict when the Arabs attempted to free Palestine from the Israeli occupation .. just keep reading, you'll understand why I chose to use the word "occupation".)

Simple right, OK, the reason there is no official country called Palestine and the whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict started when Palestine (that was colonized by the British) was handed over to become a land to the Jews. The colonizing British regime handed over Palestine (then an Arab country colonized by the British like so many other countries were) to the Jews in what was an implementation of what was known as the "Balfour Declaration". The "Balfour Declaration" was issued by the British government in 1917 and expresses support for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". So, in effect, Israel is simply an implementation of the Balfour Declaration, there never existed a state of Israel before then, so implying that Israel is some region that existed like any other country is simply wrong! Israelis came from all parts of the world, the only thing they have in common is that they're Jews. The Israelis that were born and settled there (in which is effect Palestinian land) are the only exception to this. So, in effect, Israel as shown in the map is just the part of Palestine that is now held by the Jews (as a result of the Balfour declaration). What is left of Palestine that belongs to the Palestinians are the scattered regions that are shown on the map, like the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Palestine as a country does not exist simply because it is still colonized (in effect): first by the British who gave it over to the Jews. All other countries that were once colonized were returned to their original citizens which later declared their independence. Palestinians never got their independence from the British.

Many people might think I'm being pro-Arab, but in reality, these are just the plain facts. Everything I've mentioned is based on my knowledge of the history of Palestine (plain historical facts, as anyone who cares enough to check will find out), and on a UN web page that also talks about the history of Palestine (which is where I got the info about the Balfour Declaration). The link is provided below:

[1] http://www.un.org/depts/dpa/ngo/history.html

Wozz88 (talk) 11:46, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Merge proposal
In the recent weeks, the "Historical outline" section has transformed from a brief historical summary (which in my opinion was initially missing many important details) to a comprehensive and extended section which in some people opinions it might currently be too long to comfortably read and navigate and would defiantly only become bigger with time. In my opinion, since it would be almost impossible to keep a brief NPOV version of this section within this article due to the massive additions which would be constantly made into this section in the future, I think that eventually we would have no other option but to implement the following suggestion:


 * Since a lot of the information in the "Historical outline" is repeated "Historical outline" section (which is also currently too long to comfortably read and navigate), and since it would only become larger with time, I think it would be a good idea to merge the "Historical outline" section with the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article, divide the merged content into the main six time periods of the conflict (instead of the many sub headlines which the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article currently contain), and minimizing the merged content as much as possible keeping only the most essential information in it.


 * After the merge, in my opinion, a "See also" template should be added to the top of the "The periods of the conflict" section which would contain a referral to the new and improved merged "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article.

What do you think? TheCuriousGnome (talk) 06:37, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to trim the fat in the Historical outline section for about a week. I'm going to do more today.  --GHcool (talk) 18:50, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The problem is that you can't really trim it to a very short segment because other wikipedians would ALWAYS insist on adding background information to it in order to make it sound less POV. that's why I think there is no other way but to eventually, sooner or later merge this section with the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article. beside that, I think that the article "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" could use to be re-edited and summarized and I think that combining the two, dividing the merged content into the main six time periods of the conflict (instead of the many sub headlines which the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article currently contain), and minimizing the merged content as much as possible keeping only the most essential information in it is essential.
 * I am adding a merge template to this section. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)


 * "The problem is that you can't really trim it to a very short segment because other wikipedians would ALWAYS insist on adding background information to it in order to make it sound less POV."


 * This is what has been happening, and there is no willingness to trim the actual sections in a less 'POV way' as you mentioned. I am in favor of the merger, which is necessary since there are two articles that cover the same information.  To trim the sections, and on top of that, to oppose the merger is not feasible.  Is it why I added much needed information, which for now, won't add it again if a merger is accepted and executed. The strong POV part of the article, will be looked at with patience.  Cryptonio (talk) 22:34, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Please User:GHcool, do not reverse while discussing here. E.g.: your edit first pass at trimming the fat ... see talk page (a big! remove) was edited clearly after initiation of the question. -DePiep (talk) 00:33, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * WP:Preserve went out the window. Information removed that could go along to the other page.  Plus information not added to individual 'section-articles'.  No worries though.  Cryptonio (talk) 01:08, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, uh huh. Anyway, I'm gonna revert to this version if there continues to be no actionable discussion here within the next couple of days.  --GHcool (talk) 04:44, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Merging the two articles is a bad idea for two reasons. Firstly, both articles are already long in their own right, and combining them would make that situation worse. Secondly, the two articles have a different focus, which is why they are separate articles. For various reasons, the history section of this article has bloated out of proportion. As has already been mentioned, restricting this bloat is not an easy problem to solve. One possible solution is to remove the history completely from this article, leaving a completely new ~200 word blurb outlining key themes, trends and ideas in the history. By leaving out specific events, we can avoid the problem of random editors inserting their own 'important' sentence, and having to debate whether or not certain events are significant enough to be included. Another possible solution is to continue trimming the section so that it is manageable again. Suicup (talk) 06:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That's actually not a bad idea. I may do that if there aren't any objections within the next couple of days.  --GHcool (talk) 06:42, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The summarized version of the conflict which we have established in the "Historical outline" section has become a much better article than the big mess which is going on in the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article, and in my opinion it helps our readers understand much better the historical background of the conflict.
 * I think we need to agree that the weaknesses of the "Historical outline" section are the same as the weaknesses of the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" and that the keeping only one trimmed summarized version which would focus on the entire conflict would be in everybody’s best interest.
 * If it was only up to me I would replace the whole content of the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article with the summarized content we currently established in the "Historical outline" (keeping only the most important information from the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article) and keeping a referral to the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article in the "Periods of the conflict" section. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 13:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, both articles are long and terrible. Why have two bad articles? when one mediocre will keep everybody content.  I'm still of the idea of merging these two 'creatures' and having only one site to work at.


 * Well Ghcool, you seem to like every single proposal that is thrown your way. You started to "cut the fat" thinking the merger was a good idea.  Now you seem to think merging is a bad idea etc.  The way I see things, you are not to be taken seriously, with will make the job a bit harder, because you seem to want to take a little bit from every plate.


 * Keeping one of the articles, with a very basic outline or to just occupy space could do something. What I would to also add is, making 'spin offs' of the sections in the merged article. If we have to improve various articles to accomplish this, i think we are going to have to.  Cryptonio (talk) 14:05, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't agree with the merge proposal. by the way, every article at wikipedia has some items which some person disagrees with. any editor making revisions to such articles still need to take note of others' opinions. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 16:20, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * There is always going to be disagreement about this subject. Due to the many different opinions on how the historical overview of the conflict should be presented though, a whole lot of problems are created because we have two different articles which deal with the same complex controversial subject. Wouldn’t it be much better to have one good summarized historical overview which would contain only the most important events of the conflict with brief background information to certain events? (The current "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article doesn’t. As I mentioned above, the "The periods of the conflict" section in this article is good enough for a brief historical overview and we would be able to add a referral in it (a see also template) which would refer our users to the new and improved merged "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article 24.12.234.123 (talk) 17:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Further discussion

 * Another good idea by TheCuriousGnome. If there are no objections, I'll replace the "History" article with the "Historical outline" section here within the next couple of days.  --GHcool (talk) 17:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * …and it is important to restate that by doing so the whole current "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article won't be deleted forever - after GHcool would replace the "History" article with the current "Historical outline" section, we’ll all help restoring only the most important information which is currently in the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article and/or debate which information should be restored or rephrased, creating a new, improved and more concentrated historical overview which would contain the best of both the current "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article and the "Historical outline" section for the benefit of our readers. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 18:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I object. I do not see any benefit to entirely removing the abundant data currently present in the History article. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * See the above comment. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 18:21, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Ok, but in that case, any major deletions should be discussed first. We shouldn't delete everything and then discuss what to put back. I'm open to the material which you wish to add though. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay. I agree that implementing the merge won’t be quick and easy and that we would need to discuss many of the changes, especially when removing information which is currently presented in the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article. That being the case, I suggest that:
 * In the first stage of the merge, GHcool would be in charge of merging the contents of the "Historical outline" section into the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article by himself, only adding missing information to it or replacing certain segments with better phrased/sourced segments taken from the "Historical outline" section, instead of deleting any segments/the whole current version of the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article. Any disputed changes he would make, would be brought up and discussed in the discussion page of the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article.
 * In the second stage, after he finishes merging the content, we’ll all help editing the article and/or debate which information should be restored or rephrased, creating a new, improved and more concentrated historical overview which would contain the best of both the current "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article and the "Historical outline" section for the benefit of our readers. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 20:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * This sounds like a reasonable course of action. I won't do it immediately because more people may want to comment.  Also, this week is a busy week for me due to Passover.  --GHcool (talk) 21:06, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok. Happy holidays. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 21:14, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I appreciate GHCool's message. I too will be less active due to Passover. Thanks. CuriousGnome, thanks for your message as well. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:26, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. Happy holidays to you too. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 23:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that TheCuriousGnome's solution tackles it in reverse. Ideally, the History article should be cleaned up/rewritten/whatever first, and then a history section written here as per WP:SUMMARY. This was attempted however as we have seen, failed. You can't just replace the entire history article with a (frankly sub par) 'summary outline'. You either fix the history article on it own, and then transfer a summarized version of that content back into this article, or you implement my suggestion of removing the history section completely from this article, and replacing it with a broad blurb on key issues and themes.

Cryptonio, while I don't agree with a lot of GHCool's opinions I acknowledge that he has personally contributed a significant amount of edits to this article compared to yourself. While I applaud a sudden flurry of editors trying to implement radical changes in these articles, I am wary because something similar was tried about a year ago by myself and a couple of others and it ended up not fully being achieved due to 1) drive-by editors chiming in but not ultimately helping out, 2) massive edit warring because the changes were not fully agreed upon, 3) editors not sticking it out for the long haul.

So what I am saying is that while I disagree with what you are doing, if you really are going to do it, don't be half hearted about it. Put in the work. And be prepared to compromise. Suicup (talk) 00:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Sure will boss, had to catch up on my reading though, on the subject. To that, it wasn't until today that I had the time to visit the library.  Also, proposals like yours are still pouring in, so unlike Ghcool who Zeus only know what he's trying to archive(and a few devil-like as me), I've been waiting to see where we could somehow find an acceptable solution that everybody could live by. Rest assured, I'll dine and wine on these two articles for a while.  No time lost.  And, I don't think Ghcool has done much of any significant long lasting worth(but that's just me of course). Cryptonio (talk) 02:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * "could live by. Rest assured, I'll dine and wine on these two articles for a while. No time lost. And, I don't think Ghcool has done much of any significant long lasting worth(but that's just me of course). Cryptonio (talk) 02:41, 7 April 2009 (UTC)"


 * your comment suggests some lack of attention to how Wikipedia works and how people treat each other here, or how this article has evolved, or how this whole topic area has been handled. With all respect, there is no excuse for denigrating the work of any editor here. Maybe you didn't mean to do that? I would like to suggest that you try to not do that. It goes against WP:CIVIL and WP:Assume good faith, and it just isn't helpful. thanks.


 * Furthermore, many of the editors here have evolved a working relationship. i don't expect you to just jump into that sight unseen. However, one of the rules which we've hit on is the realization is that many of us will disagree over aspects of these articles. In spite of this we treat each other with respect. so that's another thing to take note of. Also denigrating other editors or their work here only lowers your own credibility., in my opinion.


 * If anyone else wants to chime in on this, they are welcome to do so. i hope the concept of trying to maintain some civility at Wikipedia can get at least a few more people to endorse this concept. thanks. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 12:43, 7 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Frankly, I think the content of the history article needs to be written by people who know what they are talking about. No offense to you Cryptonio (I do not know your level of knowledge on this subject), however there are many editors such as Nishidani who have a wealth of expertise IMO. If it is written by amateur 'historians' who've googled most of the info, it will end up into the bloated, POV mess that it is now. I would consider myself to have a better than average knowledge of this history, having studied it at university, however I am by no means an expert, and as such would hesitate to make a substantial contribution (in addition to my numerous edits already). My concern is that this delicate and complex web of stories has not been expressed effectively in Wikipedia, and this is a goal that should be attained. Suicup (talk) 03:27, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I will try to read over the whole section properly and make some specific points which I believe could be addressed, in addition to the ones already mentioned. It may be that I am too pessimistic about the current state of the article. Suicup (talk) 03:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Suicup, I see you haven't read my latest suggestion above.. Please read it, I think you would be satisfied with it.

Besides that, I agree that Ideally we would be able to clean up/rewrite the entire History article first and then write a short summary of it here as per WP:SUMMARY. Nevertheless, you need to remember that this complex controversial subject which both of the articles attempt to cover is being subjected on a regularly basis to massive amounts of edits by biased editors, which make it much harder to maintain two different articles which cover the same subject. Therefore, in my opinion, I think that we have no other option but to keep only one article which would contain a well phrased NPOV historical overview of the conflict, and we’ll keep only the short "Periods of the conflict" section in this article (instead of the a summarized historical overview) which would contain a referral to the new and improved merged "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 04:38, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I am dissatisfied with your latest solution, because it is still the same solution - merging the articles. 'Periods of the conflict' is essentially the same as a 'summarized historical overview'. What you are saying is that the summary on this page (even after reform) is better than the entire content on the History page, which is patently rubbish IMO. However, whatever, go ahead, i don't really have any time to contribute seriously. For what its worth though, I have invited Nishidani to come and make some comments. However he knows full well that it is not as simple as you make out TheCuriousGnome. Suicup (talk) 01:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I won't flood this talk page much further.


 * "Frankly, I think the content of the history article needs to be written by people who know what they are talking about. No offense to you Cryptonio (I do not know your level of knowledge on this subject), however there are many editors such as Nishidani who have a wealth of expertise IMO."


 * Nishidani has been on this and many other articles, trying in a very smart way, "re-write" or improve all of these articles. Now, even with Nishidani's assistance, this and other articles still look pretty, to say the least, outdated.  Now, no doubt about the confrontations that are BROUGHT to Nishidani and others like him on these talk pages.  Of these capable editors, I am the smallest. Ashley was another capable editor(with questionable approach to say) with knowledgeable 'experience' and knowledge who also attempted to improve or "re-write" certain parts of this article and look what that led him to(no obligation to follow what is going on with him, so i'll say he got disconnected for now). What Ghcool does is my concern, how i see his work in my opinion, go ahead and improve the article, which will at the same time, silence me and my work.


 * Cheese whiz, are we adults here. Sue me if you think i'm on the wrong here, but don't call out my name without reading what i've said. I apologize for continuing participating on this talk page without edits. But i am a man, a young man, and have many things to waste time on. none of this can't be brought against me. I apologize to those who comment in good faith and don't even need me here. Cryptonio (talk) 20:40, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * At Suicup's suggestion, though entangled in other things, I've glanced over the discussion. Given the mess many similar articles have, and the long history of politics of article drafting here, I am opposed generally to merging, in the short-term, since you don't merge two articles indifferently composed with any degree of assurance that the baby is not thrown out with the barfwater in either article.
 * In principle, what is required is to avoid massive ambitious changes and simply devote attention, article by article, to cleaning up the extremely poor sourcing by establishing a certain agreement on method. The fundamental principle on method, in line with the aims of this encyclopedia, which are to produce articles according to the best available reliable sources, is to systematically go through an article, from the beginning, and replace bad sources, mostly from tertiary, or primary sources, with citations from the best available scholarly works. The I/P area is one of the areas mostly richly endowed with readily available academic sources, whose existence dispenses with the need to use government documents, agenda-driven POV-sites' thumbnail descriptions, or press articles. This was the essence of my exchanges with GHcool recently on poor sentences that had 26 sources, when just 2 updated references to cutting edge scholarship would have sufficed to clear the air, and the page, of trash. The method is economical, and eliminates a lot of the nonsense caused historically by edit-conflicts and compromises between earlier editors using, respectively, inferior sources. So, the short-term solution should simply be to rework on each article the notes, until everything is grounded in the best secondary sources. Reading those, in addition, often means finding information that is trenchantly material to these otherwise haphazardly composed articles, that can be included, and often familiarity with that material will make obsolete the kind of stuff harvested from poor, synthetic journalism or government sources. I did this, at User:Ceedjee's suggestion, at Muhammad Amin Al-Husayni for the first part of the article, the article being plagued by politicized editing, and by the use of numerous articles of poor polemical quality reflecting outdated sources. Much of that reconstruction could, once the article is thoroughly edited (still half done) gradually be shifted to relevant sections (The Western Wall, the 1929 Palestine riots etc.) but it is still premature to do so. That is why I suggest that it is sensible, as a working method, to concentrate on one article, bring it up to snuff by thoroughly revising it according to the best sources, and only then, when it is close to GA status, using it as a leaping board to collegially re-edit the other contiguous articles. One has to start somewhere, and it is best to avoid premature merging of articles that are themselves in poor shape. Nishidani (talk) 08:29, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm drafting a merge that I hope both sides will respect. I'm pretty close to finishing it, except it is still too long and I'd like to trim some more when I get a few moments. I tried not to make it a blow by blow account of violence or focus too much of great man explanations, but rather explain certain key moments in the conflict. For example, I cut out the entire Mufti section and the article reads a lot better and clearer. I also try my best to focus on the parts of the history when Israelis and Palestinians interact and limit extraneous, indirectly related discussions of things such as Israeli-Egyptian relations. --GHcool (talk) 17:24, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually nothing ever happened outside of power calculations between the British, French, Israel, and the surrounding Arab countries. The whole history of Israeli-Palestinian relations is the history of these 'extraneous' relations. The 1982 Lebanese invasion is a classic case.Jordanian-Jewish negoitiuations onn the eve of war 1948,1967 etc.etc. It can't be done. It's like describing how two children behave while eliding all mention of other sublings and parents. Nishidani (talk) 17:33, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
 * As I wrote in my message above, the focus of my draft are the Israelis and the Palestinians. The 1982 Lebanon War is pretty well featured, but it focuses on the Israelis and the Palestinians more than it does on the Lebanese and Jordanians.  I'm trying to differentiate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the wider Arab-Israeli conflict.  Nishidani, I thank you for your interest in my draft, but I'd like to ask that you save the criticisms until after you read a finished draft.  At that point, I'd be glad to hear any and all constructive criticism from any Wikipedia editor.  Thanks in advance.  --GHcool (talk) 18:12, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

GHcool, in order for the merge to be implemented with minimal issues, I ask of you to only focus at this time on merging the content currently presented in the "Historical outline" section into the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article without making any other extended changes to the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article and/or presenting any big draft which should be discussed prior to merge. After the merge would be implemented you’ll be able to discuss any changes you wish to make and/or present us with any draft you have made.

Nishidani, I do not understand why you oppose the merge – I think we both agree that it is very hard to maintain two different articles which cover the same complex controversial subject and are subjected to many biased edits, and I think we both agree that currently we only need to concentrate on one historical overview of the conflict. Other than concentrating all of our efforts in one article, the aim of this merge is to improve the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article by adding to it missing information which is currently presented in the "Historical outline" section as well as replacing bad phrased/sourced segments in the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article with better phrased/sourced segments. If you would disagree with any changes made, after the merge you would always be able to retrieve any information presented in the article prior to the merge (after discussing it of course) and you would also be able to challenge any new information/facts added to the article in the discussion page. Merging the "Historical outline" section into the "History of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict" article is the first necessary measure which we would have to take in order to concentrate on one article. After implementing the merge and and/or after we’ll discuss the changes and decide whether certain segments need to be reverted their former state prior to the merge, we would be able to continue to thoroughly revise the article and improve it tremendously in cooperation. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 20:39, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

GHcool's merge
I just made what I feel is a good and fair pass at a merge of the article and a serious trimming of the fat. I think it reads a lot better than the current article. I'd like to hear constructive comments and try to address them. My hope is that this merge eventually replaces History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that we can shorten the "Historical outline" section of the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" to about 10-20 paragraphs (right now its about 60 paragraphs long). --GHcool (talk) 17:02, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a well-written account from a purely Zionist perspective of the period in which the central fact, that two nationalisms aspired to a state, the one foreign, Zionism, the other indigenous Arab-Palestinian, is wholly elided, so that every key phase describes Palestinian and Arab movements as obstructive, militant or terroristic. Any average reader would give it full marks as neutral. I think it gets an -A minus for a comprehensive effort to narrate a conflict of two peoples as essentially the heroic success of Zionism in overcoming indigenous obstacles, depicted as intolerant and violent, to the repatriation of the diaspora to a Palestine where the majority didn't want them, but had this imposed on them by foreign powers, and foreign events. There would be a thousand things to remark on, the lack of the McMahon-Sherif correspondance before Sykes-Picot, the idea that persecution of Jews was 'worldwide' in the 1930s; the suggestion Israel offered recompense after 1948 (it owned 6% of the property and infrastructure, and seized, at the end of the war, and expropriated a huge amount of property with Palestinian title, vastly outweighing the pittance you mention, since it included most of the housing infrastructure and territorial assets of Israel in 1949. See Yifat Holzman-Gazit's brilliant Land expropriation in Israel: law, culture and society, Ashgate, 2007, for how this was done); that the Jews were expelled as a consequence of 1948, which is nonsense and propaganda, but placed strategically there to 'balance', the fact of the nakba. (almost as if, after the expulsion of 720,000 Palestinians in 1948 into several Arab countries, which caused huge disruptiveness, economic problems, etc., the long period of emigration, Zionist assisted flight from 1949-1980s, bombs in Iraq, the Lavon Affair in Egypt, the 1956 invasion of Egypt, the 1967 preemptive war, the 1982 war of choice in Lebanon, etc.were consummated by Arabs saying 'good riddance' to their Jewish populations shortly after 1948. Eliding broader historical context, as 'fat' means none of this is visible).


 * Still you've focused on the Zionist narrative, and as such, it's a middling effort, but the Palestinians only figure as a nuisance to the accomplishment of the dreams of the former. A lot of old history books, and even Benny Morris, underwrite this, but it is not history. It is the selective national textbook version from one party, the winner, recounting what interests that party. The only significant effort for a decent bibliography consists in an absurd holusbolus of odd sources to document the 4-5 armies invasion theory of 1948. The bulk of sources are not academic, but from tendentious sites of no noticeable value)
 * Well, my exceptions are too substantive, and my time too short, to assist here. But in my world, I can recognize this as a sincere reflection of one people's beliefs about history, while being incapable of recognizing it as what history must be, an impartial account of all perspectives. Good luck with it.Nishidani (talk) 19:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Compromise proposal
Due to the complexity of the subject I believe that it would be either almost impossible or that it would take us a lot of time to establish a draft which would be accepted on all sides before implementing the merge. Therefore I suggest that instead implementing a merge, at this point, we’ll completely remove the content of the "Historical outline" section and instead of it add a link to the "History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" article (with a "see also" template) in the "Periods of the conflict" section.

I believe that if we'll focus on improving the "History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" article by ourselves while discussing the changes in the discussion page in a civil manner we’ll be able to reach consensus much faster then trying to improve GHcool’s draft. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 21:16, 9 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree about deleting the "Historical outline" section, but think that we won't get a much better version than mine if we try and improve the "History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" article little by little. --GHcool (talk) 22:03, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm quite serious in what I said. Your version gives, fairly enough, the skeleton of 'conflict' (qua military conflict, riots, terrorism) as that is read in traditional Zionist historiography. This was, for most of the time, a conflict over land rights, and almost all of this has been ignored, except for Ehud's 'concession', which consisted in taking from 24% to 8% of the 22% of land left over to the Palestinians, parcelled in such a way as to make a state unviable. It is a strictly explicitly 'Zionist' narrative to describe the 20s as consisting only in that extraordinary showcased triplet of Palestinian 'riots', three over 12 days in a decade (1920,1921,1929), coming fast on the murder of 60,000 Jews in Eastern Europe and Petliura's Ukraine, but representing, comparatively, minor ephemeral skirmishes of revolt against a project of dispossession. The word 'conflict' is interpreted in military terms: whereas the whole history is fraught with competing institutional claims of a wholly conflictual nature, and this has disappeared, if it was ever there-


 * There is a whole literature that the draft seems completely unaware of. It scrupulously follows one side's account. All the 'riot' articles are mistitled, because they give the impression Arabs were rioting for all over those years (the proper NPOV title for the '1920 Palestinian riots' should be 'the Nabi Musa riot'.


 * There is a cameo section on the great Satan (al Husayni, mostly reflecting 50s historiography). A Palestinian account, for balance, if this useless stuff is included, would balance it with a parallel section on Rabbi Kook, whose works and influence (through his son) created much havoc in the 1970s and 80s, by providing the theoretical grounding of a messianic interpretation of Judaism for an otherwise secular project, an extremist rabbinical approach that eventually justified violence, expulsion and murder as acceptable means for re-appropriating 'the Land of Israel'.


 * You have 'Palestinian terrorism' and nothing about Gush Emunim and Kahane and other groups: you have the conflict as highlighting Jewish pressures for immigration as an urgent necessity to flee Nazism, while Palestinian post-nakba attempts to return to their homeland are 'border wars' against clandestine terrorist infiltration.
 * You have a succession of wars with other countries in which Palestinians almost never figured, (1948, 1967,1973, 1982) recognized as part of the conflict, yet ignore much evidence that many of these wars, and esp. those from 1982 were wars of choice to isolate the West Bank from the PLO and set it up for colonization. That was the explicit design of the 1982 Lebanese war, which was provoked by Israel against a UN ceasefire which the PLO observed for several months. You have nothing on the water conflict over post 1967 in which 10 times the volume of water harvested from the West Bank acquifers goes to Israel and Israeli colonial enterprises on ther West Bank, while West Bank Palestinians get hardly enough to allow their sheep to graze, their fish farms to flourish (for the Tel Aviv market). Nothing of the systematic destruction (conflict) of Palestinian cisterns and water harvesting plants throughout the West Bank (the Hebron water system is open and closed at Kiryat Arba where 6000 settlers control the water of 170,000 local Palestinians).
 * Nothing on the conflict post-Oslo in which 90% of the population in the West Bank lives on 2% of that land, the great urban cities.
 * Nothing on the huge outpouring of hi-tech military firepower essentially on a disarmed population, the policy of 'breaking their arms and legs' set out Rabin,from 1987 onwards which caused 30,000 casualties in 5 years. Nothing on the strangulation of Gaza from 2001, in a policy of ghettoization. These are only a few minor points.


 * So, as I said, it's a good Zionist job, but it is only one side's account, has nothing to do with fairness, does not in any way draw on numerous, comprehensive, readily accessible academic works that detail the real nature of the conflict, and systematically suppresses what a Palestinian would recount. It is nowhere near a basic level of NPOV, though fairly complete as a Zionist interpretation. The rewritings proposed, if they follow this schema, esp.given that the best editor on these things, Ashley kennedy3, is now expelled for a year for noting how bad several of these articles are, will not improve this lopsided work. I don't think this is intentional, because it is obviously the handiwork of people who have grown with narratives that slant everything one way, unaware that there is a totally different reading available from scholars, many of them Israeli, who have included in their works the narrative dealing with how the vanquished population on the other side saw things. Nishidani (talk) 10:04, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * We have to start somewhere though. TheCuriousGnome (talk) 23:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
 * If you decide to do so, the Palestinian reading can be well represented by drawing extensively on a book like Zeev Maoz's Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel’s Security & Foreign Policy, University of Michigan Press, 2006. Without books like this, there is no point in working either article, or draft.Nishidani (talk) 12:08, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll try to respond to the most relevant points:
 * The 1920s - I agree that more can be added about the 1920s, which I sort of glossed over.
 * The Mufti - The Mufti is not mentioned at all in my draft. Should he be? Rav Kook isn't mentioned either.
 * Kahane - I feel like Kahane is more of a domestic Israeli issue. Yes, he was a racist and counter-productive force, but he really only affected Israeli internal politics.  If we begin adding biographies of every controversial figure on both sides of the conflict, this article will quickly become very, very long and follow a great man outline.  I am not interested in pursuing this.
 * Border wars vs. Palestinian right of return - These are two entirely separate issues. The Palestinian fedayeens' goal was not to "return to their homeland," but rather to harass Israelis and steal stuff.  A comparison between European Jews fleeing the Holocaust and Palestinian fedayeens attacking Israel cannot reasonably be made.
 * 1982 war - I disagree with Nishidani's analysis of the motivations for this war on the Israeli side and I get the feeling that most Israelis would as well. Let's keep it to just the facts.
 * Water conflict - Yes, I glossed over this. I wouldn't mind including a paragraph on this.
 * Gaza blockade - There are already two sentences on the Gaza blockade in my draft. While this is an important issue in today's politics, I didn't think it was necessary for the broader history article.  I added a wikilink to the main article and whoever is interested can read about it there.  --GHcool (talk) 18:22, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the feedback. The mufti's on the history article (Sorry for mixing. I read the two articles one after another the other day. I don't enjoy reading wiki articles, and didn't rely on anything other than memory, once I've read one through, a bad habit but they make me grind my teeth, and I dislike ending up with dentures simply out of pertinacity in reading poorly drafted essays. Your's is well-drafted, it's just lacking everything readers like myself note from a counter.Zionist perspective).
 * The 1920s is almost wholly ignored in wiki, except for those three points, which are milestones in the Zionist narrative, small beer in the other. The McMahon-Sherif correspondence had a very large impact on Palestinians and Arabs, after the BalDec came through. It was, to them, as if their own Balfour Declaration had been torn up, after they had rallied with the British against the Ottomans, and another tribe had been given the benefits, a stab in the back.
 * Kahane, and many associated figures who played a leading role in forcing the pace of settlement, Moshe Levinger, Benzion Heinemann, the Zvi Kook circle, etc.ect. and the settler movement, played a very powerful role in creating the poisoned atmosphere in the West Bank and Gaza. Ian Lustick, one of the foremost international experts in colonialism and territorial disputes, in his 1988 book (1994 ed.) wrote (p.xi):'the Jewish fundamentalist movement, and the settlers in the territories who have been its spearhead, have "emerged as the greatest obstacle to meaningful negotiations toward a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement.' (p.3 = Despite divisions on the Arab side, and the intransigence of many Palestinians, it is the Jewish fundamentalist movement that has emerged as the greatest obstacle to meaningful negotiations toward a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace settlement.). His analysis is shared by many Israeli ranking scholars.
 * I don't think you have read adequately on the parallel between the driving ethos of the Jewish right to settle in Israel, and the Palestinian claim to a right to return. In limotrophic areas there was always a traditional to-and-fro across what later became borders. The expulsion of Palestinians and their desire to return cannot, as Morris argues generally, be summed up as fedayeen terrorism or bedouin banditry. The Palestinian desire to return to their homeland is as strong as any Jewish yearning in the past to make aliyah. Yet the former is deprecated as 'fedayeen' terrorism, the latter as an idealist goal. For example, there was from the late thirties quite a large amount of illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine. That is understandable, as is the hostility to British clampdowns. Writers who turn from this to characterize post 1949 attempts of Palestinians to migrate back to their homes deal frequently with this as some subversive attack on the Israeli state's territorial and demographic integrity.
 * My analysis of 1982 is not 'mine'. I could provide a dozen sources of high quality that analyze this, citing Begin and Sharon and Eytan's own expressed interpretations for that war of choice, which wasn't even preemptive. It was strictly designed to isolate the West Bankers and destroy their aspirations for a national home, just as the treaty with Sadat was. I'm not in the habit of saying what I think. If writing discursively on this, I always bear in mind what sources tell me. You can look at my toponym essay on my page and see 3 or four quotes on this there. I have about a dozen.
 * I'm happy to see you note the water conflict, which goes a long way to clarifying much of the tensions with both Syria and Jordan, as well as explaining difficulties on the West Bank. It is one of the central strategic factors in all Israeli thinking, and has been since the 50s.
 * Gaza is crucial. In the 1990s it had 30,000 commuters working in Israeli daily. 2001 made that all but dry up. It is now the central area of conflict.
 * Generally however, I don't think the article can be done unless books like the recent work by Maoz are used. It's very long, but throws a huge amount of light on IDF decision-making, and was written by an insider who supported everything and saw these conflicts unfold, and, eventually recanted and wrote that extraordinary book. (Un)fortunately, I do not have the time to attend to this article, or many others. Secondly, I think the first sensible step is simply to embrace a principle, one I keep harping on. Everything down to 2004 at least should be book-sourced, ignoring all internet government or PNA, partisan web-site sources, mainstream newspapers or old books. The best work is in the huge scholarship from the 1980s onwards: what the net gives us is recycled and often outdated narratives, or POV spinning. There are many other points I could make, but since I am not active on this page, and will not edit it, it seems pointless to niggle.Nishidani (talk) 21:17, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I just added a sentence on the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence. I took a look at the footnotes and noticed that of the 40 cited works referenced from the period before 2004, 17 of them are books, 5 of them are from government reports, websites, and documents (UN, US, Israel, Palestinian National Covenent), 3 are from scholarly journals, 1 is from Encyclopedia Britannica, and 1 is from Human Rights Watch.  The rest are from websites ranging from the highly respected (BBC, etc) to the borderline RS (Damascus Online).  Therefore, 67.5% of the sources cited are extremely reliable.  The remaining 32.5% are still reliable, but I'm all for citing the info to even better sources.  --GHcool (talk) 21:38, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually your draft conserves that absurd concatenation of superfluous sources, a mixed bag of books, 10 just for an uncontroversial point (note 11), which means 10 sources are basically used or introduced for just one undisputed moment in a century long history. Subtract most of those sources (only 2 are used elsewhere) and you get less than 10 books for the whole page. This is just bad methodology. Since all the period is intensely covered in books citing the BBC and other web sites is futile.Notes 11-19 are useless, since the two points could be covered by Gelb and Morris, without citing so many one-off sources. Most of the books in the 17 listed are cited but once, half are outdated, (Arafat's testimony useless in any case). There are dozens of methodological errors like that. I think we discussed this a few weeks ago. It's called source-economy, a variant on Occam's razor, 'the sources are not to be multiplied beyong necessity', and they never are if one bases one's work on comprehensive histories.Nishidani (talk) 08:37, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * In my defense, I did not write this article alone. If I did, it would look a lot different.  It is a merger of what was already on Wikipedia with some transitional stuff by me.  As I wrote before, I'm always in favor of citing better sources.  --GHcool (talk) 18:35, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I just cut out a lot of the extraneous sources and consolidated some of them into The Cotinuum Political Encyclopedia. --GHcool (talk) 19:44, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You have a huge amount of work to do on the wars. As I said, read Maoz, who has extraordinary good credentials as an Israeli academic and insider expert on security. His thesis is summed up by his own words.
 * "‘The major theme is that most of the wars in which Israel was involved were the result of deliberate Israeli aggressive design, flawed decision making, or flawed conflict management strategies or were avoidable. Israel’s war experience is a story of folly, recklessness, and self-made traps. None of the wars – with a possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence- was what Israel refers to as Milhemet Ein Brerah (“war of necessity”). They were all wars of choice or wars of folly’ Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: a critical analysis of Israel's security & foreign policy, University of Michigan Press, 2006 p.35"
 * There is a large literature on this, it is interpretive, but the way your draft reads, one would never gather that this is a widely shared reading of the sequence of wars and conflict. Nishidani (talk) 19:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Like Joe Friday, I'm interested in "just the facts." --GHcool (talk) 01:25, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, there is a timeline structure, and then a selective use of facts to underline a Zionist narrative. All facts, readily available to an editor, not bearing on this narrative are omitted. Why is Abu Nidal registered? He was under a death sentence from the PLO in 1982, and the attempt on the life of the Israeli ambassador to London seems to have been ordered by Saddam Hussein. That the event was a pretext to blame the PLO and then destroy them in Lebanon is known to everybody. If you cite Abu Nidal, then you are obliged to reference not only the trite pretext, but also the dozens of later historical accounts, like Maoz's which supply full analysis and quotations from the decision-makers on why they decided on that war of choice. The real 'facts' behind the decision are known to all scholars. They are not in your account, here as throughout. But I see it is pointless to insist. Go ahead, but on a present reading, there is no possibility of your draft being a merging. Nishidani (talk) 09:26, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Nishidani, I have not read the same books that you have. I do not own those books.  I will go forward with the merge and encourage you to add any verifiable, relevant information you wish into the merge.  Any omission in the merge I drafted are not by design to help the Zionist agenda or any other such fiddle-faddle.  --GHcool (talk) 16:53, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I say Zionist in all honesty. From someone wholly outside the perspective in which this merge is written, it looks like an essay in Zionist interpretation.
 * I could spend months on noting where the method is poor, or the text ignores decades of scholarship. I clicked back to check 1948 just now and what do I get?
 * "The Arab leadership called on the Arab population to evacuate[16] many areas to make it easier for the Arab forces to take them over. Many rumors of awful acts that were committed by Jewish fighters as well as a number of serious actions taken by Jewish forces made a greater number of Arabs decide to leave Palestine."
 * This is a style of interpretation common to Zionist propaganda down to the early 1980s, and only survives in non-historians like the hackwork of Alan Dershowitz. In fact, note 16 which buttresses it, reads:
 * "16. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), 256, quoted in Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003), 80."
 * Alan Dershowitz is not an historian, virtually everything in that book is useless, he has so twisted everything one cannot use it. It should not be cited. But he is used to cite Benny Morris. If we look at ther quote from Benny Morris we get
 * "In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purposes . .More than half a dozen villages, just north of Jerusalem and in the Lower Galilee-were abandoned during these months as a result of such orders. Elsewhere, in East Jerusalem and in many villages around the country, the (Arab) commanders ordered women, old people, and children to be sent away out of harm's way .. in 1946-47, . the AHC and the Arab League had periodically endorsed such a move when contemplating the future war in Palestine'"
 * The text drafted from this reference is patched up by selective citation, a violation of WP:SYNTH, WP:OR which actually manages to misrepresent Morris's known views, though he is cited for it (via the lamentable Dershowitz, who still subscribes to the myth of his youth here).
 * It changes the subject of 'some Arab commanders' in a few villages to 'the Arab leadership'
 * That the AHC and Arab League had periodically endorsed the idea a year or two before in thinking of strategy is immaterial, since there is no evidence it was put into practice, as your synthesis asserts.
 * It reintroduces under false credentials (Morris) a myth fabricated by Zionists and effectively buried by Erskine Childers 5 decades ago. All serious historiography no longer entertains the myth in the formk enunciated in your first sentence.
 * It ignores the conclusions of Morris's massive study, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (2004). Morris in this book footnote 95 pp.269f. dismisses what your synthesis of the Zionist propaganda, from a misreading of the passage Dershowitz quotes, implies he maintains. There, he explicitly states there is no evidence that the Arab leadership made a blanket call for evacuation. The only example that vaguely fits this is the evidence for Haifa (see pp.133ff.pp.198ff but p.139 concludes that before April 'the AHC and by and large the NCs opposed the flight' p.130).
 * Your draft here also refers to post May 14 events that occurred (flight, rumours leading to flight) underway long before that date, late 1947 through to April. Morris and many others document that throughout, a transfer mentality guided many Israeli operations that 'cleansed' villages. Of this no word.
 * Attempts to write singlehandedly a draft requires, to meet NPOV, either deep familiarity with historical method, and reliable sources, the best academic works period for period, over this conflict, or, alternatively, collaboration with people who know the literature thoroughly, to ensure the compensations of much one misses, and the other POV. The one person who might have helped has been screwed off the encyclopedia for a year. Life's short. I can't spend what's left of mine cleaning up messes like this. It is better to have two messy pages with much useful information scattered over them, than a merger written by one hand that is organized along one POV, Zionism. You work hard, the draft is well-organized and neatly written. It neglects, elides, glosses over or ignores everything of moment not considered welcome by the vetero-zionist approach to historical writing. I.e. it neglects modern scholarship from 1980s onwards. You have some reading to do, therefore, so good luck.Nishidani (talk) 20:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * ps.I note that the 24 incidents Morris analyses as outright massacres of Arabs in 1948 are reduced to 'rumnours' or 'serious actions'. (All actions in war are serious, except when General Spike Milligen was in command).Nishidani (talk) 20:46, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I just reworded the sentence so that it says "some Arab commanders ordered." --GHcool (talk) 21:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Correcting the text/source error, but leaving in, along with a tendentious ultra-Zionist secondary source of notably poor quality (Dershowitz) a diluted echo of a hackneyed myth, thus still showcasing flight-as-self-induced, while ignoring the dozen key elements (transfer, forced expulsions of entire cities, ethnic cleansing of areas) (Morris) that any neutral text would remark on. Another reason for not collaborating on the draft. You pick a few things to improve the aesthetics of the skeleton, dab in cement on a rotten joint, but it remains a rickets-ridden corpse.Nishidani (talk) 07:22, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * I just fixed the sentence, completely removing the Dershowitz citation, and replacing it with the two you have provided Nishidani. With regards to your comments of massacres of arabs you refer to directly above, could you provide Morris's reference for that, and i can rewrite the second sentence: "Many rumors of awful acts that were committed by Jewish fighters as well as a number of serious actions taken by Jewish forces made a greater number of Arabs decide to leave Palestine."
 * I also just want to say thanks to Nishidani for coming here and offering feedback. It is a shame he (or she?) doesn't have the time to properly contribute, however as always it is extremely welcome to have someone with the insight and familiarity with the historical method to comment. I would hope that these couple of sentences are a clear example of what can be achieved for the whole article. Regards. Suicup (talk) 07:37, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * That said, I completely agree with Nishidani that this merge was a bad idea for reasons already established. While we may have 'fixed' this sentence, the fact is, the whole article and its citations must be reworked in this manner, which involves a lot of work, especially for a single editor. Much better IMO to leave it as it was. Suicup (talk) 07:40, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Morris gave that figure, 24 Jewish massacres of Arabs, to Avi Shavit in the by now famous interview in Haaretz, after the publication of his rev.ed. of the 1988 masterpiece. In that book he gives 3 Arab massacres of Jews for the same period. But this wasn't just about massacres, though they played a huge role in flight. One cannot reduce such a monumental moment to a few stray remarks. Generally the thumbnail sketch approach in one overview article can only be done if one has a full and cogent synthesis on all period pages to work from. Unfortunately, most of these pages are 3 decades behind the specialist literature. That is why I continue to suggest that whoever is keen to work towards a revision of any page simply begin by checking the notes, and replacing all newspaper sources, government-slanted or NPA-sourced material, or encyclopedia compendia, or tertiary sources, with references from the secondary literature. User:Ceedjee does this, as does User:Ashley kennedy3. Without some overriding and binding principle like this, fully compliant with the ideal of WP:RS, all editing is merely tatting and patching up from hearsay, outdated POV material - which is the congenital problem with I/P area articles. Regards Nishidani (talk) 08:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it would help if you could list here 4 -5 key sources which could be utilized for this purpose. That way, potential editors have a starting point for their research. Regards. Suicup (talk) 08:20, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Spoken Article?
I think there is a problem in recording this article because the conflict is still happening and events are changing. Also, the neutrality of the article is in question, subjecting it to a lot of potential for change. --SuperJew (talk) 11:42, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

"One Family" numbers
Sry folks, I know that I'm not a regular editor of this article, but I felt compelled to remove the section with the "One Family" casualty numbers. Several reasons: Firstly, it was almost verbatim copied from their website. How about copyright issues? And don't you agree that this way it is really too long for an already long article? Secondly, looking at the website, I can't find any details for the calculation of the numbers. This raises concerns. There is not even an definition given for the number count. For instance, are IDF soldiers included? And lastly, One Family as an organistion dedicated to the welfare of Israeli victims families only certainly is not a neutral voice in the conflict. Sry, but you folks simply can't include a whole section in this way, without any prior discussion, and severely damaging the NPOV of the article this way. That's not ok, imho. If you disagree, lets discuss this here first. Gray62 (talk) 14:14, 2 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Two other issues with the casualty numbers: There should be a subsection vor the B'tselem numbers. I would have added that, but I dunno anything about that class formating, so i was afraid to screw everything up. And then I have to say that imho the casualty numbers of 1936-1939 should be deleted, too, because they onesidedly reflect Palestinian casualties, while only saying about Jewish ones that theere have been "several hundred". This doesn't look like a fair comparison. Gray62 (talk) 14:25, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Water
Why is there no discussion of water? Water is the crux of the problem. Israel is entirely dependent on the West Bank and Golan Heights for its water. Israel can never give up control of these areas without endangering its very survival. No meaningful negotiations can take place unless and until Israel is guaranteed a secure alternate water supply.

Hopefully some one more knowledgeable than me will write about the role of water in the conflict.

LeRoy Euvrard —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.56.1.98 (talk) 17:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * There is: Israeli–Palestinian_conflict. Do you think the title is unclear? if so you are welcome to change it to 'Water' or something like that. Mitsuhirato (talk) 07:52, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Update Needed in the Introduction
The end of the introduction which talks about the Annapolis meetings is dated. It says that the talks are scheduled to conclude by the end of 2008. We should put in how those talks concluded, and the current state of the talks in general.

Bill (talk) 19:33, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

The introduction could also be written to lay out the conflict in one or two concise sentences at the very beginning for readers who don't know anything about the topic. It jumps right into a description of the attempted two-state solution. A little more background would be useful.

I added two sentences to the first paragraph, I'm not sure if they cover everything, but the article needs a better introduction than "The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an ongoing dispute between Israel and the Palestinians." Here is what I added, how should the list of issues look? What is it missing?

Although the conflict is wide-ranging, the key issues are settlement and land rights, border security, water rights, and control of Jerusalem. The frequent violence caused by the conflict has prompted other security and human rights concerns on both sides.

Ihaveafordv8 (talk) 10:07, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

the common goal of Palestinian violence
It seems that a minor IP vs registered editor war has broken out. The target sentence appears to be "the common goal of Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians is to eliminate the Jewish state and replace it with a Palestinian Arab state" sourced to The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East. The sentence is sourced but is it accurate ? For example, a great deal of violence by both sides is part of cycle where both belligerents carry out actions in response to the activities of the opposing belligerent. So it would seem that "to eliminate the Jewish state" doesn't accurately describe matters. How could it be improved to better describe the situation ? Perhaps some material fromRocket_and_mortar_attacks_on_southern_Israel could be re-used?  Sean.hoyland  - talk 10:15, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The sentence refers to the entire history of the conflict, that is, several tactics by several actors over decades, not just the recent rocket attacks by Hamas. The Continnuum Political Encyclopedia confirms that the sentence is true.  I'll also add a Jerusalem Post editorial and a "Jewish Virtual Library" article to cite the "eliminate the Jewish state" claim, even though it is not needed since the encyclopedia says basically the same thing, but takes more effort for an average Wikipedia user to get his/her hands on.  --GHcool (talk) 17:15, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure how to respond, so this is the only way I know to comment. Please do not revert and save back to the old page that is very disconcerning. what I think you need to do is you save the edits made, remove the content in question come back and reedit them and add the new content back in, or whatever you have to do to make the content better, which is what I've been asking for, and what you strive for. what I noticed is the content is biased and very one sided. I think you need more current quotes and content for that opening paragraph. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.122.125.169 (talk) 23:39, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The onus is on the person who wishes to make the changes to make changes. That is what WP:Bold refers to.  Censoring material and the ordering someone else to fix it to your liking is against Wikipedia policy.  --GHcool (talk) 16:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

goal of Palestinian violence (cont'd)
I agree with GHcool. The mere fact that someone said something at some time does not demonstrate its truth. All four of those citations are pro-Israel, which should point a warning finger to partiality. Michael B. Oren served in the Israel Defense Force, Daniel Pipes is a pro-Israel political commentator, and this |citation declares its status as fringe politics. Obvious personal investment in authorship should always warrant additional scrutiny when citing.

If Joe Johnson says that "potatoes taste terrible", the article on potatoes should not state that "potatoes taste terrible"; it should cite that as his stated opinion. Furthermore, if Joe Johnson states that he bought a Ford because prefers American companies, the statement "Joe Johnson bought a Ford because he prefers American companies" is not necessarily true, but "Joe Johnson stated that he bought a Ford because he prefers American companies" is true. Intentions are difficult to ascertain. Note that the featured article on Barak Obama never discusses Obama's intentions. Certainly if the claim is as significant and powerful as the intention of Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, care (and nitpicking) is crucial.

Unless Daniel Pipes interviewed every Palestinian militant and determined that Israel's destruction is their unanimous goal, his claim should not be stated as true. If Pipes did interview every Palestinian militant and determined that, then that should be cited as Palestinian militants' unanimous stated goal, not their actual goal.

Also, I must express my support for the neutrality template. It's not a matter of arbitrary balance; it's a matter of weasel words.
 * Palestinians insist on contiguous territory which will in turn rupture the existing territorial contiguity of Israel.

Insist. Rupture. Most of the article is fine, but the Israeli security concerns section is a biased wreck. dm yers t urnbull  ⇒ talk 21:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I assume you meant "I don't agree with GHcool" unless you were specifically referring to their statement about the WP:BRD process.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 05:17, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with User:dmyersturnbull. Also, the sentence states that the motives are complex and then proceeds to say that really it is about elimination of Israel, which doesn't really make sense. Is it complex or not? For this reason I have reworded to sentence, and also removed superfluous language. I also removed all the references except the Continuum Encyclopaedia because a) one should be enough, b) the others were hardly objective. Regards Suicup (talk) 11:30, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that anyone who makes a firm statement about a "common goal of Palestinian violence" can be forgiven for believing it not only true, but proven by their overwhelmingly having elected Hamas to lead them. There's no bias involved in such a position, just observation.FlaviaR (talk) 21:55, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * That is an incredibly silly "observation".  nableezy  - 22:01, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
 * If you could prove that it was "silly", you would no doubt have done so. Likewise with proving it false. You might want to take another look at Hamas' charter before you answer.FlaviaR (talk) 07:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

periods of the conflict
it would be nice if the "periods" section had dates or years included. i don't feel like clicking every link to figure out the timeline. Xanthrax (talk) 03:16, 18 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point. I'll get right on it.  --GHcool (talk) 05:04, 18 November 2009 (UTC)

i removed this part
there was grave inaccuracies and wild claims which reek of propaganda and bias in the first paragraph. That part was claiming that Palestinians did not possess a unique culture or identity and was clearly insinuating that there were no Palestinian people, was also bringing up stuff that was irrelevant like "there was never a state called Palestine".

i removed the part as it was extremely biased and had false claims as well as no sources —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.196.239.212 (talk) 12:10, 23 November 2009 (UTC)


 * That's not as biased or false as you may think. The Palestinian notion of self-identify is a fairly recent phenomena stretching back only 100 or perhaps 200 years. The people who now identify as Palestinians used to consider themselves as Arabs. People have written books (e.g., historian James L. Gelvin's The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War) exploring Palestinian nationalism with the thesis that it is a response to Zionism. This is not as fringe of a notion as you might believe but probably the standard interpretation of Palestinian history by neutral parties. This does not imply some sort of anti-Palestinian agenda either as Gelvin himself states. Jason Quinn (talk) 19:57, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

there is a problem with sources and this part
Quote "The United States, France, United Nations, and others have called on the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations with Israel immediately, but these calls have been ignored. "

after checking the sources mentioned, nothing like that was impllied in either article. So i deleted this part, but i left the sources. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.120.62 (talk) 00:41, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if you just didn't read the articles fully or somehow misunderstood the content, but after reading them over again, they do clearly say this... I have added additional sources as well. Breein1007 (talk) 05:29, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Intro POV wording
The current Israeli government has made repeated requests for continued negotiations without preconditions, but Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, has refused to negotiate unless Israel completely halts all settlement construction and expansion, a demand that Israel wishes to discuss within the negotiations themselves. In December 2009, Israel announced a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction as a gesture to the Palestinian Authority, but calls for negotiations continued to be rejected. The United States, France, United Nations, European Union, and others have called on the Palestinian Authority to resume negotiations with Israel immediately, but the Palestinian Authority has continuously refused and insisted that negotiations will not resume unless the precondition of a complete settlement freeze is met by Israel.

The above section (copy/pasted from the intro) is, in my opinion, worded in a POV against the Palestinian side. Specifically, it uses the word "refuse" a number of times; no references use this wording, and the term "refuse" has a bit of a negative connotation to it. The section paints the Israelis as generous and the Palestinians as stubborn; maybe they are, but the wording shouldn't paint anyone as anything. I would try to reword this myself, but I'm not familiar enough with the entire topic to do it justice. Perhaps this section could also be trimmed, as it's all relatively recent info which could perhaps be better elaborated on further in the article; the intro is getting a bit too long anyway. Cheers, -M.Nelson (talk) 05:14, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't agree that this presents any POV... it's an objective summary of recent events as they have occurred. If you happened to take the information as painting the Israelis as "generous" and the PA as "stubborn", then maybe that's just what the events portray. There certainly isn't any wording within the summary that suggests this whatsoever. I don't think that "refuse" qualifies as a POV issue, and I don't really see how it has a negative connotation (other than the fact that it is by nature a negative response to something). But if we do have consensus that "refuse" is an inappropriate term to use on Wikipedia, I don't particularly have a problem changing it to something similar. What do you propose? I did try to vary the usage in the summary. We could say "rejected" if you think that is better? But in the case that we do rule "refuse" as being inappropriate, I would question whether or not we need to filter it out of every single Wikipedia article where it is currently used in a similar fashion. Breein1007 (talk) 05:38, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Has Israel announced a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in East Jerusalem ? If not then the sentence is rather misleading since the international community regard the Israeli built population centres as settlements and within scope of a settlement freeze.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 05:47, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's irrelevant, Sean. The point is that Israel has called for negotiations without preconditions, and the international community has agreed that the Palestinians should indeed restart negotiations. Israel decided to halt construction for 10 months as a gesture, not as a settlement freeze. A settlement freeze is an issue that Israel wishes to discuss within the negotiations themselves, and Israel hasn't agreed to a settlement freeze (nor did I say that they did in the article). This is similar to past refusal by the Palestinians to accept the Israeli precondition that they accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Israel has dropped this precondition and asked the PA to similarly drop their precondition. That is the point of the paragraph. Breein1007 (talk) 06:10, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It's relevant in the sense that terminology needs to be unambiguous. The term 'settlement construction' is being used twice and in two different ways as far as I can tell. For the international community (plus the PA) 'settlement construction' includes East Jerusalem, for the Israeli government it does not include the construction of 'neighborhoods' in Jerusalem. So, someone could say that it is an Israeli precondition that they be allowed to continue constructing 'neighborhoods' in Jerusalem. Using the same term to mean two different things seems like a bad idea. It confuses rather than clarifies. Perhaps we could say, including East Jerusalem for the Palestinian sentence and excluding East Jerusalem for the Israeli sentence or settlements in the West Bank or anything else that would ensure that it's clear what is actually meant.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 06:42, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, I didn't notice the double use of "settlement construction". That's fine, then. It's definitely an appropriate change to make. Breein1007 (talk) 06:45, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) I would say that "reject" also has the same connotation. The Washington Post source says that the PA "said it will not participate", which is quite obviously NPOV... how about we change it to that? For the record, I still think that the entire section needs to be reworked a bit, as it puts most emphasis on the Israeli calls for Palestinians to return to negotiations, rather than on Palestinian calls for Israelis to suspend settlement building (which are both equally notable points). -M.Nelson (talk) 05:58, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "will not participate" seems unnecessarily wordy to me, but theoretically I would accept it. On second thought, I just did some more research, and I have found a pretty good list of sources that use "reject" or "refuse". If you'd like, we can add these sources to the article to qualify the choice of wording (though I still find it irrelevant because these terms are not inherently POV) Breein1007 (talk) 06:10, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Recent events
Sean, is your edit a joke? I'm not even going to waste my time changing it because I know I'll simply get gang attacked by the usual editors. I'm growing really tired of this. You have added an undue amount of focus on the Israeli criticism and took out virtually any mention of the Palestinian refusal to return to negotiations, contrary to calls of the international community, aside from subtly hinting at the fact that some people have called for negotiations without preconditions. You removed sourced content that I had posted, and masked your edit as an attempt to "clarify" and make it more "npov". You did the opposite. I am highly hopeful that you, someone who for the most part I have seen as a rational and more objective editor, will go back and take a look at what you have written, and change it to really reflect a more NPOV message. I'm not going to make any more changes to it at this point. Breein1007 (talk) 08:29, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * No, it's not in the least funny. Can you assume good faith on my part for a moment ? From my perspective the edit is neutral, much clearer in the specifics of the permit lull, the PA demands and refusal to reopen negotiations and the associated reactions from the international community. I'm not trying to subtly hint at anything. What is the sourced content that I removed that you are concerned about specifically ? Maybe it's better if you detail your concerns as I honestly can't see any problem with the edit. It follows the sources and just provides factual info as far as I can tell. It seems entirely uncontroversial to me.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 08:39, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Also note that I took great care to cite a source for every single statement rather than simply put refs at the end to make it absolutely clear where the information for each piece of information came from. That was in anticipation of this kind of objection. Regarding who in the international community has called for negotiations without preconditions, I put the US and the EU because those are the only 2 supported by your sources and the others I found. France is in the EU so there is no point listing them separately.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 08:51, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I did assume good faith, but it seems that you got carried away. I'm too tired to go through it properly now... maybe I'll take a look in the morning. I'm sure you can understand that it gets frustrating constantly having to deal with POV on this issue, and can see where I'm coming from even if you disagree with this particular instance. Breein1007 (talk) 08:55, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, well let me know where I got carried away when you get a chance. I don't really have a POV on this issue so if you see what you regard as POV it's from the sources not me. I don't think I've changed any of the language/terminology used other than minor things to avoid copyvio. I should say that I conciously tried to reduce the number of Israeli reliable sources a little bit and increase the number of international reliable sources because over reliance on either Israeli media sources or non-Israeli sources on issues like this isn't a good idea in my view.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 09:10, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

how can Palestine be in Israel? Clearly Israel does not want palestine in Israel and God gave Isreal to the Jews, so how could another country or place be in Israel

af 011210  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.35.224.63 (talk) 20:22, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Please read WP:TALK.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 04:22, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Edits to the lead
I really do hope that this edit doesn’t disrupt any existing consensus. That was not my intention, but as the edit summary indicates, whatever the consensus is, it seems to have missed a great deal of notability, and was simple to correct. I also find the lead lacks, in particular, the broader international context, in which the included events unfolded, and appears excessively isolated to the POVs of the two noted sides; these events did not occur in a vacuum, and other third-party things played an important part. I believe this is necessary for the benefit of the reader, per the basics. Regards, CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 04:26, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * It's offensive, lacks taste, and is flat out insensitive. I wouldn't expect anything less from the BBC. That said, this isn't a battle I'm going to fight. Good luck. Breein1007 (talk) 04:34, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the correction of the ref's words, I'd missed that, and note that it provides the proper parallel phrasing. While I note your impressions of the BBC, others' positions may differ. In noting your specific phrasing of those impressions, I could not find any specific blue-linked WP:Whatevers that particularly discussed those, except possibly WP:BOLD. CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 05:56, 1 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Following a similar bold approach, I made other incremental edits,, through the 1st paragraph.  Others may challenge these edits, so I will let them sit for a while, but I believe the following rephrasing of those words would link them together better, provide better contextual relationships, and improve flow within the paragraph and the next.  It would read:


 * The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is an the ongoing dispute between Israelis and Palestinians, and one of the most enduring and explosive of all the world's conflicts. Although t The conflict is wide-ranging, and T the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the majority Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or British rule. It forms part of the wider and generally earlier Arab–Israeli conflict. t The remaining key issues are: mutual recognition, borders, security, water rights, control of Jerusalem, land rights, and legalities concerning refugees. The violence resulting from the conflict has prompted other security and human rights concerns on both sides and internationally.
 * Although the last sentence still misses the mark somewhat, IMO. Regards, CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 09:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The edit of the last sentence adds notable ‘international actions‘, attempts to define the ‘conflict’, and notes there is more than just ‘both’ sides; quickly, that would be, for example, Israeli left versus right, and Palestinian left versus right, both of which tend to differ greatly. There were objections to the 'attempt to define the ‘conflict’', please indicate just what other 'is more to it than nationalism'. CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 06:58, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Are Israeli settlements a key issue in the I-P conflict?
I recently added the settlements to the list of the key issues in the conflict, but Breein1007 disagrees. This seems like such an obvious, common sense truth that it seems ludicrous to have to argue for it. However, I have found at least one source (from the Canadian government) listing the settlements as a key issue. Factsontheground (talk) 07:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The issue is commonly refered to as land rights, because there is more to the issue than just the settlements. Land rights encompasses settlements and more. As far as the edit war you have started re: the unsourced sentence, I am going to put it back in one more time, and if you have an issue, I will request AGAIN that you discuss it here. If you feel that the sentence should be removed because it is unsourced, I trust that you will argue that the entire paragraph should be removed (since none of it is sourced). I will assume that this is true because of my great confidence in your desire to maintain WP:NPOV. Ahh, the beauty of WP:AGF. Breein1007 (talk) 17:38, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The lead doesn't need any sources. It should summarise the sourced statements in the article. The article lists the core areas of dispute. If something needs to be changed it should changed in the article and then the lead. The same terminolgy should be used in both cases. If the article didn't say that Israeli settlements are a key issue in the conflict using the term Israeli settlements then there would be something very wrong with the article.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 18:13, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I am bewildered that the edit war is continuing even after a discussion has been started here. Wait for other people to join the discussion so that we can reach consensus. The version that you continue to edit war into the article is redundant. Land rights includes settlements. It makes no sense to mention both. Breein1007 (talk) 23:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I am bewildered that you are rejecting a reliable source from the Canadian government that clearly states that the Israeli settlements are a key issue of the conflict. I am bewildered that you are ignoring nearly every single negotiation between the Israelis and Palestinians since 1967 in which a settlement freeze is always a key, preeminent demand by the Palestinians, to the point they refuse to negotiate unless one is in place. Factsontheground (talk) 23:57, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, Palestinian "land rights" are not the same thing as settlements. The land rights issue is quite separate and has to do with Palestinian land, not Israeli land which is what the Israeli government considers the settlements to be situated in. Factsontheground (talk) 00:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The fact that, even after asking you again to stop edit warring and inviting you to discuss the issue here so that we can reach an agreement, you reverted again (and with an identical edit summary as the last one) leaves me no choice but to alert you that if you make one more revert, I will fill out a report asking for admin intervention. Breein1007 (talk) 00:05, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that 'Canadian' sentence should be removed entirely. The source is simply not good. The sentence is out of place. --Shuki (talk) 00:09, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * What do you mean? The word "Canadian" does not appear once in the article. The cite is to the Canadian government, but surely you're not arguing that the Canadian government is an unreliable source? Factsontheground (talk) 00:16, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

It is blindingly obvious that the settlements are a key issue that must be in the lead. It is one of those things you can verify by opening a random newspaper. Hiding the issue inside the innocuous looking phrase "land rights" is deceptive and not even true. Zerotalk 00:42, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Of course settlements are an issue, its the biggest one in the negotiations, I have reverted it: --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 00:47, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's not. In any case, I'm tired of dealing with petty edit wars. If you're going to insist on making the editing atmosphere one of hostility and one that lacks collaboration, but rather edit wars and a game of numbers, then that's fine. Have it your way. In any case, the redundancy has to go. I am deleting "land rights", even though it is clearly the more appropriate term as it involves more issues than just settlements. Breein1007 (talk) 00:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Key Issues Re-Think
The Global Policy Forum, an organization which monitors the UN and holds consultative status at the UN, identifies key issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

"Key issues that have plagued the stalled "peace process" include: Israel's occupation, Israeli settlements and settlement-building, the Israeli wall, security for Israelis and Palestinians, shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, and the right of return of 3.7 million stateless Palestinian refugees." ( http://www.globalpolicy.org/security-council/index-of-countries-on-the-security-council-agenda/israel-palestine-and-the-occupied-territories.html )

The Global Policy Forum is a reliably objective source. And so I think we should model this article's key issues on the above key issues identified by the GPF. What does everyone think? EightNineEditorMan (talk) 21:54, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for starting a mini-DR. IMO, the wording shows that it is not exactly objective but in any case that list is too vague on one hand (occupation) or on the other too specific (wall).
 * From Canadian perspective currently in the lead, it's okay, but perhaps the order is not right: mutual recognition, borders, security, water rights, control of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and legalities concerning refugees.
 * I would change control of Jerusalem to 'separation of Jerusalem', Israeli settlements to 'Israeli settlements and Jewish residency', and refugees to 'immigration of refugees and descendants of refugees'. I would add 'free/safe passage of Israelis and Palestinians' in all areas. --Shuki (talk) 23:56, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * It is not "Jewish residency" that is raised as an issue, it is "Israeli settlements". And the "immigration" of refugees is not the issue, it is the "return" of those refugees, and "Palestinian refugee" includes "descendants of refugees". At least the POV push is subtle. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> nableezy  - 01:14, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Montage?
The montage are all pictures from the Gaza War. Is this appropriate? Shouldn't the montage be moved to the appropriate article? The hamas-israeli conflict is a relatively phenomenon, and most of the fighting and overall casualties (since 1948) are independent of the islamist movements. Just for accuracy I guess. Anyways. Wikifan12345 (talk) 11:12, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * An anon has been introducing that montage into the template Infobox Israeli-Palestinian conflict instead of the original map. --Shuki (talk) 21:54, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
 * What's an anon? Wikifan12345 (talk) 04:56, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Shuki means this IP Special:Contributions/70.69.53.247 <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 05:09, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Should we replace it with the original map? Wikifan12345 (talk) 05:32, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Map
The map makes it look like the Palestinian Authority controls the Gaza strip. But the Gaza strip has been under the control of Hamas sense 2007. Some one should change/fix the map. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.9.230.61 (talk) 03:53, 23 April 2010 (UTC)


 * (IP comment moved from top of the page by <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 04:18, 23 April 2010 (UTC))

Inaccurate statement
Casualties have not been restricted to the military, with a large number of fatalities in civilian population on both sides.

Does anyone have any reliable sources with statistics on casualties? Machn (talk) 09:51, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I think that generally speaking we consider ITIC, HRW and B'tselem reliable. But it might be a good topic for WP:RSN and/or WP:IPCOLL. 10:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Not quite. These organizations are reliable only to report on their own claims. ie: everything they claim must be explicitly attributed to them. Breein1007 (talk) 15:49, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Lede clarification
Does anyone mind if I change ".....freedom of movement[3] and legalities concerning refugees." to ".....freedom of movement[3] and Palestinian refugee's right to return". This seems to me slightly clearer. NickCT (talk) 17:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The original wording was far more accurate. The issue is refugees broadly, not just specifically their so-called "right of return". There are several other possible outcomes such as monetary compensation, resettlement in Jordan or other Arab nations, etc. Breein1007 (talk) 17:52, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok. Well let's spell those out and specify "right of return", which I think meets notability standards in this context.  NickCT (talk) 17:57, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * They are spelled out in the body of the article. Feel free to expand the info there if you feel it is lacking. The lead is intended to be a short, precise summary of the article. Adding a list of all the potential solutions that various people have come up with to the problem would not fit in the lead. Breein1007 (talk) 22:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, if you're worried about size, I think we could potentially exclude some of the other items in this list. For instance, it seems a little wierd to have to "mutual recognition" and "borders".  Aren't those essentially synonomous?  If I recognize you are a country, I also recognize your borders, no?
 * Additionally, some of the items listed seem considerably less notable than the "right to return" issue. For instance "water rights" and "freedom of movement" seem rather 2ndary to the "right to return" issue. If we are going to have this material in the lede it should really concentrate on the most WP:NOTABLE issues. NickCT (talk) 14:14, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Do not start an edit war here. I am reverting your change once again. You did not address the issue that I explained very clearly to you. Breein1007 (talk) 19:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Bree - I proposed potential solutions above and waited for you to reply. After you didn't, I figured you had lost interest.  Note that you didn't bother responding to me before simply reverting.  Who is edit warring? NickCT (talk) 13:43, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Waiting a day and a half is not an indication that I lost interest. I have a life. You made a bold edit, I reverted you, and we began discussing. You then reverted me. That is edit warring. It is not my job now to come up with a compromise edit. I am happy with the current version. If you want to come up with something else, feel free to propose it here. I am once again reverting your inappropriate edit. Breein1007 (talk) 14:47, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding "having a life"; you've told some whoppers in your time Bree, but this one takes the cake. Look... The day and a half I waited you were online and editting.  You had a chance to read my comment and respond.  That is more courtesy than you afforded me.  Now tell me how you think we can edit the wording in a way that specificly calls out the somewhat notable "right of return" issue, and we can reach some agreeable compromise. I've offered some ideas above, tell me which one you think most acceptable.  Otherwise, cease and desist with your edit warring.  Best, NickCT (talk) 14:26, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to waste my time discussing anything with you if you can't do it in a civilized manner, so have fun picking fights with someone else. I made myself very clear. If you are unhappy with consensus, propose a compromise. Nothing that you proposed so far is acceptable. If you edit war one more time, I will take the issue to AE. Bye, Breein1007 (talk) 16:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Bree - You are intentionally gaming the system by endlessly objecting and not offering what you think would be acceptable. Cease this behavior and you will find people may be more civilized towards you.  I invite you to take this issue to AE. NickCT (talk) 17:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the beginnings
frederico i'm not going to undo your edits, because you seem confident in your saying, but can you specify a violent event during late Ottoman rule which we can regard as political clash ? In my opinion the arab-Palestinian nationalism has begun its anti-jewish and anti-Israeli approach under Amin al-Huseini's leadership. I know there was a land sales denial during Mohammed Tahir Mustafa Tahir al-Husayni's reign as Grand Mufti, but is it already a conflict ? Of course there is no "exact date", but i support the claim that the violence of 1920-1921 is the best definition for Israeli-Palestinian conflict beginnings on nationalistic grounds, and it is not just my opinion. Point events before 1920 loosely and poorly correspond the definition of the conflict as nationalistic. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greyshark09 (talk • contribs) 16:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As for the existence of a conflict between Arabs and Zionists in Palestine during late Ottoman rule, Benny Morris writes in his book "1948" at page 8:


 * --Frederico1234 (talk) 17:21, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Benny Morris is a controversial figure, whether he is right or not. I would not rely on his opinion in this field - he is a minority opinion. What you describe of 1909-1914 is among the events we learn under definition of simple robbery. The attacks of several arab and Bedouin gangs in those years came as a barden upon jewish agricultural rural villages and led to the establishment of first jewish guarding company - "ha-Shomer" in 1909. Until the establishment of Shomer, jews were paying armed arabs to guard their fields and villages. Yet a failure of those and raise of distrust with the guards (who didn't really oppose the criminals, due to blood relations in some cases) was followed by employment of jewish militia instead. Moreover, up to this day Bedouins do not relate themselves as Palestinian arabs, but as Bedouin arabs. Hence, the subject largely irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and only slightly relevant to Jewish-Arab conflict, since it had criminal background.Greyshark09 (talk) 11:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Categorisation
Could people cease altering the categories on this article without discussion? My initial rv of the removal of Cat:Zionist Terrorism was part of reversing a string of problematic category removals. --Andrensath (talk &#124; contribs) 21:44, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Zionist terrorism category
Categorization guidelines state: "It should be clear from verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories" (emphasis added). Since this article says absolutely nothing at all about Zionist terrorism, it should be clear to anyone that this article should not include the Zionist terrorism category. Unless a compelling reason is given for inclusion of the category, I will delete the category within the next couple of days. False balance is not a compelling reason. --GHcool (talk) 21:51, 24 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Convincing argument. --Frederico1234 (talk) 11:21, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Palestinian versus Jordanian
You can check me on this, but wasn't the original partition of British mandated Palestine (pre-1967 Arab Israeli War borders) in 1948 the two states of Jordan and Israel? Why did later partition agreements ignore that the planned homeland for Palestinian Arabs was Jordan?

Considering the current situation, why hasn't more weight been given to creating a democratic One-state solution, where the rights and freedoms of all nationalities of the Palestine region (Modern Israel, West Bank, Gaza, etc) would be protected?--Gniniv (talk) 04:05, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The original partition is here. The land which is now called Jordan was not a part of the plan.
 * The one-state solution has been advocated by a handful of pro-Palestinian intellectuals in the western world. It has been rejected by almost everyone else, including the Palestinian and Israeli leadership.  Giving more weight to the one-state solution would violate WP:Undue weight and perhaps even WP:Fringe theories.  There is a good paragraph on the one-state solution in the Peace process in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict article.  --GHcool (talk) 19:05, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Under the age of 18 casualties?
I don't think is an accurate parameter for casualties. A better way to sort casualties would be by age and gender. Vast majority of Palestinian casualties between the 1st and 2nd intifada and the Gaza War were combat-age males. "Under the age of 18" is too ambiguous. Also, I think it would be better to provide ranges than simply citing B'tselem and in the UN which have been accused of fudging stats numerous times. Wikifan12345 (talk) 23:39, 22 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Accused of fudging numbers by whom? B'tselem is widely cited, considered an RS and the UN is absolutely considered an RS. Unomi (talk) 11:11, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not disputing B'tselem or the UN. I'm saying "under the age of 18" is too ambigious. And yes, casualties are disputed by a variety of institutions - especially since the UN relies heavily on Palestinian themselves for information. Makes it harder to verify specific casualty data with an independent, 3rd party. According to the UN, more than 90% of all Palestinian casualties are combat-age males during the 2nd intifada. The civilian-to-combatant ratio is blurred since B'tselem designs their own rubric for what qualifies as a non-combatant, unfortunately their methodology has yet to be tested against international law from what I understand. This is important since the Palestinians openly abuse the status of non-combatants to exploit Israel's rule of engagement. During OCL Hamas combatants were ordered to dress as civilians. Israeli fatalities are low in part because of a better security apparatus, and extreme sensitive in protecting civilians from the battlefield. Whereas Palestinian ROE does not discriminate and their weapon of choice (suicide bombing, grenades, molotov cocktails, mortars, etc...) are designed to maximize kills.


 * On another note, the Palestinians have been widely condemned for using civilians as shields in every facet of conflict. The point is, in spite of the tactics used by the Palestinians (similar to insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, etc..), their casualty ratios are very low in comparison. The casualty section fails to provide context, instead putting too much weight on the actual numbers rather than explaining the reasons behind them. Wikifan12345 (talk) 14:47, 29 July 2010 (UTC)


 * "under the age of 18" means under the age of 18. How is it ambiguous ? 18 is the international standard for combat age under the UN's protocol. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 15:02, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Source? Combat-age is combat-age, 14+. The IDF militaries, evaluates casualties by their age and gender. You think soldiers ask for their driver licenses of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Fatah combatants to make sure they above the age of 18? Wikifan12345 (talk) 23:28, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Source. It's not about what soldiers or militants do. It's about the international standards that place adults and children into different sets based on age. Natually the IDF collect all sorts of attributes, so do B'tselem but my simple point is that there is nothing ambiguous or surprising about casualty metrics being grouped into sets based on international standards. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 04:54, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that having a drivers licence doesn't necessarily prove you're 18+ at all, or it's lack prove you're not. If I'd wanted to, I could have gotten a (learners) one at 15. As-is, because the local public transport system is excellent, I'm 20 and haven't even bothered applying. --Andrensath (talk &#124; contribs) 05:01, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The source says nothing about combat-age males.
 * The fact that a "child" is killed on the battlefield does not necessarily infer innocence. If Hamas and Fatah are deliberately arming the internationally-recognized standard for children, Israel can't possibly be accused of killing "children" in the way the you infer. Article 4 of your linked charter states: "Armed groups that are distinct from the armed forces of a State should not, under any circumstances, recruit or use in hostilities persons under the age of 18 years." The Israel army says the majority of "children" killed were males capable of firing a weapon and engaging in hostilities. B'tselem does not differentiate between infant, preteen, teen, young adult, etc. The UN says ~20% of Palestinian children killed were 12 or younger. So, 80% were 12 and older. And 90% were male. Article 1 says: "States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure that members of their armed forces who have not attained the age of 18 years do not take a direct part in hostilities." Palestinian militant groups openly recruit Palestinians below the age of 18 for combat. B'tselem doesn't dispute this. According to pro-Palestinian groups, the average age of a Palestinian is 17 (legally a "child") so this further skews the way data is gathered. Do you see what I'm saying? Wikifan12345 (talk) 05:13, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Did I say the protocol says anything about gender ? Why would it ? It doesn't mention hair color or height either. Wikifan, please take off the hasbara goggles. It's not about that. I don't think we are here to explain to people that the IDF preferentially kill young Palestinian males or whichever of the countless spins that could be put on the interpretation of the stats by the interested parties. I understand everything you are saying, I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm familar with the reality of the conflict, the detailed stats collected by both the IDF and B'tselem and what the histograms look like when you break the the data down into subsets. All I'm saying is that UN protocols mean that persons under the age of 18 years are classified as non-combat age. Obviously, that doesn't mean they aren't engaged in combat. It's just an unsurprising and sensible way to split stats up and present them, based on a standard. It doesn't mean or imply anything. It's just data. If you are trying to find ways to present statistics in a form that illustrates the narrative of a belligerent in the conflict then I would ask why you would want to do that ? By all means include attributed statements from sources saying "in our view the stats prove x,y,z" but we need to make sure it's not in Wikipedia's narrative voice. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 05:57, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Sean, read your source again. The protocol says squat about combat-age males. People below the age of 18 are not immune from attack - rather, it is illegal for children below the age of 15 cannot be conscripted. In other words, just because someone is 18 doesn't mean they are a non-combatant. This is why many organizations criticize the casualty data because so much emphasize is put on age rather than physical status. Non-state actors are held to even a higher standard - anyone below the age of 18 cannot be recruited for armed conflict. I'm not sure if Israel is a signatory to the protocol - I can't find the list yet. The Palestinians have habitually violated the protocols, whereas Israel has 21st-century style safe-guards consistent with other Western armies. Wikifan12345 (talk) 06:06, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Why do you keep taking about males. It's puzzling. Let me explain something as I think you misunderstand where I'm coming from on this issue. I have absolutely zero interest from the wiki perspective in the rights and wrongs of this issue, who the IDF target, whether they break any rules by doing so, who is or isn't immune from attack, whether militant groups are breaking rules in their recruitment of child soldiers, the age or gender of people, whether they were engaged in hostilities or not etc etc. What I see are numbers and a discussion about whether they are ambiguous. My view is that grouping the numbers into sets based on the UN's sets, combat age 18+, less than 18 = persons (males, females, transexuals etc) who according to the protocol should not be engaged in hostilities, is fine, is a perfectly sensible way to report these things and completely unsurprising. You're wasting your time talking to me about good guys/bad guys, who's breaking what rules etc. I don't care. I think Israel is a signatory to the protocol and the Palestinians aren't but that doesn't matter. It's not about that. It's about sensible, unambiguous ways to present the raw data, casualty statistics, based on standards. The data should just be data. We shouldn't conflate the narratives with the data. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 06:44, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Why do you keep taking about males. It's puzzling. Let me explain something as I think you misunderstand where I'm coming from on this issue. I have absolutely zero interest from the wiki perspective in the rights and wrongs of this issue, who the IDF target, whether they break any rules by doing so, who is or isn't immune from attack, whether militant groups are breaking rules in their recruitment of child soldiers, the age or gender of people, whether they were engaged in hostilities or not etc etc. What I see are numbers and a discussion about whether they are ambiguous. My view is that grouping the numbers into sets based on the UN's sets, combat age 18+, less than 18 = persons (males, females, transexuals etc) who according to the protocol should not be engaged in hostilities, is fine, is a perfectly sensible way to report these things and completely unsurprising. You're wasting your time talking to me about good guys/bad guys, who's breaking what rules etc. I don't care. I think Israel is a signatory to the protocol and the Palestinians aren't but that doesn't matter. It's not about that. It's about sensible, unambiguous ways to present the raw data, casualty statistics, based on standards. The data should just be data. We shouldn't conflate the narratives with the data. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 06:44, 30 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The TLDR version of my answer is, I think you care about how the stats make Israel and the Palestinians look. I don't care, I don't think Wikipedia policy cares and I don't think it matters. It's just data. <small style="border: 1px solid;padding:1px 4px 1px 3px;white-space:nowrap"> Sean.hoyland  - talk 07:06, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

<-This is not about me Sean. The way B'tselem presents the data has been criticized as flawed and at times simply bogus. You said the protocols determined what constitutes combat-age males, it didn't. It just provided the rights of humans under the age of 18 and 15 in armed conflict. The way the data is being prevented is ambiguous. Some rights groups are selecting some parameters but but ignoring others. Let's divide casualties by age, but not gender. Let's count militants killed in non-hostile action as non-combatants (basically any Palestinian without a weapon at time of death is a non-combatant). I'm simply going by what mainstream groups as well as numerous scholars have pointed out. I don't have a problem citing B'tselem, but the article does not need 5 redundant graphs. Wikifan12345 (talk) 07:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Could you please present sources for The way B'tselem presents the data has been criticized as flawed and at times simply bogus, I'm simply going by what mainstream groups as well as numerous scholars have pointed out. Unomi (talk) 08:58, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * link. <-Unsigned link provided by User:Wikifan12345
 * That's *one* group, and, looking into them, I disagree that they can be considered reliable, given their about page not only trots out the tired old implication that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic, but also uses a unverified quote (in an appeal to authority) from MLK Jr., and one that arguably cannot be verified, because apparently the source of the quote made it up. --Andrensath (talk &#124; contribs) 12:00, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
 * Opinion^^^. Please use reliable sources in discussion - counterpunch is not an RS. No one here is going to discuss whether anti-zionism is anti-semitism, but Scholars for Peace in the Middle East is perfectly reliable in this context. But this is totally unrelated to the age/gender issue. Wikifan12345 (talk) 23:08, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Settlements as war crimes
Can't see any mention of the settling of occupied territory as being a war crime:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1682640.stm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.13.23.233 (talk) 08:14, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Palestinian violence
The sources linked simply don't back up these numbers. It's a mess of figures culled from multiple spots and arranged in a novel manner. OR. Sol (talk) 04:24, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Using multiple sources does not make WP:OR. Please read over that link article and make it sure you understand correct what it means before you accuse it. LibiBamizrach (talk) 21:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I have. Recombining data in a novel manner not done by a source to imply a conclusion is OR. We need a source that has the same data arranged in the same way. Maybe the citations have just gotten messed up but a lot of the sources don't even have the statistics claimed. If the table is actually in one of the listed sources and I've missed it I will heartily apologize and buy you an e-beer. This question has come up enough recently that I'll go over to the OR noticeboard to see what the mavens say. Sol (talk) 00:22, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The choice of picture also looks somewhat odd. Or is it supposed to illustrate that the typical victim is a young child with minor injuries? At least there is no fluffy bunny. --Boson (talk) 09:56, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Minor injuries?" Geez, too bad Israeli doesn't donate their children to become suicide bombers. More fatalities, less "minor injuries." XD Wikifan12345 (talk) 06:20, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * But the fuzzy bunny would match the fluffy kitten in the picture above!
 * Libi, the original objection is that gathering data from different sources and recombining them is OR. It's not that the data has been created by an editor but that it has been presented in a manner not done by the original sources and in a manner that invites readers to assume the embedded conclusions. Add in that the sources don't directly quote all those numbers and you've got a pretty shifty looking section. So if you've got a good policy argument on why it's ok, go for it. Sol (talk) 16:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

80% of the population living on less than 2 dollars a day
Is this a fact?

2x365=730.

Average per capita income is somewhere north of ~3,000.

I think it is dishonest to not include UN subsidizes, as well as Hamas contributions to social welfare. The average Gazan does not live like an average African.

Gaza receives more aid per capita than Haiti.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is set to arrive in Israel to visit the Gaza Strip amidst demands to end a so-called siege on the terrorist-controlled territory. Yet one has to ask what siege, or blockade, he is referring to, with 738,576 tons of humanitarian aid being transferred into the Gaza Strip in 2009. Moreover, the UN has provided $200 million in Gaza Strip aid following a military operation that reportedly claimed 1,300 fatalities

amongst a population of less than 1.5 million – meanwhile, notwithstanding plans to raise more funds, it has provided only $10 million to natural disaster victims in Haiti as of the end of January, an earthquake that claimed the lives of over 230,000 people and affected over 3 million. Of course, that is without mentioning that Haitians have not been attacking an innocent nearby civilian population for a near decade.

Ti give a more accurate of the average Gazan lifestyle, we need to include the amount of money Gazans earn on a daily basis. 2 dollars a day is simply ridiculous.

I don't think the blockade should be linked to the entire Palestinian economy. Hamas has total control over the economic and financial policy, distribution of wealth and health services. The direct affects of the blockade should be enumerated, but issues such as per capita income and joblessness is a multi-faceted issue and not totally dependent on Israeli policy. Wikifan12345 (talk) 01:24, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I have no idea if it's a reasonable number or not, despite my repeated applications to NPR they will not accept me as a journalist =( It's what they said. They are a reliable source. I don't know how they got their numbers. Taking a wild guess I'd say that most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the political elite. Finding numbers on the Gazan economy is tricky as most source lump it in with the (relatively) prosperous West Bank. Gazans don't live like Africans? Depends on which part of Africa :P Swaziland is beating their GDP nicely (and this is only when you include the West Bank with them) while Western Sahara is lagging a bit behind. Oxfam and NPR think the blockade should be linked to the whole Gaza economy. Good enough for me. Sol (talk) 00:42, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * NPR is a reliable source but the cited information is extremely dated and not very comprehensive. The economy of Palestine, including Gaza, is still pretty strong considering the neighborhood it lives in. In Egypt, for example, over a 1/3 of the population lives on 2 dollars a day (and Egyptians have a lower life expectancy than Gazans).

So the humanitarian situation needs to be more accurate, and Israel's policies need to be stated in a more neutral manner. What we do know is Israel is the principal economic relative of Gaza, while the Arab nations have done little if anything to supplement their lifestyle. This is important, considering Israel is the enemy.

And in any event, I don't consider the humanitarian situation in Gaza a breaking point in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict since Gaza has always been a cesspool even before 1967. Wikifan12345 (talk) 01:29, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It's from this summer. It's not dated. I don't know what Egyptians live on. I don't know why you consider Israel the enemy or why what other regional nations have or have not done affects the Gazan daily budget as reported by NPR. Sol (talk) 05:08, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I told you what the Egytians live on. I don't consider Israel the enemy - Hamas and Israel are declared enemies. The NPR story is hardly comprehensive and I'm sure editors could find plenty of other RSs that provide different stats. Human interest pieces aren't the best places to find empirical data.


 * The only piece of good information in the article is:

"Christer Nordahl, deputy director of the U.N. agency in Gaza, enumerates the reasons that the United Nations believes Gaza is facing a humanitarian crisis: 40 percent unemployment; 50,000 homeless; 800,000 dependent on food aid; 80 percent of the population living below a poverty line of $2 a day."


 * What does this have to do with the blockade in Gaza? To infer internal crisis in Gaza to Israel and Egypt's blockade is dubious without clarification. Is the right of unemployment because Israel has placed controls on its border? Or is it because Hamas is in a declared state of war with Israel? This article provides a little more detail. It seems Israel was Gaza's largest trading partner prior to Hamas' takeover. After Hamas took control of Gaza and starting firing rockets at Israel, businesses in Israel severed ties with businesses in Gaza.


 * Global post provides a far more honest and accurate perspective on Israel/Gaza economy. We also need to consider the fact that Gaza still has a very high-population growth rate and low-infant mortality rate, so clearly their economy is powerful enough to support such a growing and healthy population. We probably should include facts about international aid agencies and welfare, as the Palestinian territories are world-leaders in terms of aid per capita. Wikifan12345 (talk) 06:17, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Tell you what, let's make a deal:; leading the blockade with information on its economic effects on Gaza is somewhat silly/POV as it doesn't provide a quick who/what/where and skips right to the impact. Let's cut the court quote about electricity (I'm not sure what that adds anything not summarized in the article) to save some space, add a better quick lead paragraph introducing the concept and shuffle existing paragraphs accordingly. If you want to write that lead paragraph be my guest. Sol (talk) 06:32, 25 September 2010 (UTC)