Talk:Second Intifada/Archive 6

Mediation-Deadlocked
11:34:14, April 28, 2008 ''This mediation case, as I see it, is deadlocked. This case has been open for over a month now, and after 2 weeks worth of active discussion, followed by 2 weeks of no discussion, it appears an agreememnt has not been able to be made between the parties. As such, this mediation is being marked as deadlocked. It will still stay open. All parties have been emailed about a week or two ago, proposing a possible solution, as was discussed with an arbitrator. I'd ask that all parties who have not yet replied to the email, to do so as soon as possible, and additionally, for a new heading at the bottom to be created, and for acceptance of the option to be made known. Once that is done, the dispute resolution process can continue. I will watch this page and re-comment once I've received all emails. Regards, Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 03:26, 27 April 2008 (UTC)''

Option Discussed by email-Accept/Reject
For the record, I rejected any email exchange on a long-standing principle of mine, according to which nothing bearing on the editing of texts in wikipedia should be discussed off-the-page. This to ensure that all editors know exactly what is going on, and to avoid any suspicion that agreements can be made beyond the purview of other editors. Steve did well to request this of people, since it is accepted in many cases as a procedure. I couldn't oblige him, because I adhere strictly to the principle that everything regarding both editing choices and arbitration must be visible to all editors. Nishidani (talk) 10:23, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Nishidani, comment just below this line. Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 13:39, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I will accept any 3/0, i.e., unanimous decision by outside non 1/P administrators called in to review the evidence. Nishidani (talk) 14:31, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

The comments I sent to the other editors is identical to the one I sent you. It was discussed on IRC between myself and User:FT2, and that is the wording he chose. I sent the same copy to everyone. Additionally, when you declined to set up email, I sent you it on your talk page. A simple Accept/Reject of the proposal is all that is required, with a brief comment. Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 10:37, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * For the record, the context of this (for me) is that often in mediation, two editors argue and don't feel able to "move" because frankly, neither trusts the other to be neutral on the case. In such disputes, it may be a useful tool in the mediator's toolkit to suggest "what if we asked 3 other people who have credibility in the eyes of the community - arbitrators or bureaucrats for example - and have one chosen by each "side" and one (chosen fairly) by the mediators." It seems to me there are some disputes where the parties may agree that makes more sense than just arguing. (Ie, maybe sometimes parties would agree to ask others if they cant decide themselves and it was done fairly.) FT2 (Talk 00:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Accept Like Nishidani, I don't reply to emails about wiki stuff outside on wikipedia itself, so I'm sorry for the delay in responding. I would be willing to accept whatever arrangement others feel is necessary to get past this deadlock. I think it's unfortunate that mediation has failed to bring about consensus on the issue and that we have to appeal to higher powers, but if that's where we are, than that's where we are. Regarding the selection of the arbitrators, I wouldn't know who to recommend. Does anyone have any thoughts?  T i a m u t talk 10:36, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I am willing to accept whatever decision proposed as binding, assuming that the outcome, while processually unique, is, like any other, made in the spirit outlined in WP:CONSENSUS. Whatever the outcome, revisitation at a later date is always possible. Presently, we need to move on and and get to working on other areas of the article in desperate need of attention.  T i a m u t talk 19:10, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Accept FT2's suggestion. I don't like the idea of suggesting however one mediator 'on my side', for the simple reason that the crux is a matter of the meaning of one English word, and I do not want people 'on my side' to mediate with people on the other side. I would hope it were possible for an administrator to gather in three other adminstrators with a strong interest in articles dealing with English and linguistics. I couldn't care less whose side, in the political arena, they might be on. This is something that can be objectively determined: we are not in the realm of subjective opinions, as the thread's other side has insistently claimed without evidence. The meaning of words is determined by reference to the best authorities, and their usage in the relevant literature. Everything else is mere chat, inference, innuendo. I think the case is extremely strong for the neutrality of 'uprising', and its normality in the historical literature. If 3 administrators with strong linguistic competence say I, and all the evidence marshalled for the viewpoint I and Tiamut have documented, happen to be wrong, so be it. In the meantime, this afternoon, I will show that Michael's latest evidence undercuts his own assumptions and inferences, in the relevant section. Nishidani (talk) 10:57, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Just requesting this section not be used for extensive discussion, feel free to create a new heading beneath this for discussion, but this section is merely an Accept/Reject section, with a brief comment. Thanks. Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 10:47, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Accept ← Michael Safyan (talk) 05:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I accept and am aware that the decision will be binding. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 07:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Accept suggestion.
 * Note: I think this is a matter of the Narrative-driven/POV-loaded paragraph and I believe this is something which could be objectively determined. The "thread's other side has insistently demanded" to lay it out to their narratives exclusively or with an overwhelming ratio. An NPOV layout of paragraphs is determined by equal presentation of established POVs and I think the case is extremely strong for the non-neutrality of 'uprising'+'resistance'+'struggle'+'liberation'+'occupation' (Palestinian narratives) compared with 'terror' (Israeli/Global narrative). If 3 administrators say this is not a POV-laid presentation, I can't see how that decision would last on wikipedia long term but I'm certainly open to more eyes on this imbalance of presentation. My own suggestion started with a 3:3 presentation (Proposal_3), and then I took it down to a more encyclopedic 2:2 presentation of the most repeated narratives from the 2nd Intifada (Second_Intifada#Proposal_4). Regardless of the result we get for this suggestion, I'd be interested in a balanced long term solution.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  06:29, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, a note, all four major parties have accepted. I just need to clarify, that the decision made will be binding. I just want to clarify that, even though it was in the email. If you can just sign your name below th line, that you're aware of this, would be great. Then we will discuss how this is going to work, then begin, so if you will, just put 4 tildes below this if you understand. Thanks. Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 06:39, 13 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Very well,  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  03:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Mediation
The informal mediation, Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-03-18 Second Intifada, in this matter is now open. Please propose versions of the contested wording at User:MBisanz/MEDCAB-P. Follow the rules of that page. Then present discussion in the below sections as to why you believe a particular version is the best version. At this time, I'd ask the parties not to address each other's comments, that will come once a number of individuals have had a chance to present why they think a certain wording is better than another wording.

User Statement 1
I believe proposal #1 is the best, because: Michael Safyan (talk) 02:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It uses neither "uprising" (unquoted) nor "wave of violence" (unquoted), phrases considered to be POV by various parties.
 * It nevertheless explains that "Intifada" means "uprising".
 * It emphasizes the non-literal, yet more common, "uprising" translation over the literal "shaking-off" translation.
 * It summarizes Palestinian and Israeli interpretations of the Second Intifada in the first sentence.
 * It gives the periodization of the First and Second Intifadas in the first sentence.
 * It removes the unnecessary "is the name of" in describing Al-Aqsa Mosque.
 * It removes the possibility of debate regarding the order in which Temple Mount and Haram al-Sharif should appear.
 * I disagree with proposal #2 because it uses the term "uprising" in an unquoted fashion (primary objection), it is redundant ("is the name of" instead of "is"), and it repeats material which would occur later on in the text. I very strongly disagree with proposal #3, because it is grammatically incorrect ("within of" is not a valid phrase), it is redundant ("is used to describe" instead of simply "is"), and it incorrectly explains the Israeli viewpoint (it is violence directed against civilians, not against "statehood," which makes it a terrorist campaign). ← Michael Safyan (talk) 20:41, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - proposal #3, User:MBisanz/MEDCAB-P - was reformatted since this comment was made.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  10:34, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I still fail to see the merit in proposal #3. Proposal #3 remains verbose and does not otherwise enhance the article. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 04:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Jaakobou, what on earth are you doing? No offense, but you are behaving like Ralph Nader to the Democratic party. Is it your intention to ensure that the POV phrase "uprising" is added in an unquoted form to the text? Please throw your weight behind proposal #1 or proposal #2. Thanks. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 04:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Michael,
 * Suggestion 1 uses: "struggle for national liberation against foreign occupation and by many Israelis to be a terrorist campaign" is unbalanced to the Israeli victims of this war campaign and to the Israeli perspective. If Palestinians' perspective is presented with (1) struggle, (2) liberation, (3) foreign occupation; then the Israeli perspective deserve something more worthy, starting with (1) terrorist campaign and continued with something additional from the Israeli perspective, such as (2) Funded with foreign aid money. European Union+Saudi Arabia & Iraq, (3) Guided by Yasser Arafat . The second point has always been the official Israeli position on every international news broadcast and clearly has as much room as the "foreign occupation" perspective.
 * (GIDEON MEIR, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY) MEIR: The decision right now is to isolate Yasser Arafat. This what the Israeli government decided. The Israeli defense forces are getting the orders from the Israeli government. We are a democracy. HEMMER: What does it mean "isolate?" Define that word for us. MEIR: Isolate, from what I understand is, that Yasser Arafat will not be able to instruct his terrorist organization to activate more terror against innocent Israelis. HEMMER: Are you saying that Yasser Arafat is responsible for ordering attacks on Israelis directly? MEIR: The answer to your question is yes.
 * In any event, I completely reject the second version.
 * Cordially,  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  12:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've added a 4th version - open to suggestions on it.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  12:41, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

User Statement 2
I believe proposal #2 is preferable since:
 * It defines the subject of the article in the first sentence. While some editors have claimed "uprising" is POV, they have provided no evidence that would support this assertion. Uprisings can be violent or non-violent, pre-planned or spontaneous, and a review of reliable, scholarly sources from across a wide spectrum indicate that the term is widely used to refer to and define the Second Intifada.
 * The second sentence outlines both the majority viewpoints held by Palestinians and Israelis respectively on what the Second Intifada is. It gives equal weight to both viewpoints and should ally the concerns of those editors who objected to "uprising" as POV by prominently highlighting the Israeli viewpoint (which is, after all, a minority viewpoint in the worldwide scheme of things.)
 * The next paragraph discusses the Palestinian name used for the Second Intifada in more detail, explaining that the more accurate translation of "Intifada" is "shaking off", while noting that the term is widely translated as "uprising". It also mentions the First Intifada by way of contrast.
 * The third paragraph provides an overview of the different names and views held by Israelis, giving ample space to the different Israeli POVs on the event thus providing balance to the explanation focusing on Palestinian views which precedes it. T i a m u t talk 08:01, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Besides proposal #2, #1 comes very close to something I can live with. In fact, if the first sentence reads as does that of proposal #2, I can accept the rest of the text pretty much as is. It should be noted that the rest of the material in proposal #2 (on Israeli names for the Intifada) is repeated further down in the intro in what would follow what is represented in #1. The major issue for me (and I believe for Nishidani from what I can gather from his comments) is that because "uprising" is a non-controversial definition of what the Second Intifada was which defines the subject at hand that this should be stated in an unambiguous voice (and this, based on the review of the sources). Proposal #3 is largely unacceptable to me because it uses the word "violence" without qualification and in a hazy context.  T i a m u t talk 18:17, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

User Statement 3
I support 2 because much of the debate seems to circle around the ostensible POV of 'uprising', whereas in English it is the normal, and most neutral, term to describe this kind of phenomenon in the scholarly literature. I have not cited from sources that are declaratively pro-Palestinian (Tanya Reinhart p.14, for example)


 * (1)Ritchie Ovendale, The Second Palestinian Uprising ch.15 of his The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Wars, (1984) 4th revised ed. Pearson Education, Edinburgh 2004 pp.301-327
 * (2) David Bukay,The Al-Aqsa Uprising, Chapter 5 pp.87-113. in Shlomo Sharan (eds.) Israel and the Post-Zionists: A Nation at Risk, Sussex Academic Press, Brighten 2003
 * (3) Joshua Ruebner, Clyde Mark,Kenneth Katzman, Alfred Prados, The Current Palestinian Uprising: Al-Aqsa Intifadah, ch.1 of Edgar S.Marshall (ed.) Israel:Current Issues and Historical Background, Nova Science Publishers, New York 2002 pp.1-20
 * (4) Tami Amanda Jacoby, Bridging the Barrier:Israeli Unilateral Disengagement, (she is at University of Manitoba, Canada), Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot and Burlington 2007 writes:'Israeli-Palestinian relations deteriorated greatly with the onset of the second Palestinian uprising.’ p.102 (While the first Palestinian Uprising was considered a largely spontaneous outburst putting Palestinian youth, shabab, armed with stones, grenades and Molotov cocktails against the formidable, but constrained, force of the Israeli military within the Occupied Territories, the second Palestinian Uprising was led by organized and well-trained Islamist organisations such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (the military branch of Fatah), which target civilians in Israelui urban metropolis centers using the /principal weapon of the suicide bomber,pp.102-3.
 * (5)‘The Palestinians called the new uprising the 'al-Aqsa Intifada', a name inflaming religious passions.’ Barry Rubin, Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, Oxford University Press, 203 p.205
 * (6) ‘The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades first appeared in September 2000, Shortly after the Palestinian uprising began.’ Anthony H. Cordesman, Arab-israeli Military Forces in an Era of Asymmetric Wars, Praeger Security International, Westport, Connecticut, London and Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC,p.316
 * (7) Loren D. Lybarger,Identity and Religion in Palestine: Ther struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Opccupied Territories, Princeton University Press, Princeton, Oxford 2007, p.196 writes: ‘From the very beginning of the occupation, Palestinians mounted various types of resistance, ranging from different modes of nonviolent non-cooperation (e.g.tax refusal, commercial strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, demonstrations, prison hunger strikes) to violent insurgency. In Gaza, there were three major outbreaks of mass uprising and armed revolt; the period immediately following the 1967 war, the first Uprising of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the most recent al-Aqsa Intifada, which began at the end of 2000. In each instance, Israel had to shift from bureaucratic modes of control to overt direct repression. The use of violent repression was usually successful. In the early 1970s, army units under the direction of Ariel Sharon effectively smashed Palestinian guerilla activity with house-to-house searches, mass arrest campaigns, bulldfozing camp homes to creat wide boulevards for easy access by tanks and other heaby armaments, and so on. Many of these same tactics were employed twenty years later with the outbreak of the first Intifada,. Israel has responded to the much more violent al-Aqsa Uprising by using overwhelming force: Apache attack helicopters, fighter-bomber jets, wholesale demolution of homes, especially in Gaza’s Rafah refugee camp, mass arrests, assassinations, and so on.
 * (8) ‘Since the onset of the second Palestinian uprising, the al-Aqsa intifada, in September 2000, children’s participation in war has taken a darker turn.’David M.Rosen, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, 2005 p.92
 * (9)Rex Brynen, ‘Permeability Revisited: Reflections on the Regional repercussions of the al-Aqsa Intifada,’ in Bassel F.Salloukh, Rex Brynen,(eds.), Persistent Permeability? Regionalism, Localism, and Globalization in the Middle East, Ashgate Publishers, Aldershot and Burlington 2004, chapter 7 pp.125-148 ch.7: ‘In late September 2000, a new intifada – the ‘al-Aqsa intifada’- erupted in the occupied Palestinian territories. By the end of 2002, almost 2000 Palestinians (and over 600) Israelis were dead. A World Bank assessment of the first twenty-seven months of the uprising put the costs at $950 million in damage to Palestinian infrastructure as a result of Israeli military action; $3.2 billion in lost investment and $5.2 billion in lost national income (mainly due to curfews and closures).’ p.125Nishidani (talk) 12:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
 * In response to User:MBisanz's request, I think I have listed already, earlier in the discussion, the results one can obtain by examining the O.E.D. For simplicity's sake I will repeat what I remarked earlier. It is established that, in the academic literature, 'uprising' is standard, a point which was challenged by User:Michael Safyan and several others. Faced with this challenge, I came up with authoritative sources. Can it be replaced? Well, it could but only because of some unexplained scruple which would have Wiki substitute a standard term for some other non-standard term, and a decision to use language here that is not current in very many sources would be highly questionable. As to replacing the word, I have already remarked that uprising appears to be the most neutral term:-
 * "'Check the OED 20 volume edition. 2nd edition vol.19 pp.312-313 ad loc. and one will immediately perceive that its use is historically the most neutral term for describing an event like the intifada. The word was predominantly used of (1) resurrection (2) getting up from one’s bed (3) getting up from one’s knees (4) the rising of a woman from her confinement (5) picking oneself up after a fall (6) advancement in place or power and (8) coming into existence  and only (7) as ‘a popular rising against authority or for some common purpose’.  Any other available term in the English language rebellion, insurgency, insurrection, revolution, revolt,  jacquerie. will colour the facts with strong emotive language'."
 * Secondly, of the several quoted sources I have adduced to underline the normality of uprising for describing the phenomenon, I would remark particularly on the statements by Ovendale, Anthony Cordesman and Rex Brynen. Cordesman is a conservative analyst of distinction.Ovendale is a distinguished historian of international relations whose book is noted for its balance. Brynen himself is one of the major experts on the region, with a very impressive record of publishing including a monograph on the PLO's Lebanese years (that is by no means tender), and a comparativist historian of these movements.  When 'right', 'centre' and 'left' (useless designations) concur on language, I think it only proper to acquiescence in their shared, and standard usage.
 * My major disagreement is with those who contest this one word. Versions 1 and 2 can be sorted out in a just merging, but I would insist that whatever version we settle on must contain the word 'uprising'. It should never have been the subject of contentiousness, and that is why I side with Tiamut's version.Nishidani (talk) 10:18, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As for the emended 3rd version, I don't think it worth consideration, since the effort there to cog the text hysterically is self-evident. The uprisings occur because a huge part of the Palestinian population has suffered variously from relentless dispossession, destruction of property (a typical daily example of how the system operates can be read here http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/971504.html), harassment, starvation, arrest and wounding while under military occupation for 4 decades, on their own land, as that has been determined by international law. Terror begets terror, until all attempts at establishing a causal logic assigning unilateral blame become meaningless Nishidani (talk) 10:52, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As for the emended 3rd version, I don't think it worth consideration, since the effort there to cog the text hysterically is self-evident. The uprisings occur because a huge part of the Palestinian population has suffered variously from relentless dispossession, destruction of property (a typical daily example of how the system operates can be read here http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/971504.html), harassment, starvation, arrest and wounding while under military occupation for 4 decades, on their own land, as that has been determined by international law. Terror begets terror, until all attempts at establishing a causal logic assigning unilateral blame become meaningless Nishidani (talk) 10:52, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Please avoid advocating your personal perspective. 3rd version is well sourced for the Israeli perspective.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  10:57, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Please try and use English correctly. 'Soapboxing' and your gloss on it, 'advocacy' mean, respectively, haranguing an audience, and, pleading a cause. The terms of my statement were in no way commensurable with an harangue nor with a plea for a cause. They were quite simply a set of statements of well-known facts. I cited the haaretz article in counterpoint because you cited an haaretz article favourable to your own view. ut, nota bene, I did not try to put my own viewpoint (which happens to coincide with the facts) into a proposed textual edit. That is the difference between us User:Jaakobou. I have my views, but I keep them on the talk page, and endeavour to honour the necessity that these pages hew to WP:NPOV. You pop your passionate personal views into most edits by trawling unilaterally for and culling sources that you assert represent the Israeli perspective. I am far too familiar with the variety of informed Israeli opinions on these issues ever to take seriously statements about the Israeli perspective. Like races, national perspectives don't exist, only fluctuating moods of opinion that vary according to the timing of polls. There, a piece of soapboxing at last!. regards as usual Nishidani (talk) 15:36, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * User:Michael Safyan writes:-
 * Jaakobou, what on earth are you doing? No offense, but you are behaving like Ralph Nader to the Democratic party. Is it your intention to ensure that the POV phrase "uprising" is added in an unquoted form to the text? Please throw your weight behind proposal #1 or proposal #2. Thanks. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 04:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Please try and use English correctly. 'Soapboxing' and your gloss on it, 'advocacy' mean, respectively, haranguing an audience, and, pleading a cause. The terms of my statement were in no way commensurable with an harangue nor with a plea for a cause. They were quite simply a set of statements of well-known facts. I cited the haaretz article in counterpoint because you cited an haaretz article favourable to your own view. ut, nota bene, I did not try to put my own viewpoint (which happens to coincide with the facts) into a proposed textual edit. That is the difference between us User:Jaakobou. I have my views, but I keep them on the talk page, and endeavour to honour the necessity that these pages hew to WP:NPOV. You pop your passionate personal views into most edits by trawling unilaterally for and culling sources that you assert represent the Israeli perspective. I am far too familiar with the variety of informed Israeli opinions on these issues ever to take seriously statements about the Israeli perspective. Like races, national perspectives don't exist, only fluctuating moods of opinion that vary according to the timing of polls. There, a piece of soapboxing at last!. regards as usual Nishidani (talk) 15:36, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * User:Michael Safyan writes:-
 * Jaakobou, what on earth are you doing? No offense, but you are behaving like Ralph Nader to the Democratic party. Is it your intention to ensure that the POV phrase "uprising" is added in an unquoted form to the text? Please throw your weight behind proposal #1 or proposal #2. Thanks. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 04:39, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I endorse his suggestion that proposal three, esp.as modified by User:Jaakobou. However, I cannot help but note again that Michael is challenging the use of 'uprising'. I have provided over 10 academic authorities during this long discussion whose work amply demonstrates that it is a very common description in English academic literature on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am bewildered therefore by this hardnosed insistence that what is certainly standard usage in specialized books nonetheless constitutes a POV, and further, requires documentation (already supplied, to show documentation is unnecessary because the usage is standard). In trying to understand Michael’s idiosyncratic objection I have reread the thread, and all I can come up with is the following remark by User:Ynhockey:-
 * "# I'm against the use of the word 'uprising', because it's inherently a POV term which implies that those instigating the uprising are the oppressed, and are in the right (the Palestinians), while those quelling the uprising, are in the wrong (the Israelis). There is no doubt that uprising is the favored Palestinian term - no one in Israel would call this HaMered HaSheni (lit. the second uprising). Ynhockey (Talk) 11:38, 29 December 2007 (UTC)".
 * I.e. no one in Israel would call the Al-Aqsa intifada a second 'uprising' in Hebrew (HaMered HaSheni ). Ynhockey makes two serious linguistic mistakes, one to misidentify 'uprising' as an Arabic word favoured by Palestinians, and the other to insinuate that 'uprising' implies that the insurgents have right on their side. The Palestinians call it intifada, not uprising, which is an English word. 'Uprising' is one of the most common terms used by the academic literature in English on the Al-Aqsa itifada. What Israelis or Palestinians call this term in their respective languages is their business. We here are required to write an article in English using the language employed by anglophone area specialists on Israeli-Palestinian relations. Many of those academics whose writings I have quoted only partially, do certainly not, in their analyses, consider that the people of the 'uprising' (their term) are in the right, and, contrarily, the Israelis are in the wrong, as Ynhockey and Michael suggest. They use the word simply because it reflects agreed neutral usage in English.
 * While it is indeed fascinating to find out that Israelis would dislike the standard English phrasing were it literally translated into Hebrew, this does not constitute an objection. Once more, the English version of Wiki looks like it is being held hostage to an Israeli/Palestinian linguistic perspective in discussing words that are current in English. Those two languages are irrelevant to the discussion, because the encyclopedia is not being written in Arabic nor in Hebrew, and must therefore follow English usage, which, as established to exhaustion, accepts as a neutral and normal description of the second intifada the word 'uprising'. Methodologically, as in happening here, you cannot determine English usage by translating it literally into another language and saying that, since it resonates badly in that language, it is not acceptable in English. I cannot see how there can be a compromise on this, any more than one can compromise on calling the West Bank, or the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 'Judea and Samaria'/ 'Eretz Israel'/'Disputed Territories'. All of these latter terms are a matter of Hebrew usage, duly registered. But in English, and in international law, the correct and standard terminology is 'West Bank' or the 'Occuipied Palestinian Territories', just as the Al-Aqsa 'intifada' is customarily called by scholars 'the second uprising'. In my dialect, this kind of objection is called a 'furphy', and both Michael and User:Ynhockey appear to be the victims of a linguistic misprision here. I would therefore ask someone to make a call on this specific point, which is a matter of usage easily determined by simply consulting (a) any good dictionary (b) the relevant technical literature (both done). This settled, Michael and Tiamut can surely iron out the remaining differences between versions 1 and 2. Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Nishidani, sorry for not responding earlier. I thought I had addressed this question sufficiently, but it appears I am mistaken.
 * Regarding sources: It is my contention that none of the sources which you have used have said that the Second Intifada consitutes or constituted an uprising. I have already said that I do not object to a usage of uprising which mirrors the usage of the sources. For example, I do not have any objection to using the phrase "second Palestinian uprising" in place of "Second Intifada" or to say "...the Second Intifada, or second Palestinian uprising,...". I do not object to this usage, because such usage suggests that the name is simply being translated and does not seek to impose an interpretation on the reader. When it is argued, however, that the Second Intifada "is", "was", "amounts to", or "refers to" an uprising, it is then that I object.
 * Regarding linguistics:
 * Connotation: My objection is based on the English, not Hebrew usage. I agree with Ynhockey's assertion that the phrase "uprising" is favored by (English speaking) pro-Palestinian sources, is frowned upon by (English speaking) pro-Israel sources, and generally connotes justification. I admittedly have not found a dictionary which says "this phrase connotes justification"; however, since dictionaries impart a word's denotation and not its connotation, it is unsurprising that I have been unable to locate such a source.
 * Denotation: Since I have been unable to find a source for my connotation argument, it is -- I admit -- a rather weak argument. However, I also object to the use of the term uprising on denotational grounds (which can be readily verified by a dictionary). Before I begin, though, I would like to say that I am biased towards the Merriam Webster's dictionary (in particular the 11th edition of the Collegiate Dictionary). It is the dictionary on which I was raised, and thus my understanding of English may differ from those of you who were raised on or have a preference for the Oxford English Dictionary. Here is the definition according to Merriam Webster:
 * an act or instance of rising up; esp: a usu. localized act of popular violence in defiance usu. of an established government'
 * Let's break this definition down into parts:
 * an act or instance of rising up
 * One who rises up must have been held down. Being held down is oppression. Oppression is unjust. Removing oppression is just. Ergo, the party responsible for an uprising is justified in doing so.I realize it doesn't say that explicitly, here, but that is part of the rationale for the connotation which I see.
 * esp:
 * This means that what follows is the most frequent usage and what readers will assume unless told otherwise.
 * a usually localized act
 * So far, so good. The Second Intifada is localized. No objections here.
 * of popular violence
 * Here is a problem. What does "popular" mean? In this context, it could mean that it is committed by the people at large or supported by the people at large. The latter interpretation of popular is not problematic; however, the former has potential to suggest that an upswelling of discontent led the population to spontaneously rebel against Israel. This interpretation is disputed.
 * in defiance usually of an established government
 * This is also problematic, because this suggests that the Israeli government is/was the target of the uprising, rather than the Israeli civilian population at large.
 * I hope that clarified my position. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 16:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks indeed Michael, that is perfectly clear. If these inform the substance of the objections, then I think it not difficult to show that they are, frankly, either groundless or subjective. Most importantly, they look like they violate the established criteria for determining the NPOV language of Wikipedia. Let me address the points systematically.
 * The fundamental error you make is that of requesting that one find a source justifying the adequacy of 'uprising' as a term for the al-Aqsa intifada. You write:-
 * "'my contention that none of the sources which you have used have said that the Second Intifada consitutes or constituted an uprising'"
 * You say this because you, and a few others, regard the word 'uprising' as interpretive.
 * The answer is simple. None of the sources I quote, from left, middle-of-the-road, or right-leaning academics, Jewish or goy, argues that the Al-Aqsa Intifada constitutes an uprising because the point is not controversial in the specialist literature. Your request for a philosophical or sociological justification of this common usage flies in the face of the fact that uprising is widely used by historians and experts on conflict, of all political leanings, to describe that phenomenon. You are, in short, as an editor without, as far as I know, a doctorate in conflict studies (?), challenging the way specialists of conflict describe the Al-Aqsa intifada. For my evidence shows that this is very widely used by major academic specialists hailing from all sides of the political spectrum. Now, it is your natural right to disagree vigorously with what specialists agree on. What you cannot do is contest this usage in the drafting of a Wikipedia article. These articles must reflect standard technical language, and the evidence I adduced shows that 'uprising' is not considered problematical by experts in the field. Several 'pro-Israeli' (ugh!) editors say it is problematical because it is the term 'pro-Palestinian' sources favour. That possible fact however does not mean that the term carries a pro-Palestinian POV, and here you are all collectively mistaken. Why? Because if a Palestinian prefers to call the land he is on 'The West Bank', 'The Occupied Palestinian Territories' etc., this, ipso facto, does not render the term 'pro-Palestinian POV'. It simply means that the Palestinian in question favours the term which international law (ICJ 2004) and international bodies have determined is the correct term juridically, whatever Israeli government or popular sources think.


 * On linguistics. You yourself admit, and it honours your integrity in this discussion, that evidence both 'denotative' and 'connotative' to authoritatively source your position has not been forthcoming. You have failed to find reliable evidence for the interpretation of 'uprising' you propose.
 * "I have been unable to find a source for my connotation argument"
 * "I admittedly have not found a dictionary which says 'this phrase connotes justification';"
 * You justify this by saying dictionaries deal with 'denotation' not connotation', a distinction that is arbitrary. Good dictionaries deal with both. You then look at denotation and citing Merriam-Webster obtain:
 * "'an act or instance of rising up; esp: a usu. localized act of popular violence in defiance usu. of an established government'''"
 * That has nothing in itself to lend support to your case. What you set about to do is to analyse it to tease out evidence for connotations you otherwise have no evidence for. Now this procedure is again, technically, at fault. In linguistics, the connotations of a word are not deduced, in sophistic fashion, from the denotation. They are retrieved by canvassing, in the fashion of Wittgenstein's second period, usage. As I have shown, (and you have admitted to have failed to disprove), usage commends the neutrality, to specialists, of uprising. You however try to measure the denotative meaning of one dictionary against the contentious interpretations'' of the nature of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and thereby derive both its connotative and denotative impropriety. This is a purely personal exercise, that goes in the face of proper method. The way to figure this out is empirical, not deductive.
 * Empirically, what historical phenomena are characteristically termed 'uprisings'? Well the Jacobite insurrections of 1688-1746 are frequently termed 'uprisings' or 'risings'. In my own field, peasant revolts in Tokugawa Japan are called 'uprisings' (Hugh Bolton 1968, Stephen Vlastos 1990): the Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1901 of Charlton Heston fame is often designated as an 'uprising', as are many other revolts, riots, such as the Wuchang Uprising of 1911, and the insurrection in Canton of December 1927. The Chinese Communists  call the latter Guangzhou Qiyi (廣州起義). General Cash-my-cheque, sorry Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, which suppressed it, called it Guangzhou baodong (廣州暴動). Thus, just as Israeli and Palestinians have different words in their languages for the Al-Aqsa intifada, so the Taiwanese version of history, which follows Kuomintang tradition, prefers to use two graphs which mean 'violent/movement', while the Chinese Communist tradition uses two different graphs which mean 'rise/justice'. The former in Chinese is condemnatory, the latter approbative. The 'approbative term' (Qiyi:起義) is used by both mainland communist historians and Taiwanese historians however, for the earlier Boxer rebellion, which is frequently, in the specialist literature, called in English the 'Boxer Uprising'(義和團起義). One more example of how, controversies between non-native-English-speaking peoples over shared events are not reflected in English, which adopts a terminology both can take as standard. For English sinologists, the Boxer, Wuching, Canton events etc., are 'uprisings' whatever the politics of partisan language may variously term them in Chinese historiographical currents.
 * In Western literature the Canton event is described neutrally as an 'uprising'. Trotsky's famous essay described it thus, as do most historians left and right. You dislike 'uprising' because it connotes for you (on your own deductions) oppression, justice vindicated, and suggests, when the evidence for Al-Aqsa's intifada as a 'popular' or 'PLO managed' outbreak is disputed, that it was a 'spontaneous, popular' insurrection. Well, there is still a good deal of controversy on to what degree the Canton uprising was spontaneous, directed from Moscow, organized by local cadres, or prompted by comintern mavericks (If you wish to check see Michael Tsang-Woon Tsin's study, Nation, Governance, and Modernity in China:Canton, 1900-1927, Stanford UP 1999 p.234 n.153). This fits exactly your complaint, with the difference that standard histories of the Canton insurgency all call it an 'uprising'. The word 'uprising' in Western scholarship on that event is not deemed to signify a small conspiracy, popular outbreak, a riot to vindicate justice. It simply means what it means, a revolt against authority. These can be small elite-directed insurgencies, popular revolts, full scale rebellions against constituted authority or insurrections against the status-quo as run by war-lords, feudal chiefs, whatever. That familiarity with the literature denies your collective claim of partisan implications is best shown by looking at standard accounts of Spanish history or Irish history (the Easter Uprising is how 1916 is described. It was an elite conspiracy, which however was wildly admired and supported by an otherwise, militarily speaking, passivepopulation). Both the miners' revolt in the Asturias in 1934 and Franco's revolt two years later are often described as 'uprisings' (Hugh Thomas prefers 'rising' for both, however, in hisThe Spanish Civil War rev ed.1965pp.165ff. and passim). A contemporary writer spoke as follows:-
 * "'By now, Franco, in common with a number of Nationalist leaders, was convinced that the Soviet Union had prepared precise plans for a communist uprising, and Franco Salgado quotes him as saying that despite all the difficulties that lay ahead, a military uprising was the only way left to forestall a Communist takeover’ Crozier, cited in Herbert R Southworth, Conspiracy and the Spanish Civil War, Routledge, London 2001 p.188. In his book Southworth himself uses it indescriminately, calling Franco's coup d'état, 'the Franco uprising’, for example p.194 n.10"
 * This quotation shows unequivocally that 'uprising' can be used of a Communist revolt, and a Fascist revolt, of a popular outbreak, a directed insurgency, and an elite-barrack revolt by military authorities against the constituted government. You will find it used of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, against the Communist system, and the Spartacist (Communist) uprising against the Social Democrats in Berlin in 1919 (Martin Collier, Philip Pedley Germany 1919-45, Heinemann, 2000 p.7), and that reminds me that Géza Alföldy, at least in the translated version of his brilliant The Social History of Rome, (tr.David Braund and Frank Pollock) introduces his analysis of Spartacus' revolt with the heading: Uprisings of Slaves, Provioncials and ItaliansCroom Helm (1985) Routledge rev.ed.(1988) p.67. Alföldy's analysis points to the great diversity in nature of many slave 'uprisings'. They have only one common feature, one minor incident escalates into a wave of violence as others join in the fight. The Watts revolt in Los Angeles 1965 is something that wrecked the democratic peace movement for its impact on middle class opinion, and is something I recall vividly as it was reported on the news nightly. However one looks on it, recent specialists like Gerald Horne have no problem in defining it as an uprising (See his Fire this time: the Watts uprising and the 1960s, Da Capo, 1997). All these things once more underline the non-partisan character of 'uprising' in historiographical literature, the way it can define varied social phenomena, all with distinct logics and politics, that share simple a common insurrectional character.
 * You then say you are used to the College edition of Merriam-Webster's. Now Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia, and the Oxford English Dictionary, of which I have the full 20 volume edition, is regarded as the basic source for a simple reason. It is drawn up on historical grounds, comprehends in its survey of usage all regional variations (USA, Canada, Australia etc.), and is far more discriminating than any other dictionary in its contextualised analysis of every word. That is why it is authoritative, and its entry for 'uprising' does not allow for the kind of deductions you make in construing Merriam-Webster's definition, which in any case I would contest (your construal of necessary implications, not the dictionary denotation). This is not therefore a dispute between your American usage and my more anglophone sensibilities, esp. since, if you know something of the backgrounds of the writers whose use of the word cited earlier, they have varied backgrounds, English (Ovendale), American, and Israeli.
 * A final point. I haven't mentioned the 'Warsaw Uprising'. All anglophone Jews refer to that tragedy thus (ha-mered in Hebrew). To have an Arab revolt against the Israeli occupation share the same word, 'uprising', as that used to describe the revolt of ghettoized Jewish morituri against their Nazi executioners, may well, and understandably, evoke a deep sense of distaste for many Jewish people. I realized this when I noted Ynhockey's remark that it is unimaginable for a Hebrew speaker to refer to the Al-Aqsa Intifada as ha-mered ha-sheni, (the 'second uprising'), since ha-mered is the usual Hebrtew term for an uprising of the kind in Warsaw. I realized that it is the natural resistance against such an association which motivates your own otherwise (to me) cavilling objects to what is, in the world of critical scholarship, unproblematical language. You yourself aloow the truth of this when you wrote:-
 * "The term 'uprising' brings to mind the 'Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,' not some 'prison break' or 'prison mutiny.' I suppose you could describe a prison break as an 'uprising'; however, doing so would imply justification and legitimacy. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 21:23, 25 December 2007 (UTC)"


 * That, dear Michael, is the crux of the problem for Jewish/Israeli editors here. Nothing I have read in this long thread has struck me as 'rational' or based on sound linguistic principles. It has been an endless exercise in nitpicking. Yet, while reading it and participating in it, (unaware of these two remarks), I kept asking myself why rational Anglophone speakers with urbane address and courtesy hold a commonplace and innocuous, neutral term like 'uprising' hostage, against all the evidence others might muster. I knew there must be a powerful cultural motivation, and I only realized it four days ago, while planting salad in my garden, and mulling this issue. The phrase 'The Warsaw uprising' popped into mind. I came back into my study, checked the whole thread, and discovered your earlier remark. It clarified everything, and I could finally understand that your otherwise unaccountable resistance to the term, something I kept thinking 'crazy' 'irrational' 'obtuse' while engaging in this dialogue, had a probity of a deep, if ethnocentric, order which recast your remarks in a different light. The term other editors in here wish to use, because it happens to be virtually standard in the technical literature, rubs at a certain vein of Jewish sensibility ever aware of the Warsaw uprising. You have all been reading our efforts at neutrality as, perhaps inadveretently, perhaps not, introducing a strong cue towards establishing a spurious analogical congruence between the situations of Jews besieged by Nazis, and Palestinians under siege by Israelis.


 * To that there is no answer, other than the simplest one. None of us in here are pressing, I hope, to introduce the word 'uprising' in order to secure such a parity. We endorse the word because it is a standard term in the contemporary specialist literature on the conflict. The anglophone world reading this does not make the kind of associations some Jewish people might make over a word like 'uprising'. To say that, since one uses 'uprising' of the Warsaw revolt, it cannot, without injury to the peculiar tragedy of Jews in the Holocaust, be used of other historical events, would, in principle, make the writing of history impossible. All the events I have chronicled or thought over, from Spartacus's slave insurrection, Jacobin highlander revolt, Toussaint Louverture's movement in Haiti (a page I edit), religious revolts by Buddhists in the Orient, peasant insurgency under the Tokugawas in Japan, Chinese disaffection with warlordism, with Christianity and imperialism in the Boxer rebellion, or Communist challenges to social democracy in Berlin, to the Kuomingdang in Canton, to anarchist miners' rising up against local authorities in Asturias, or both Franco and the Comintern plotting revolt in Spain in 1936, the 1980 Gwangju riot in South Korea, Lumumba's revolt in the Congo, or the Watt's riots of 1965 all these events, otherwise with distinct and unique characteristics, have been called 'uprisings' in the scholarly literature, not because scholars wish to draw an analogy between such varied forms of revolt, but because 'uprising' is a neutral and standard term in the scholarly literature to denote outbreaks of protest, violence, rancourous dissent, revolt everywhere in the world. To use 'uprising' of the Intifada does no more call Warsaw automatically to anglophone minds, that it evokes memories of Spartacus, or Lumumba, or Rosa Luxemburg, or Chiang Kai-shek.


 * Having written this, my sense of being exhaustive was niggled by some obscure memory I could not focus on over a lunch with relatives. I came and did a search, and realized what my scruple was about. In one of my files I discovered, there is in fact, a record of an explicit link made between the Al-Aqsa intifada and the Warsaw Ghetto, something I'd read and forgotten about. It troubles me to mention this at this point, but sincerity, and fullness of response, without equivocation, requires that I do so. I checked an historical file and found the following remark:


 * "'To repress Palestinian resistance, a senior Israeli officer earlier this year urged the army to analyze and internalize the lessons of…how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto. (Haaretz, 25 January 2002, 1 February 2002)'.Norman G. Finkelstein, 'First the Carrot, Then the Stick: Behind the Carnage in Palestine', Counterpunch April 17, 2002"
 * This is a deeply disturbing remark. I have no reasons for disbelieving the veracity of Finkelstein's reportage, since he gives one a readily verifiable source. Note that the analogy is based solely on a concept of confinement, and does not assume by any means a congruent existential or sociological analogy between the two situations. It does mean however that, whatever I or others might think, some senior officers in the IDF drew precisely the analogy you yourself think not only inappropriate but distasteful. Whereas you understandably wish to keep the two episodes separated by a linguistic discrimination, the IDF officer wished to conflate them, and treat the Palestinians as equivalent to Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Wikipedia however cannot be held hostage to what is an obscure connection made between events that is not widely known, one not customary in the normal associative connotations of English usage. The connection between the two events you protest that might arise from using 'uprising' is a highly restricted POV in some Israeli and perhaps Jewish circles, not a Palestinian POV. Were Palestinians fully cognizant of things like the Warsaw Uprising, and Israelis thoroughly informed of what really goes on, in their name, in the territories, I doubt we would be wasting such an extraordinary amount of time on these futile discriminations over meanings subjectively attributed to words (I shall be taken to task for soapboxing in this last remark, no doubt). Regards Nishidani (talk) 15:37, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * For those interested, I have responded on Nishidani's talk page here. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 01:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

User Statement 4
I have created a new proposal based off proposal 2, where I rearranged the sentences slightly, and I hope might satisfy some of the concern about the "uprising" wording.  Yahel  Guhan  00:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

SteveCrossin
So I've asked co-mediator SteveCrossin to handle the second part of this mediation. I'm starting to run out of ideas and think his taking a more active role might help things.  MBisanz  talk 02:15, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment from SteveCrossin
As requested by MBisanz, and after a lot of consideration, and, as the fact remains that I actually am co-mediating this case with MBisanz, even though I have not spoken on the talk page at all, I feel it's time for me to weigh in.

As I see it, the debate seems very clear and simple, so excuse me if I've oversimplified the debate. It appears editors are arguing that the term “uprising” is POV, that it is not neutral. The counter argument argues that “uprising” is not POV, and that it is a neutral term used by scholars and experts in the field, as well as its mention in a wide range of publications.

The policies and guidelines are very clear. First and foremost, Wikipedia isn't the place to carry out your personal agenda, or to push a particular point of view. We're writing the English Wikipedia. A world-wide, free encyclopedia. This, as i see it, is a highly controversial dispute, but really should be a simple one. I've read the whole dispute, and in all honesty, 2-3 page responses haven't been easy to follow, neither has the incessant nit picking at tiny details. The dispute, as I see it, is very simple. Is the use of “uprising” in violation of our neutral point of view policy, and, in extension, whether it adds undue weight to a particular viewpoint?

Simply put, the parties supporting the use of the word uprising need to give reliable sources as to why “uprising” is not POV in this context. Then, the parties opposed need to give sources showing that uprising is POV in this context. Additionally, if you feel the word uprising adds undue weight, as in, lopsides the article, state why. And, add sources. Personal opinions, however how elaborate, is not a source, and personal opinions generally can be given very little weight, as opposed to reliable sources.

Once we've got that far, then we will re-begin negotiating on the wording of the lead section in the article, namely, the section under dispute. This may extend the mediation, but I feel we would all rather this be resolved here, and not higher up in the Dispute resolution chain..

Keep your comments concise. As MBisanz has aforementioned, extensive 3 page essays, is a struggle to read. Be as straight to the point as possible.

That's all for now, I'll wait for responses first. Regards, Steve Crossin (talk) (anon talk) 08:16, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Responses
In response to Steve Crossin's request for (more) sources (do note however, that Nishidani has already provided many here and there are dozens on the talk page as well), here are some more:
 * Uprising is NPOV


 * Thomas S. Leonard's Encyclopedia of the Developing World (2006)
 * "…the Al-Aqsa intifada differed from its predecessor in a number ways. First, this uprising used terror – especially suicide bombings - as its primary tactic."
 * "As was the case in the first intifada, the Israeli response to the second uprising was again severe."


 * James L. Gelvin's The Israel-Palestine Conflict: 100 years of war (2005)
 * "Al-Aqsa intifada: Uprising against the Israeli occupation that broke out in 2000 after Ariel Sharon visited the site on which the Al-Aqsa mosque stands."


 * Russel E. Lucas' Institutions and the Politics of Survival in Jordan (2005)
 * "The Al-Aqsa intifada began, and the uprising threatened to engulf the region..."
 * "As with the prior Palestinian uprising, the Jordanian regime treaded cautiously between placating domestic anger at Israeli repression, and a spillover of the rage of Palestinians in Jordan."


 * Gershon Shafir and Yoav Peled's Being Israeli: The Dynamics of Multiple Citizenship (2002)
 * "The Al-Aksa Intifada, as the second uprising is called, was not only more surprising to most Israelis, but also more disappointing than the first."
 * "Within the first fourteen weeks of the uprising, 301 non-citizen Palestinians, 43 Israeli Jews, and 13 citizen Palestinians were killed and numerous wounded."


 * Mordechai Bar-On's A Neverending Conflict: A Guide to Israeli Military History (2004)
 * "The renewed Palestinian uprising soon acquired the name 'Intifada II' or 'Intifadat al Aqsa' (named after the old mosque on the Temple Mount where it began). Unlike the first intifada, which was characterized mostly by civil disobedience and low-level street violence, the second intifada soon became more lethal."  T i a m u t talk 14:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * User:Steve Crossin You write: Simply put, the parties supporting the use of the word uprising need to give reliable sources as to why “uprising” is not POV in this context. Then, the parties opposed need to give sources showing that uprising is POV in this context.


 * I have given exhaustively above a small selection of page references to the reliable sources, i.e., academic literature on Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, which use 'uprising' as though it were normative terminology. I will repost part of it here for quick reference. Note that the academics whose books are cited come from all sides of the political spectrum.


 * (1)Ritchie Ovendale, The Second Palestinian Uprising ch.15 of his The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Wars, (1984) 4th revised ed. Pearson Education, Edinburgh 2004 pp.301-327


 * (2) David Bukay,The Al-Aqsa Uprising, Chapter 5 pp.87-113. in Shlomo Sharan (eds.) Israel and the Post-Zionists: A Nation at Risk, Sussex Academic Press, Brighten 2003


 * (3) Joshua Ruebner, Clyde Mark,Kenneth Katzman, Alfred Prados, The Current Palestinian Uprising: Al-Aqsa Intifadah, ch.1 of Edgar S.Marshall (ed.) Israel:Current Issues and Historical Background, Nova Science Publishers, New York 2002 pp.1-20


 * (4) Tami Amanda Jacoby, Bridging the Barrier:Israeli Unilateral Disengagement, (she is at University of Manitoba, Canada), Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot and Burlington 2007 writes:'Israeli-Palestinian relations deteriorated greatly with the onset of the second Palestinian uprising.’ p.102 (While the first Palestinian Uprising was considered a largely spontaneous outburst putting Palestinian youth, shabab, armed with stones, grenades and Molotov cocktails against the formidable, but constrained, force of the Israeli military within the Occupied Territories, the second Palestinian Uprising was led by organized and well-trained Islamist organisations such as the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades (the military branch of Fatah), which target civilians in Israelui urban metropolis centers using the /principal weapon of the suicide bomber,pp.102-3.


 * (5)‘The Palestinians called the new uprising the 'al-Aqsa Intifada', a name inflaming religious passions.’ Barry Rubin, Judith Colp Rubin, Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography, Oxford University Press, 203 p.205


 * (6) ‘The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades first appeared in September 2000, Shortly after the Palestinian uprising began.’ Anthony H. Cordesman, Arab-israeli Military Forces in an Era of Asymmetric Wars, Praeger Security International, Westport, Connecticut, London and Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC,p.316


 * (7) Loren D. Lybarger,Identity and Religion in Palestine: Ther struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Opccupied Territories, Princeton University Press, Princeton, Oxford 2007, p.196 writes: ‘From the very beginning of the occupation, Palestinians mounted various types of resistance, ranging from different modes of nonviolent non-cooperation (e.g.tax refusal, commercial strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, demonstrations, prison hunger strikes) to violent insurgency. In Gaza, there were three major outbreaks of mass uprising and armed revolt; the period immediately following the 1967 war, the first Uprising of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the most recent al-Aqsa Intifada, which began at the end of 2000. In each instance, Israel had to shift from bureaucratic modes of control to overt direct repression. The use of violent repression was usually successful. In the early 1970s, army units under the direction of Ariel Sharon effectively smashed Palestinian guerilla activity with house-to-house searches, mass arrest campaigns, bulldfozing camp homes to creat wide boulevards for easy access by tanks and other heaby armaments, and so on. Many of these same tactics were employed twenty years later with the outbreak of the first Intifada,. Israel has responded to the much more violent al-Aqsa Uprising by using overwhelming force: Apache attack helicopters, fighter-bomber jets, wholesale demolution of homes, especially in Gaza’s Rafah refugee camp, mass arrests, assassinations, and so on.


 * (8) ‘Since the onset of the second Palestinian uprising, the al-Aqsa intifada, in September 2000, children’s participation in war has taken a darker turn.’David M.Rosen, Armies of the Young: Child Soldiers in War and Terrorism, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey and London, 2005 p.92


 * (9)Rex Brynen, ‘Permeability Revisited: Reflections on the Regional repercussions of the al-Aqsa Intifada,’ in Bassel F.Salloukh, Rex Brynen,(eds.), Persistent Permeability? Regionalism, Localism, and Globalization in the Middle East, Ashgate Publishers, Aldershot and Burlington 2004, chapter 7 pp.125-148 ch.7: ‘In late September 2000, a new intifada – the ‘al-Aqsa intifada’- erupted in the occupied Palestinian territories. By the end of 2002, almost 2000 Palestinians (and over 600) Israelis were dead. A World Bank assessment of the first twenty-seven months of the uprising put the costs at $950 million in damage to Palestinian infrastructure as a result of Israeli military action; $3.2 billion in lost investment and $5.2 billion in lost national income (mainly due to curfews and closures).’ p.125Nishidani (talk) 12:33, 26 March 2008 (UTC) reposted now by Nishidani (talk) 15:40, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Michael admits he has no evidence for his counter-contentions, but has deductive arguments (that are, in my view, personal, illogical and inferential rather than evidential). My extensive arguments apparently bore, being bookish, and book-sourced. Therefore, I can only ask, at this point, why Wiki articles (all with extensive sourcing) so abundantly use the word 'uprising' to describes all kinds of insurrection, revolt, rebellion, in their titles, leads, or bodies of the text, but this word must be denied to a revolt by Palestinians, especially one which is described as the second in a series of Palestinian uprisings? Particularly when no expert in the field finds the usage exceptional? Nota Bene:


 * "'The First Intifada (1987 - 1993) refers to the first mass Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule in the occupied territories.' (Wiki entry for Ist Intifada, unchallenged)"


 * If that Intifada is the first in a series, why on earth is the second in the series to be denied the same descriptive term, i.e. 'uprising'? This obstructive refusal to countenance the obvious standard term defies logic, usage, comon sense, historical intelligence, every known principle in the armory of narrative writing.


 * Why is the standard vocabulary in English for describing such events, to which no other ethnic group writing the history of their own or neighbouring countries or of subject peoples, seems to take exception, to be denied Palestinians? Checking the talk pages of the following arbitrarily selected articles in Wiki, I have found no one raising questions about the POV character of the word ‘uprising’. It has, to my knowledge, only been challenged here. by editors who have consistently failed, and occasionally admitted to failing to, find evidence for their personal conjectures about the connotations of English usage.


 * Mau Mau Uprising(Kenya)


 * Warsaw Uprising (1944)


 * Sétif Uprising (Algeria 1945)


 * 1916 Cochinchina uprising Viet revolt against french colonization


 * Thai Nguyen uprising (Vietnamese revolt against French 1918)


 * Uprising of 1953 in East Germany


 * Spartacist uprising (1919 Berlin)


 * 1959 Tibetan uprising


 * Soweto uprising (South Africa)


 * Boudica's British uprising against Rome 61 CE


 * Jewish uprising in Judea (132–135) led by Simon Bar Kokhba.


 * Georgian Uprising of Texel Georgia 1945


 * Warsaw Uprising (1794) (Poland)


 * June Days Uprising (France 1848)


 * Wuchang Uprising (China 1911)


 * The Senussi Uprising (Libya)


 * Chmielnicki Uprising Cossack-Crimean Tatars in Ukraine 1648


 * Silesian Uprisings (Silesia)


 * helot uprising against Sparta 464 BCE


 * First Serbian Uprising (Serbia)


 * January Uprising (Poland-Lithuanian rebellion against Russia 1863


 * August Uprising (Georgia 1924)


 * Kiev Arsenal January Uprising (Ukraine)


 * November Uprising Cadet Revolution 1830-31


 * Greater Poland Uprising (1848) (Poland)


 * Sioux Uprising (Dakota 1862)


 * Easter Uprising Ireland 1916


 * Kronstadt uprising (Russia 1921)


 * 1991 uprisings in Iraq


 * Timeline of Kurdish uprisings (dozens of pages listed)


 * Hama Uprising (Syria 1982)


 * Independence Uprising (Lebanon)


 * Mexican Uprising 1926 (Cristero War)


 * Burmese Uprising (1988)


 * Brunei Uprising (Malaysia)


 * armed uprising by slaves


 * Brazil Uprising (Muslim revolt Brazil 1835)


 * Battleship Potemkin uprising


 * Maji Maji Uprising (Tanganyika)


 * Eureka Stockade Uprising (Australia)


 * Peruvian Uprising 1780


 * East Karelian Uprising (Finland)


 * St. George’s Night Uprising (Estonia 1343-5 against foreign German occupation)


 * Christmas Uprising (Montenegrins against Italy)


 * Piedmont Uprising 1834 Italy


 * Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising (Macedonian uprising against Turks 1903)


 * Filiki Eteria uprising against Ottoman Turkey 1821


 * Uprising against Rome by slaves led by Spartacus 73BCE


 * Titokowaru’s Maori uprising (1868) (New Zealand)


 * Titokowaru's uprising NZealand 1868 different page


 * Apache Uprising (title of 1966 film of the Apache Uprising, with Rory Calhoun)


 * Newfoundland Uprising


 * Pennsylvania Uprising 1791-4


 * 1932 armed uprising (Mongolia)


 * Yemen Uprising 2004


 * Egyptian Uprising 1919


 * Congo Uprising 1959


 * Indian Mutiny Uprising 1857


 * Eelam War II Uprising in Sri Lanka


 * Franco’s Uprising 1936 in Morocco


 * Carlist Uprising, Spain 1833-39


 * Thököly's uprising Hungary against the Habsburgs


 * Khalk uprising Taraki and Amin's Afganistan uprising 1978


 * Maharaja Hari Singh’s crushing of the 1931 Kashmir uprising


 * Nepalese Uprising


 * Planned Khmer Uprising 1965-66 Cambodia


 * Malagasy Uprising (Malagascar uprising against French 1947-8)


 * Autumn Harvest Uprising (In Hunan, China, led by Mao Zedong 1927)


 * Nanchang Uprising (China 1927)


 * Ainu Uprising led by Shakushain against Japanese feudal lord 1669 to 1672


 * Madreileno Uprising against French occupation 1808


 * The Loch Uprising by Boers


 * Zulu Uprising in South Africa 1906


 * Madiun Uprising in Indonesia of 1948


 * Herero Uprisings in 1904 (full scale war leading to German genocide in Namibia)


 * Kengir uprising (1954 against Soviet gulags)


 * Vorkuta uprising 1953 (uprising in Soviet gulags)


 * Rodney King uprising


 * Uprising under José de Antequera y Castro against Spasnish rule 1731


 * Uprising against Juan Manuel de Rosas in Uruguay 1850


 * General Venancio Flores’s armed uprising against the Blanco president, Bernardo Prudencio Berro 1863


 * Mapuche Uprising of 1598 in Chile


 * Amadou Toumani Touré’s democratic uprising in Mali 1991


 * The Watts Uprising


 * The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda(1991 Saudi Arabia)


 * Wu Guang Uprising 209 BCE against Qin Dynasty


 * The Khitan uprising against the Song Dynasty 1164


 * Jin Dynasty suppression of Jurchen Uprisings 1161


 * Peasant Uprising against Han Emperor Ling Di CE 184


 * Hassan Uprising 1899–1902 (Phillipines). A poor page by the way. That was a very intensely fought uprising, with massive casualties


 * Tamblot Uprising 1621 (Philippines, religiously inspired uprising)


 * Comanche Uprising (1874)


 * 1975 anti-Communist uprising led by Ahmad Shah Massoud


 * 1562 uprisings in Chaozhou and Yingde in Guangdong province 1562


 * the Miao (Hmong) uprising


 * Bagadates’ uprising against the Seleucids 280CE


 * Maccabean Uprising


 * Bar Kokhba’s failed messianic uprising


 * Soviet-backed communist uprising in Armenia Nov 1920


 * Portuguese uprising 1808


 * Uprisings in Norway 1150s-1180s


 * 1911 Highlanders’ uprising in Albania


 * Nicaraguan uprising against Somoza 1979


 * 1944 Guatemala Uprising


 * Uzbekistan Uprising 2005


 * Katanga Uprisings 1966,1967


 * the Mahdi uprising 1881- Sudan


 * Mahdist Uprising


 * Ethiopian uprising lead by Yekuno Amlak against the Zagwe dynasty


 * Armed workers uprising in the US 1921 (You’ll all know the Matewan film version of 1987)


 * Keian Uprising (Against the Tokugawa shogunate 1651)


 * Kostka-Napierski Uprising (Poland 1651)


 * the Bagaudae uprising of 284–285


 * Jacquerie as peasant uprising


 * Jintian Uprising (China 1851)


 * Ciompi Uprising, Italy 1378


 * English peasants’ uprising of 1381


 * Uprisings in Morocco led by Abd el-Krim 1920


 * Cherokee Uprising 1758-61


 * Pontiac’s Uprising 1753 in North America


 * Second Powhatan Confederacy uprising against Jamestown, Virginia; 1644


 * 623: Uprising of Slavs led by Samo against Avars.


 * Prussian uprisings (1242-1274)


 * Cudgel Uprising against Sweden


 * Vlach uprising against Habsburg rule in Moravia 1640-1644


 * 1676 Orthodox revolrt against Tsars


 * 1669 Jat uprising


 * Lipka Tatar Uprising 1672-1674


 * Moscow Uprisingof 1682


 * Streltsy Uprising 1698


 * Vendée Royalist revolt against the French republic 1796


 * Anti-Manchu Uprising 1796


 * Afghan Uprising


 * Maya Uprising in Yucatan 1847-1901


 * Muslim Uprising in Yunnan


 * Panthay Uprising


 * Samurai Uprising of Saigo Takamori 1877


 * Urabi Egyptian Revolt against Khedive 1879-82


 * Donhak Korean antiforeign Uprising 1894


 * Regards Nishidani (talk) 15:18, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment Nishidani's links appear to be full of differnt article names for the 'uprising title he'd given them. Sample: Yemen Uprising 2004 which leads to an article called Sa'dah conflict. A big difference between this Yemen article and the Second Intifada, is that (a) this was a fight between a local cleric and the higher administration, and (b) I don't see any mention of terror attacks directed at civilians as was the standard practice of the Second Intifada war effort.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  19:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Reply to Jaakobou. I think the intelligent thing to do before making a comment on my links would be to read closely the remarks which preface them. I.e."I can only ask, at this point, why Wiki articles (all with extensive sourcing) so abundantly use the word uprising to describe all kinds of insurrection, revolt, rebellion, in their titles, leads, or bodies of the text, but this word must be denied as valid in describing a revolt by Palestinians'"
 * I have linked to pages where uprising is therefore used in the title, the lead or the text. As to the second point, Israel has been frequently accused of indiscriminate violence on unarmed civilians by authoritative organisations, violence often involving their death, for two decades, the decades of the Intifada. The kill rate has varied from 30 to 1, 10 to 1 to 4 to 1 (Palestinians vs.Israelis) depending on what slice of time you take. For myself (and for many outside specialist observers), terror is a common denominator of both sides, and I do not think the fact that ferocious assaults were made by kamikaze bombers against Israeli citizens in the second Intifada (while Israeli has used frequent indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas in Gaza) ipso facto mean that it wasn't therefore an 'uprising'. As the Mau Mau Uprising, which you are probably too young to recall, shows, many uprisings have terroristic elements, many subject populations read as 'terror' what their ruling states consider 'law and order', many uprisings are put down by state terror. Read every article I've linked, get back to me with a general theory that demonstrates the uniqueness of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, a uniqueness which thus would conceptually disqualify it from coming under the generic rubric of an 'uprising'. Do that and we may finally have an argument against uprising for the prosecution instead of a highly subjective set of personal and rather waffly objections, based on regional exceptionalism to historical sociology.Nishidani (talk) 21:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Since the amiable Jaakobou is collecting on User:PhilKnight's page a growing record of my 'soapboxing' slurs for an eventual request to have me banned from Wiki, I'd better just drop a reference in to indicate that, as ever, when I write in here, I write with a specific book in mind. My remarks on terror refer to, esp., the following passage (which could help improve the article by the way)
 * "‘The object of terrorism is to terrorize, and it was doing the trick. During the first three months of the second intifada, about three-quarters of all 'incidents' recorded by the Israel Defense Forces pit Israeli soldiers against unarmed Palestinian civilians, and since the outbreak of the second intifada, about three Palestinians have died for every Israeli: Of the approximately four thousand deaths attributable to the second intifada, three thousand were Palestinian and over five hundred of these were Palestinian children under the age of eighteen. These numbers, and the Palestinian grievances that sparked the second intifada in the first place, were drowned out by the horror roused by the terrorist outrages.’ James L. Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War, Cambridge University Press 2005 pp.243-4 I.e. we are all hugely focused on Israeli civilian deaths in the aftermath, and have forgotten the huge number of Palestinian civilian deaths, both before and after. Nishidani (talk) 21:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)"

There are a wide variety of perspectives on the Second Intifada. Here are a few:
 * Uprising is POV
 * Arafat's Grand Strategy by Efraim Karsh on the Middle East Quarterly:
 * "In September 2000, only about two percent of the West Bank's population lived in areas where Israel had complete control. By no conceivable stretching of words could the violence be described as a popular uprising against foreign occupation. This 'popular uprising' was launched and choreographed by the leadership—and above all, by Yasir Arafat." (emphasis added).


 * Israel's Comments on the Mitchell Report by the MFA:
 * "This [the Second Intifada] has not been a civilian uprising but rather an ongoing situation in which Israeli forces are coming under intensive live-fire attack." (emphasis added)
 * NOTE: Israel consistently and officially denies that the Second Intifada constitutes/constituted an uprising.


 * Rashomon in the Middle East: Clashing Narratives, Images, and Frames in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Arie M. Kacowicz (pg 352)
 * "... the official Israeli version of the second intifada is fairly straightforward: This was a terrorist war pre-planned and premeditated by Chairman Arafat as a result of a strategic Palestinian decision to use violence – rather than negotiations – as the primary instrument of advancing their political cause." (emphasis added)
 * NOTE: Again, the Israeli official perspective is that the Second Intifada is/was a "terrorist war", not an "uprising".


 * Israel's unexpected victory over terrorism by Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren:
 * "Rather than calling the terrorism assault a war , Israelis reflexively adopted the misleading Palestinian term intifada — implying an unarmed civilian uprising against an armed occupation." (emphasis added)


 * The Second Intifada by MEDEA:
 * "Whereas the first Intifada was characterised by mass civil mobilisation, the present Intifada is an insurrection that rests upon the participation of a minority, even though it has the support from the majority." (em. added)
 * NOTE: This article uses the more neutral term "insurrection", which is synonymous with "uprising", but which does not connote legitimacy or lack thereof.


 * Exiled Hamas leader warns third uprising in 6 months, blaming Israel for delay on prisoner swap by the People's Daily:
 * "The second intifada, also called the al-Aqsa intifada, is the wave of violence that began in September 2000." (emphasis added)


 * The Second Intifada: Background and Causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Jeremy Pressman
 * "In the first section of the article, I critique existing explanations for the [second] intifada that blame Arafat and Sharon for the violent outbreak." (em. added)
 * "Many Israelis, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, contend that Arafat and the Palestinians planned and executed a violent uprising  ...." (em. added)
 * NOTE: Although the author does use the term "uprising", he modifies it with the word "violent" -- a compromise I would be willing to make. The author also uses the word "outbreak", also modifying it with "violent".
 * Michael, then clearly you have not read Perelman's paper. He uses the word 'uprising' several times without an adjective. See below.


 * Poll Shows Most Palestinians Favor Violence Over Talks by the New York Times
 * "'The anger that this poll is registering is about equal to that at the very height of the second intifada,' Mr. Shikaki said, referring to the years just after 2000 when suicide attacks on Israel and Israeli strikes on Palestinian forces reached new heights. 'I am very worried about what is coming.'" (em. added)
 * NOTE: NYT doesn't even bother to label it as an "uprising", "insurrection", "wave of violence", "outbreak", etc.; rather, they merely describe the events which transpired and allow the reader to come to his/her own conclusions.

Interestingly, there are some Palestinian sources which deny that the Second Intifada is/was an uprising:
 * Twenty Years Ago—The Intifada by Michael Warschawski on AIC:
 * "I put 'first Intifada' in quotations, because I strongly deny that there was a second one! In fact, what is usually described as 'The Second Intifada' is exactly the opposite of the first one. While the Intifada was a Palestinian initiative, an anti-colonial uprising, the so-called Second Intifada is an Israeli offensive , planned for a long time by the Israeli military in order to reconquer what had been gained by the Intifada. The 'Second Intifada' is not an Intifada, but an 'anti-Intifada.' " (em. added)


 * Interview with Dimitri Diliani on Just Vision:
 * "It’s not an intifada, but rather a war that is being waged against us. We call it an intifada, but that’s incorrect. They are shooting at us with missiles and airplanes. The people are not engaged in a revolt. They are unhappy, angry, and hurt. If you compare the period between 1987 and 1992 to the period that we are currently living, you’ll understand why they’ve led to different outcomes." (em. added)


 * Despite my self-imposed ban due to lapse in a week, since this is going to arbitration, I should just note that the several tidbits of material added by Michael fail to provide any evidence for his thesis. They mainly interpret the intifada as not a popular uprising: they do not specifically make a case to deny that it was an uprising. Secondly Michael, and this is not the first time you have done this, you clearly have not read the very sources you now adduce in support of your private thesis. The one quality paper you adduce, that of Jeremy Pressman, The Second Intifada: Background and Causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, is a very astute technical analysis by a Jewish expert on conflict which systematically dismisses most of the newspapery editorializing effluvia in the wiki article we are editing, and the several articles from Israeli official or pro-official sources which you cite here. Wiki should privilege quality sources, and this is the only one you have brought to bear on the subject, and, ironically, it undoes the points made by the propaganda sources from Karsh to Israeli government sources. For Perelman the Al-Aqsa uprising arose from a failure of the Oslo accords to cater to widespread popular palestinian discontent for autonomy in the occupied territories. It had a popular base. To conclude, you have yet to provide us with a skerrick of evidence that the word 'uprising' standard in academic works on the Al-Aqsa intifada is viewed by the literature as POV. All you provide is Israeli government sources that challenge the scholarly interpretation of that intifada as 'popular'. This is immaterial. That the uprising later developed into operations by specialist guerillas, and lost its original mass mobilisation is explained in the literature (which I will cite in the article) by the fact that in the Ist five days alone Israeli troops shot and wounded 1900 protestors. It was this change in IDF tactics, from the earlier breaking of legs and widespread physical bashings in the first intifada, to the actual shooting at public crowds in the 2nd intifada, which played some significant role in the development of the secretive  and violent terror tactics  some months later. This however does not alter specialist historian consensus that the Al-Aqsa intifada was what we call an 'uprising'. Read Perelman beyond the first page.Nishidani (talk) 21:29, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, Nishidani writes:
 * If everyone calls an 'orange' an orange, one is not entitled to challenge the description and say 'I want proof it is an orange'. No proof can be forthcoming, because usage establishes that that word is the customary term for the fruit. This is high school level philosophical common sense
 * However, if it is patently obvious that an orange is an orange, then there is no need to state it explicitly. In fact, adding a sentence such as "this particular orange is an orange...", it makes one wonder why such a statement has been added explicitly! Is it possible that there are those who deny that the orange is an orange? Is there something about this orange which makes it difficult to identify as such? If the events of the Second Intifada are truly suggestive of an uprising, then the readers do not need to be told that it is an uprising; they will conclude this for themselves. If, however, the events are not suggestive of an uprising, and the belief that it is an uprising is purely subjective, then stating that it is an uprising as if it were objective is a violation of WP:NPOV and constitutes nothing short of framing. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 19:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * This is the only article on conflict in Wikipedia I am familiar with, and I have read some 142 articles dealing with conflicts here using 'uprising', where the use of this word has been questioned. You are virtually the only person in Wikipedia who finds it problematical. The onus of proof is on you, not on those who, in line with the best academic opinion on revolutions, uprisings, revolts or whatever, refer to the Al-Aqsa intifada habitually (see above) as an uprising. You have a peculiar interpretation of this word which has no backing in English dictionaries, based on inferences from Websters, inferences you can find no academic backing for. Are you familiar with Begin's biography? He describes his closet armed insurrection against the British as an 'uprising' in 1944-7 (Menachem Begin, The Revolt, 1951 p.378). Begin could in short imagine his rebellion against the British occupation of Mandatory Palestine as an 'uprising', violent, terroristic, elitist and indeed unpopular. But God forbid if anyone should dare to describe the Al-Aqsa intifada as an 'uprising' against the Israeli occupation. It cannot be, your argument goes, because the movement was 'violent, terroristic, elitist and unpopular'. The discrimination you make is very close to reflecting an ethnic prejudice, unwittingly my friend. What Begin did can be called without historical quibbling an 'uprising', but if exactly the same tactics are used by Arabs against an Israeli occupation, then, Arabs being Arabs, some other word must be found. Please reconsider your opposition, which is based on conviction, but contradicts everything we know academically on the subject.Nishidani (talk) 21:29, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

On the mediation page, Timeshifter writes:
 * From my cursory examination of the talk page since then, I believe a compromise may be to express all views and who holds them. I read one interesting comment that the various elements of the Israeli media have some unique and widely divergent views on the issue. I don't think Wikipedia should be deciding what is the 'right view' or the 'average worldview'. Nor should wikipedia choose between the Israeli view, the UN view, the US view, the European view, the various Palestinian viewpoints, the Hamas viewpoint, the Fatah viewpoint, the non-aligned nations' view, the Western view, the variety of Arab nations' views, the non-Western view, etc... I think the spin that various elements worldwide put on the Second Intifada is very important, and should be thoroughly explained. For a similar example see: Positions on Jerusalem. This is a change in position on my part because I did not understand just how fierce the differences of opinion were on these issues. I still do not see a contradiction between 'waves of violence' and 'uprising'. But my viewpoint is just one among many, and I now see that the whole conflict continues partly because there is such a fierce spin battle going on worldwide in the media that goes back all the way to the crusades and before.
 * I wholeheartedly agree with Timeshifter on this point -- that "the spin that various elements worldwide put on the Second Intifada is very important, and should be thoroughly explained". All interpretations, ranging from the extreme Palestinian view to the extreme Israeli view, should be mentioned. If Wikipedia elevates one of these views as the "correct" one, it merely biases the reader. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 19:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Again you are confusing the proper use of language with the proper interpretation of an historical phenomenon. Since the interpretation of the nature of the Al-Aqsa intifada is controversial, you think the usual word in the literature to gloss intifada, namely 'uprising' is controversial. On the first point you are right. No one challenges that various interpretations exist. Your error lies in the latter inference, in transferring to the word 'uprising'(itself near universal a term in descriptive writing of conflict, popular or secretive, violent or Gandhian), the controversial character of the interpretations of the intifada. An elementary mistake.Nishidani (talk) 21:29, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Discussion
Hmm, these are some interesting proposals. Personally, I prefer wording closer to Proposal 1 or Proposal 2. I find proposal 3 to be a tad short and lacking in context. I have a couple of questions.
 * 1) Are there citations to support statements other than the name Oslo War already in the article?  Nishidani, you give several citations in your comments.  Does anyone disagree with the use or interpretation of these or any other citations provided so far.
 * 2) Since we've now defined the versions, could each party comment under their original statement what they disagree with in the two versions they do not support (and probably did not author, I'm not checking the MEDCAB-P history for the express reason of not associating a version with an author)?  This would also be the time and place to address other issues like WP:UNDUE or WP:NOR.   MBisanz  talk 02:56, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Good, we're making progress here, we're basically down to the word "uprising" in the first sentence of proposal 1. Could each participant list any and all acceptable words in addition to "uprising" that they feel could replace it in the first sentence?  Alternatively, could you give me your best, most mainstream/neutral source for the wording of it as "uprising".  MBisanz  talk 19:47, 4 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment - proposal #3, User:MBisanz/MEDCAB-P - was reformatted since this comment was made.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  10:35, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've added a 4th version - open to suggestions on it.  Jaakobou Chalk Talk  12:42, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Everyone involved, please calm down for a second, and take a step back from the page. I don't like 5 paragraph responses or deeply threaded comment sections.  So I want, a five-line max answer, below this section, from each party on other words besides uprising they like.  If you prefer uprising, just note that, since I see some prefer it per sources like OED.  MBisanz  talk 17:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * User:MBisanz. If you have detected the slightest sign of overheated and intemperate argument in my remarks, please underline them. I wrote those remarks with urbane tolerance, despite my private belief that this argument should never have even arisen under normal conditions of either academic or wiki editing. I was addressing my argument singularly to User:Michael Safyan because he has held this page up for several months on an 'antic' discrimination that is against Wiki rules (he is asking editors to prove that the word 'uprising', widely used of the second Intifada in impeccably sourced journalistic and academic reports, is an appropriate designation for what all the world nonetheless calls the Al-Aqsa Uprising). I.e. he is contesting the right of editors in Wiki to refer to its pages standard terminology in highly reliable sources.


 * Since Michael is thoroughly determined to insist on what should never, never be insisted on, that customary academic usage be held hostage until a specific, explicit justification of its descriptive adequacy to those events be uncovered, I have taken the trouble to delineate (1) why his approach is methodologically flawed (2) why his refusal to accept 'uprising' for an Arab uprising, because it reminds him personally of the Jewish Warsaw uprising, is ethnocentric and (3) why the use of that term comprehends a very wide range of distinctive revolts in the historical literature in a neutral fashion. For the details, see above. Taking an effort to address questions that should never have arisen in the first place is not a sign of intemperance but, rather, of exceptional patience. Regards Nishidani (talk) 20:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Jaakobou's preffered version, In the "battle" over 'uprising' vs 'terror campaign', I prefer the latter since it's far more accurate considering the elements involved (Yasser Arafat, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, European Union - see sources above). However, I do believe that it would be fair to give equal presentation to both the "resistance against occupation" (main Palestinian) perspective and also the main Israeli perspective. I've tried to keep it simpler in my 2nd suggestion and made sure to reference everything in a clean and clear manner. In my suggestion (version 4), each side is given 3 points for their position - which is more than fair to the Palestinian/Arab side, getting the "land theft" perspective in the lead despite far heavier land theft during the (forced) Jewish exodus from Arab lands. I'm open to suggestions, but I completely object the direct Intifada='uprising' translation.. unless there's some other type of equal value compromise that doesn't give a "moral right" (to blow up Israeli civilians) feel to the Article's presentation... version 2, doesn't quite cover this as it gives a 3:1 importance to Palestinian claims. p.s. MBisanz, I apologize that it's a tad over 5 rows, but certainly no where near the 19,000 chars above (that use a borderline anti-semitic source, no less).  Jaakobou <sup style="color:#1F860E;">Chalk Talk  18:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * JaakobouA word of advice. I think it would be proper to withdraw or cross out that remark attributing to me the use of what you call a 'borderline antisemitic source'. If Norman Finkelstein incorrectly cited Haaretz, by all means challenge his source, which is Haaretz. Otherwise, you throwing around this kind of cheap and slanderous innuendo looks very much as though you are endeavouring to tar me with the same brush, (Nishidani uses 'borderline antisemitic sources', and therefore is a borderline antisemite) as several of your colleagues have tried to do in the past. Nishidani (talk) 20:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * If you are worried about the implications of using cheap and slanderous sources then why not cut back on it?  Jaakobou <sup style="color:#1F860E;">Chalk Talk  05:44, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Nishidani, he wasn't attributing you to being an antisemite. He was saying that Finkelstein is a borderline antisemite. He is certianly anything but a reliable source for the topic. He probably could have stated that in a better way then he did, but I think this point is valid, and correct, and it certianly isn't a personal attack on you. I don't know what issues you had with Jaakobou in the past, but I think it would be better for the sake of progress if you try not comment on his alleged behaviour here, as that will accomplish nothihng, but rather the arguement. Since Haaretz is the source in question, we should be focusing on what Haaretz said, not Finkelstein's interpritation of what Haaretz said, because as I said already, Finkelstein is not a reliable source. Do you have anything to say reguarding his arguement? Becasue it seems right now you have a lot more to say about Jaakobou.  Yahel  Guhan  00:46, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Personally, I was enjoying the discussion Safyan and Nishidani were having. It is quite enlightening and while i wished to argue some fo the points Nishidani made, I find his/her eloquence and erudition covered more points than i could have. He has responded to Safyan's arguments point by point and issue by issue in an articulate manner. He is far from hyperventilating, obstreperous or belligerent. Baseless accusations that he is using 'borderline anti-semitic' or non-reliable sources aren't really helping us here either. If you take issue with his sources than you had better bring something to the table other than "i don't like his sources". Delad (talk) 03:01, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Baseless accusations? Finkelstein is notable for being a strongly radical anti-Zionist. He isn't notable for being a highly scholarly reliable source, and shouldn't be used as one. What makes him "reliable"? Absolutely nothing. Numerous scholars have stated his notability and alleged scholarship is based on his radical political views, that he gets the historical facts incorrect, and misrepresents the work of scholars in quoting them. His supporters are generally those who hold his views. (See Norman Finkelstein) He should not be used as evidence to base anything upon, accept something directly quoted to himself, and he certainly should not be used as a reliable source for a quote from Haaretz. There are much better sources to be used, like Haaretz itself, and not with a bias unreliable interpretation/translation of what they said. Of all sources, Finkelstein is not one that should be picked to make any judgment over the lead. Perhaps I was a little harsh with my end comment to Nishidani. For that I will apologize. Still, I think we need to stop discussing each other’s behavior, because I think that is not helping resolve this dispute either.  Yahel  Guhan  03:26, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * User:Jaakobou, User:Yahel Guhan You both will have checked the net, and you both will have discovered that reliable sources independent of Finkelstein have cited the same evidence from Haaretz. So what is the point of trying here, disingenuously, to prevaricate on the fact that this was printed by Haaretz? It ony takes two minutes to get the full text, and this time, I am reluctant to do your work for you. 151.49.85.6 (talk) 11:29, 9 April 2008 (UTC)Nishidani (talk) 12:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

(this last post, minusmy handle, I noted when it went up, could not be corrected. Screams echoed from the dining room, that I was urgently required to sit down to lunch with guests. I couldn't unblock my computer, which refused to give me the full page to edit, and thus had lunch, and came back to sign the statement, only to notice User:Jaakobou had erased it as 'anonymous' and a violation of some rule in Wiki. In any case it was not anonymous. Any IP check would have shown that it was identical to mine. Apologies for any misunderstanding.Nishidani (talk) 12:56, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Compromise
Well it seems like we can all live with version 1 or 2, except the word "uprising". I'd like to suggestion a slashie compromise. Instead od just using a term like "uprising", "campaign of terror", etc, use two terms linked by a slashie. So it would read uprising/x. I ran a search and have listed the following proposed second words:

insurrection, outbreak, rebellion, revolt, revolution, riot, upheaval, convulsion, outcry, tumult, turbulence, power play, usurpation, coup, disorder, insurgency, rising, sedition, disobedience, resistance

Any comments?  MBisanz  talk 01:58, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the input, MBisanz. I would prefer that we not go this route, because it would attempt to balance one point-of-view with another, rather than simply stating facts in neutral terms. However, if others prefer this option, here is my reaction to the words provided:
 * insurrection: This is denotationally the same as "uprising", but connotationally different. Thus it does not truly balance "uprising".
 * outbreak: This is fine if put in the phrase "outbreak of violence" or "violent outbreak".
 * rebellion: This is denotationally the same as "uprising", but connotationally different. Thus it does not truly balance "uprising".
 * revolt: This is similar to "uprising" and does not express the Israeli viewpoint, and thus is pointless to use.
 * revolution: This is simply inaccurate. There was a lot of violence, but otherwise very little change.
 * riot: This is simply inaccurate. While riots took place, the Second Intifada consists of more than just a riot.
 * upheaval: This is fine if put in the phrase "violent upheaval", otherwise it does not balance viewpoints.
 * convulsion: This is inaccurate for the same reason as "riot" is inaccurate. There were convulsions, not just a convulsion.
 * outcry: This does not express the Israeli viewpoint, and thus does not balance the Palestinian POV. And even were this the Israeli POV, this is an emotive term, and therefore should not appear in Wikipedia.
 * tumult: This is inaccurate for the same reason as "riot". It also strikes me as rather euphemistic.
 * turbulence: This is severely euphemistic.
 * power play: This is inaccurate, because, although violence was exchanged, there was very little threat to Israel's political power, only to its civilian population.
 * usurpation: This is inaccurate.
 * coup: This is likewise inaccurate.
 * disorder: This sounds like an illness rather than a historical event. Does not balance POVs. Euphemistic.
 * insurgency: This is denotationally the same as "uprising", but connotationally different. Thus it does not truly balance "uprising".
 * rising: This is an uncommon usage of "rising", and does not balance POVs.
 * sedition: This is inaccurate; like revolt, it assumes that the Palestinian Authority or the Palestinian people owed allegiance to Israel.
 * disobedience: See comments for "sedition".
 * resistance: This is, by far, the preferred pro-Palestinian term, and therefore does not balance the points of view.


 * I have given the above response in the event that we take this route. However, I again remind you, that I think that attempting to balance one POV with another POV would set a poor precedent for how to adhere to WP:NPOV, and I prefer that we not take this route. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 03:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Note - I liked the latest suggestions on version 5 and changed my proposal 4 utilizing parts of it and toning down the intro from 3:3 to 2:2. I'm thinking a mix between my MEDCAB-P#Proposal_4 and suggestion 5 could definitely work for me.  Jaakobou <sup style="color:#1F860E;">Chalk Talk  08:26, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The crux is simple,that version one and two can be melded consensually is not doubted by their two authors, who have done the most work on this section. All other suggestions are less than helpful. The only point remaining, therefore, is 'uprising'.


 * I don't see any margin for compromise, because there is a principle at stake, which Michael is challenging. To compromise is to admit a dangerous precedent in the rules govering the editorial framework. Let me summarize.


 * (a)'Uprising' is challenged as a POV Palestinian partisan term. User:Michael Safyan has argued that it is POV and not adequate denotatively or connotatively to the phenomenon of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
 * It has been shown that
 * (a) it is not a partisan term, since authoritative scholars of all political and ethnic persuasions use it as a normal, standard descriptive term for the Al-Aqsa Intifada.
 * (b) that Michael's request for authoritative proof that the Al-Aqsa Intifada 'constitutes an uprising' is invalid. If everyone calls an 'orange' an orange, one is not entitled to challenge the description and say 'I want proof it is an orange'. No proof can be forthcoming, because usage establishes that that word is the customary term for the fruit. This is high school level philosophical common sense.
 * (c) That Michael admits that the gravamen of his charge, on the denotative and connotative meanings of 'uprising', lacks a reliable source. This means he is pushing a personal view in the face of established usage. He cannot source his statements, whereas his interlocutors can source their counter-statements.
 * (d) That Michael's attempt to substitute deductive logic for evidential proof is philosophically and linguistically untenable. As shown, connotations cannot be derived technically from a denotation by deductive logic.
 * (e) Contrariwise, it has been shown that connotations are derived from empirical evidence for usage, and that in both journalism and at the highest level of academic analysis, 'uprising' is a neutral term inclusive of insurrections, sanguinary or not, against constituted political authority or not, all over the world, and throughout history.
 * (f) It emerges that Michael personally dislikes the word 'uprising' because it makes, for him, an implicit parallel between the tragedy of his own group ('the Warsaw Uprising') and the culpable waves of violence, as he sees it, of a people, the Palestinians, against that group. This has been countered by the fact that (i) the analogy whose propriety he denies has been made (several times) within Israel, by senior strategists (ii) the use of a generic term used to describe comprehensively many kinds of rebellion does not, ipso facto, establish a perfect congruity of analogy or identity between the disparate phenomena that come under that term. I.e. 'war' is a generic term. 'The American war of Independence' is not analogical to 'Hitler's war' by virtue of the fact that both events are denoted as 'wars'.
 * In fine, In Wikipedia, terminological proprieties are established by best usage, as determined by consulting reliable sources, and if the reliable sources widely concur in accepting, for example, 'uprising' as an adequate denotation of the second Intifada, it is not a right of individual editors, with no formal grounding in the scholarship, to challenge that scholarly consensus. Michael has run very close to WP:OR in his attempt to undermine standard usage by making a series of deductions from Merriam-Webster on what he conceives to be the connotations of 'uprising'. His construal of this word flies manifestly in the fact of textual conventions in academic sources. His opposition therefore, while understandable in personal terms, is not grounded in concrete evidence on usage required for determining the appropriate language for articles. To compromise on this is to allow that what is a personal or mistakenly 'pro-Israeli' POV objection to English usage may undo what the English historiographical conventions governing the analysis of this conflict take as self-evident. Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia, requiring neutral language, and must not become a vehicle for redefining, in Orwellian ways, the customary meanings of words, and passing them off for bearing connotations they do not, demonstrably, bear, simply because a partisan viewpoint insists on misinterpreting the language as prejudicial to its interests. Nishidani (talk) 13:34, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

A muddle in sources to be sorted out
I have just put Menachem Klein's account into the text. It says that Arafat, Erekat and Husseini asked Sharon to call off his proposed visit. This clashes with the later quote from Yossef Bodansky,which has Arafat agreeing to the visit. Both are very good sources. Since good sources clash, both should be provisorily given, until we can iron out the problem. (Of course Arafat may have given permission, then reconsidered. We need more evidence).Nishidani (talk) 15:31, 10 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Just in case there is any confusion. User:Jaakobou has reverted the text as I set it, which is his right. In challenging his reversion, I appeared to self-revert, made an error, and therefore had to correct it by the proper revert, to my text prior to Jaakobou's. Two reverts, then, but only one intended. Reasons for the revert. Jaakobou in his reversion says Klein is some political leftie he dislikes. I didn't check who Klein was. His book was translated for the University of Florida, which doesn't publish trash (2). He gives figures for Palestinian casualties lower than those in the article (figures unsourced there). So evidently Jaakobou's description of him, and the reason for the revert, is not rational, since the information I include from Klein lowers the Palestinian casualties from Israeli police actions. Why therefore Jaakobou should reject an edit which favours 'his side', simply because he doesn't like the author's politics, is another mystery on my Wiki mystery list. I'd be happy if other active editors here look into our dispute, and make up their own minds. Thank you Nishidani (talk) 16:30, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Header images in infobox
I removed the image until we could discuss it. MathKnight added it March 22, 2007. See this diff:

I appreciate the effort in making this image. I suggest some changes first, though, before we use the image. I suggest removing the flags. They just take up space. Also, I suggest substituting, or adding in, a Palestinian casualty photo if the Israeli casualty photo is kept as part of the image collage.

It is also possible to use 6 images. I have seen many other infoboxes in military history articles. They use a variety of formats for header image collages. It is possible to get advice too from the military history wikiproject. See the banner at the top of the talk page and WikiProject Military history/Middle Eastern military history task force. --Timeshifter (talk) 15:40, 23 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I copied the above comment from the talk archive. It seems MathKnight added back the header image collage on April 12, 2008. See this diff:


 * I removed it again for the same reasons as before. I forgot to mention in my previous comment that there are even more options for images in infoboxes for conflict articles. I have seen header image combinations where there is one wider image combined with a collage of 4 to 6 other smaller images. This helps in illustrating the article, and in interesting people in reading the article. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:54, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
 * If you want to add a palestinian image, add suggest one, and I'll upload a new version of the image that includes it, but that isn't a reason to remove the image that otherwise does a good job illistrating the concept.  Yahel  Guhan  01:40, 22 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The suggested header image collage is at Image:SecondIntifada001.jpg. The current version is here:
 * http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/SecondIntifada001.jpg


 * There aren't any images of Palestinian casualties in English Wikipedia or the commons yet, as far as I know. Maybe people can upload some. See: Category:Second Intifada casualties and commons:Category:Second Intifada casualties.


 * There is the image of the father and son before they were shot. See Muhammad al-Durrah. That photo might work, but it is a fair-use image. I am referring to this image: Image:AlDurrah2.jpg
 * That Palestinian casualty image is already at the bottom of the infobox. It balances the Israeli casualty image that is also just below the infobox:
 * [[Image:Haifa bus 37.jpg|300px]]


 * The captions are necessary on both of those images, and so they are in a good location just below the infobox.


 * I suggest we remove the Israeli casualty image from the collage until we can find an additional Palestinian casualty image to balance the POV, and thus to maintain WP:NPOV. I am referring to this Israeli casualty image,
 * he:תמונה:SbarroAfter1.jpg, on Hebrew Wikipedia.


 * There are other iconic photos that could be added to the collage. One of them should be a wider image (300 pixels wide like all the images shown in this discussion) in my opinion.


 * A smaller image to add might be a photo of Ariel Sharon. It could be substituted for the Israeli casualty photo for now.


 * I can move the Israeli casualty photo to the casualties section of the article if it can be uploaded to the commons, and is not a fair-use image.


 * I think we can also do without the nationalism of the flags in a header image. They add nothing to illustrate the article, and they block what little one can see in the already-small images. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:36, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I hope I have this right but the Durran father-son image should not be used, since some say the scene was faked. We need an image of a casualty or damage as uncontroversial as the corresponding Israeli one.Nishidani (talk) 14:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, the father-son shooting image should stay where it is below the infobox in my opinion. We need a different Palestinian casualty photo for the header image collage. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Introduction
In the introduction, where it states the fighting tactics of both the Palestinians and Israeli forces, I think a review or an extension is in order. Though the list is long, there are several other tactics that weren't discussed (such as abductions by Israeli (and sometimes Palestinians), house raids (not demolitions), and even some random acts of violence to quell rebelling people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xeraxes (talk • contribs) 20:50, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Casualties & infobox
1,047 Israelis total:
 * - 716 Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians;
 * - 331 Israeli security force personnel killed by Palestinians[1]

5,103 Palestinians total:
 * - 4,487 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces;*
 * - 41 Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians;
 * - 575 Palestinians killed by Palestinians

The problem with this list is that with the deaths of Palestinians, there's no distinguishment between civilian casualties and militant casualties. An often ignored fact is that the percentage of civilian casualties amongst israeli casualties (total) is much much higher than the percentage of civilian casualties amongst the total palestinian casualties). - PietervHuis (talk) 02:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It is covered in detail in the casualties section of the article. I formatted your comment since it looks like you were trying to make a column. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

In the source there is a table below where it sais that of the Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces 1715 took part in the hostilities, 2224 didn't take part in the hostilities and from another 871 it is unknown if they were taking part in the hositlies or not. Also from the 1057 Israelis killed only 487 are real civilians, the figure of 723 includes 236 settlers. So by the Palestinians of 4810 killed by Israelis (1715 killed by IDF + 47 killed by settlers =) 1762 = 36.63% to (2586 killed by IDF + 47 killed by settlers =) 2633 = 54.74% (So ~36%-55%) where civilians. While of the Israeli figures out of 1057, 487 = 46.07% (So ~46%) where civilians, if you wanna include 39 settler children it becomes 49.76% (So ~50%). So basically the percentage of civilians killed at both sides is about equal. Kermanshahi 12:17, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

Uprising
This isn't really an argument over the word uprising. Everyone knows what it means.

It's the fact that the word sympathizes with those doing the uprising. That's the problem. So this is really an argument whether the Palestinian perspective or the Israeli perspective is correct. Good luck ever determining that here on Wikipedia. Our biased history usually takes the perspective of the victors, that's at least the precedent set in our society, but this conflict is still going. The only way you're going to settle this is by being completely neutral and listing both perspectives. That's great that 2nd paragraph does this, but the 1st paragraph is still from the Palestinian perspective. It's amazing how much this conflict spills over into Wikipedia. Yes, both sides have done monstrous things to the other side, but the only thing that gonna fix it is the forgiveness that's the core of both religions. --Calibas (talk) 00:49, 25 May 2008 (UTC)


 * If you feel that way (or, rather, if you feel strongly about whether "uprising" should or should not be used), then please sign up with mediation above. Thanks. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 05:46, 25 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The current situation of the Mediation case, well, is still pending. I'm awaiting an email from the chair of MedCom, and from someone from ArbCom, as to the status of this dispute, and as to what will happen next. It's possible formal mediation will be used. <font face="Lucida Calligraphy" color="blue">Steve Crossin (talk) (review) 06:09, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Timeline
This image should be changed given that the Intifada obviously did not end in 2006. The Squicks (talk) 15:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * If it obviously did not end in 2006, then when did it end? Or, if you believe that the Second Intifada/al-Aqsa Intifada phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not yet ended, under what criteria would you use to judge if that phase had ended? --Xagent86 (Talk | contribs) 09:51, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

IronDuke's removal of Casualties section of talk page
I believe User:IronDuke may have violated WP:TALK. If he does not return the talk comments of User:Kermanshahi, User:Michael Safyan, and User:Tundrabuggy I may report him to WP:ANI. This is a courtesy warning.

Wikipedia is not censored. See WP:CENSOR. Nothing in WP:TALK. WP:BLP, WP:SOAP, or WP:CIVIL were violated by the comments IronDuke removed in my opinion. Common sense may have been violated but that is not a crime yet on Wikipedia. :) Here is the diff of IronDuke's removal of their comments: . His edit comment was "removing the thread per WP:BLP and WP:SOAP."

The discussion was on topic because the issue of how to break down the casualty numbers has been discussed many times before. Therefore it is not a violation of WP:SOAP. The language may be very strong, but that is their opinion on the issues. Neither person insulted the other, nor were uncivil towards each other. I saw no WP:BLP problem concerning specific people. Therefore, I believe IronDuke may have violated WP:TALK in removing their comments.

Discussions on the talk pages of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict articles can get very heated with frequent general characterizations of the armed militants on one "side" or the other as being largely "terrorists" or "murderers" or "state terrorists" or "scum settler-colonialists" or other highly inflammatory generalizations. People have a right to their opinions on talk pages.

Articles are a different story. We must follow WP:NPOV in articles. I see some discussion on User talk:IronDuke questioning IronDuke's use of the word "terrorist" in articles. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:56, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The language employed was not “very strong.” Use of the word “scum” to refer to a group of people was ludicrously over the top, and violated WP:BLP in an obvious way – and no, it didn’t refer to a specific person, but specific persons. (And there were other examples of really bad language).


 * I can’t, by the way, “violate” WP: TALK. It’s a guideline, and specifically allows for exceptions. Core policy would be one of those exceptions. You want to take this to ANI? Please be my very special guest. I’d welcome other comments in re your having violated WP:BLP. People have a right to their opinions, they do not have the right to post hate-filled rants on talk pages.


 * Yes, I have discussed use of the word "terrorist." And...? IronDuke  00:01, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Like most guidelines there are exceptions to WP:TALK. I don't see how this is one though. You censored a talk page - plain and simple.


 * Show me in WP:BLP where use of the word "terrorist" or "scum" on a talk page in describing a large part of a group of people or armed militants is a violation of WP:BLP. If it is, then we need to go back and remove hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of comments on talk pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:18, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * You honestly think that the BLP page recapitulates every conceivable slur? Calling any group "scum" on any WP page is never okay, or "criminal," when not convicted of any crime. (And when did I say anything about "terrorist" in this context?) If you point me to any other instances of the use of the word scum on a talk page referring to a person or persons, I will happily remove it. I didn't "censor" anything: I upheld policy (and common sense). You don't have to help me do this, but I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't stand in the way. IronDuke  00:28, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If it is a single word you think is particularly offensive, then strike out, or remove the word. Don't remove the whole multi-person thread. I can see how calling many on one "side" of an armed conflict "scum" is pretty insulting. But calling many on one side of an armed conflict "terrorists" or "state terrorists" is far worse in my mind. Calling many on one side as civilian-killing murderers is far worse than calling them insulting names. You seem less concerned about this.


 * And you still haven't shown me anything on WP:BLP that backs up what you are saying. WP:BLP has to do with specific people. There may be something that applies in WP:CIVIL. But if there is, then it is not being enforced concerning the widespread use of the word "terrorist" on article talk pages to categorize large groups of people. This occurs in many topic areas, and not just in the area of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.


 * From CIVIL: "Only in the most serious of circumstances should an editor replace or edit a comment made by another editor. Only in the event of something that can cause actual damage in the real world should this be the first step (i.e., disclosing the name, address or phone number of an opponent). In the event of rudeness or incivility on the part of an editor, it is appropriate to discuss the offending words with that editor, and to request that editor to change that specific wording. Should removing a comment be necessary, or you wish to remove your own uncivil comments, any of the following suggestions may be applied: ..." --Timeshifter (talk) 00:42, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I support IronDuke's deletion of the casualties section. The banner Template:notaforum on the top of the page warns that comments not pertaining to the improvement of the article can (and will) be deleted. The deletion of the discussion is perfectly in line with this warning as well as the policies of WP:NOTFORUM and WP:SOAP. Thank you, IronDuke, for removing the section. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 00:44, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It's not a vote. So you don't have to support or oppose. The discussion was on-topic; therefore it was not a violation of WP:NOTFORUM and WP:SOAP. You commented in the thread, and you did not say the thread was off-topic during the discussion. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Michael doesn't have to support or oppose, but it happens that he supports what I did (and I appreciate it). And he did indeed say it was a violation of WP:SOAP, which was correct. For that reason, removing the post was totally okay. But the egregious BLP vios were reason enough to do so as well -- there were a number of specific phrases he used which were bad, "scum" was merely the worst. Could it be edited to excise all the offending parts? Maybe, though it would be hard to follow -- I have no interest in doing so, as the post was essentially a rant to begin with. And I have no idea why you keep bringing up the word "terrorist." What does that have to do with me? If you're suggesting the classic "Well, if you hate X, why are you not combatting Y?" then there's no reply necessary: I don't have to fix everything on WP all at once to have the right to fix one specific thing. IronDuke  01:37, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have asked you several times to show specifically what parts of the guideline pages were violated. You have yet to show anything. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:36, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "Editors must take particular care adding biographical material about a living person to any Wikipedia page." IronDuke  02:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "Our articles must not serve primarily to mock or disparage their subjects, whether directly or indirectly." IronDuke  02:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "Talk pages are used to make decisions about article contents. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material not related or useful to making article content choices should be deleted, and even permanently removed…" IronDuke  02:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Did you have a good source for calling people "scum?" Love to see it. IronDuke  02:18, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Re: "Editors must take particular care adding biographical material about a living person to any Wikipedia page."
 * "living person" is singular.


 * Re: "Our articles must not serve primarily to mock or disparage their subjects, whether directly or indirectly."
 * "article"


 * Nothing in the above unsourced quotes allows editors to wholesale remove an on-topic discussion from a talk page.


 * Re: "Did you have a good source for calling people 'scum?' Love to see it."
 * Next time do as the guideline says and ask the editor to strike it out. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:55, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Things will be simpler if you just read the policy in question. IronDuke  23:01, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have read the guidelines and policies. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Timeshifter, while I realize that this is not a vote, I believe my input is of substantial weight here, given that at least half of the comments deleted were my own. As for the claim that I did not say that the thread was off-topic; to the contrary, in my last comment I said exactly that. I think it is best that we drop this matter, unless Kermanshahi or Tundrabuggy -- the other two individuals who commented in the now deleted thread -- insist that their comments were wrongfully deleted and should be restored. Otherwise, further argument on this matter is to no one's benefit and certainly not to the benefit of the article. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 02:18, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Here is the version with the Casualties section.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Second_Intifada&oldid=229585188
 * You did not say the thread was off-topic. You said: "Since this discussion page is not a forum and since this discussion is bordering on soapboxing (both my comments and your comments), I am now ending this discussion."
 * That is your opinion, but others disagree. Even if there is soapboxing that does not mean the subject is off-topic. Anybody can claim soapboxing when someone provides a ton of references, and then delete the references and the thread. Convenient. So you have to follow the method in CIVIL. Because you may be wrong. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have already spent more time on this thread than I like, so this will be my last post here. Firstly, you got me; I never used the phrase "off topic" or "off-topic" verbatim. I don't think that really matters. When I said that "this is not a forum", I said it because the discussion had nothing to do with improving the article (i.e. off topic). I believe I am more familiar with what I said and with the intentions behind what I said, than you are. Secondly, there is nothing "convenient" or "inconvenient" to it. If, Kermanshahi or Tundrabuggy wants the material restored, then it can be restored. Alternatively, new and on-topic sections may be created to discuss 1.) the inclusion of a sentence/paragraph/section on incidents or allegations of incidents in which Israelis living in settlement communities have carried out acts of violence against their Palestinian neighbors and 2.) whether sources such as IMEMC meet the criteria of WP:RS. IMHO, these were the only on-topic components of the deleted section. If none of the participants in the deleted discussion object to its deletion, then why waste time arguing about the deletion? The only purpose I can see is to report IronDuke to WP:ANI (possibly pertaining to your argument with him/her over the use of the word "terrorist"?). In short, only the participants in the deleted discussion have any right to object to or concur with the section's deletion. If none object, then the subject is dropped; if one objects, then the material is restored -- possibly with offensive or uncivil material crossed out with a strike-through. May reason and sanity win the day. Signing out on this topic/subject, Michael Safyan (talk) 04:00, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Please strike your comment "May reason and sanity win the day." It violates WP:CIVIL and WP:TALK. Please stop the gamesmanship.
 * Also, this thread may have been read by others besides the participants. The references and reasoning are possibly useful to the article and to other readers beside the participants who wrote the thread. Therefore, I object to the deletion of the Casualties section. People can't read your mind. So you have to justify deletion with specific references to the Wikipedia guidelines. Otherwise, any editor can delete anything on talk pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:11, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

So why is calling the settlers (which have violently driven innocent people from their land and are now illegally living on it) scum, considered to be "to strong language" but calling the heroes of Palestine and Lebanon such as Kintar, Nasrallah and Yassin "terrorists" is perfectly normal. Wikipedia is not supposed to be some pro-Zionist website but it is supposed to be neutral. If I (or anyone else) had said this in the article (which I didn't...) I agree it should have been deleted, but this is the talkpage. > The section should be re-added as soon as possible! Kermanshahi (talk) 15:17, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Kermanshahi, the language you used wasn't "strong." It was entirely, absolutely unacceptable, and I hope you refactor all odious comments. Just say to yourself, "What would I find offesnive if someone said about me?" I'll also add that you've just flagrantly violated WP:NPA by implying that I might be an Israeli, and that therefore I am acting in an improper manner. You are certainly allowed to say that I am acting in an improper manner, but you may not use my (real or perceived) ethnicity against me, any more than I could say Kermanshahi is acting improperly because he is Iranian. Both statements are deeply offensive. So, please refactor your remarks to strike that portion.


 * I'm also past the point of mystified about all these "terrorist" points being made. If you have a problem with people using that word on talk pages to describe BLP's, please go to those pages and object. That has nothing to do with calling a specific group of people "scum" and "criminals," nor does it excuse the essentially soap-boxing nature of the post as a whole. Kermanshahi, if you have points to make, please do so without calling anyone (on or off-wiki) names. I don't think that's too much to ask. IronDuke  02:20, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Come off the soapbox, Iron Duke. You are soapboxing with hyperbole like "entirely, absolutely unacceptable". Saying that you may be a supporter of Israel does NOT imply that you are "acting in an improper manner." Please ease up on all the self-righteous, forum-style BS hyperbole. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:07, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Your remarks are uncivil, Timeshifter. Also, you appear not to have read WP:SOAP; I advise you to do so if that is the case. IronDuke  22:56, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * In the interests of a truce (at least on Wikipedia) can you agree to strike out "scum" from your comments? As in scum . There is an icon in the toolbar to do so. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:19, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

No problem, I just got a little angry at the moment due to all these things the settlers are doing. Kermanshahi (talk) 21:23, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Casualties (restored)

 * NOTE: The following discussion has been restored (with alterations, see discussion above) from this diff:

The caualty figure of 723 Israeli civilians killed gives completely the wrong impression as it includes 236 settlers, these scum are not real civilians and they're sertainly not innocent either. These settlers are only counted as "civilians" because they are not members of the military, they are as much of civilians as Palestinian millitants who fire rockets into Israel, fight with IDF and do suicide bombings are, these are not members of military either... So far 47 Palestinian civilians have been. These people are occupying Palestinian land, over 30% of it being private property and daily there are reports of settler attacks against Palestinians where they kill, beat up, stab, ect. Palestinians and even many cases where they seize more land, these guys are actually launching proper invasions. These should sertainly not be counted as civilians, the 723 Israeli civilians killed should cahnge to: 487 Israeli civilians killed, 236 Israeli settlers killed.

Another thing that has to be done is the removal of "577 Palestinians killed by Palestinians" which brings the total figure up to 5322 from 4745. The clashes between different Palestinian factions against each other is not part of their intifada/uprising against Israel but these are conflicts of their own, most notably the Hamas-Fatah Conflict. Kermanshahi 07:18, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Kermanshahi, I am deeply disappointed by your comment. Let us suppose -- and this is a major supposition -- that all settlements involve stolen land. That would make settlers thieves. Are you really suggesting that theft is tantamount to murder? Should the penalty for theft be the same as the penalty for murder? Not only that, but a large number of settlements were established using land which was willingly bought and sold. Many Israelis who live in the "settlements" do so, not for political reasons, but simply because they cannot afford to live anywhere else. My cousins, who wouldn't even hurt a fly, live in a community outside of Jerusalem, which is technically a settlement since it is in the West Bank. There is no comparison between "settlers" in general and "militants" (i.e. terrorists) who intentionally murder civilians. Perhaps your only exposure to settlers has been to the radical and violent kind. That would be indeed sad, and I am sorry if that has been the case. That said, the vast majority of settlers -- by virtue of the fact that they do not engage in violence and combat -- are civilians.


 * As for Palestinians killed by Palestinians,... it is difficult to define exactly what the Second Intifada is. In fact, this was the very nature of an editing dispute in which I was engaged above. Some might describe the Second Intifada as consisting solely of the Israeli-Palestinian violence starting either with 1.) Arafat's return from Camp David, 2.) the day before Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, 3.) Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, or 4.) the day after Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. Others would describe the Second Intifada as the period in which the violence occurred, including all events during that period, not just the Israeli-Palestinian violence. There is no consensus (not talking about Wikipedia) regarding the definition of the Second Intifada, and the listing of Palestinian-Palestinian kills/murders is consistent with the latter definition. If for no other reason, the data should be included, since the total casualty data is provided by B'Tselem, and knowing the number of Palestinian-Palestinian kills and that it has been included in the total, is necessary for understanding the casualty figure.


 * It saddens me that you are so angry, that you would compare ordinary people -- with a handful of bad apples, of course -- with those who intentionally maim and kill, and that you would see their deaths as just. In the future, I hope you will realize that you are not the only one touched by this conflict, and that there is much suffering on both sides. Perhaps, then, you will be more considerate of the feelings of others and with your words.
 * ← Michael Safyan (talk) 11:50, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Almost daily there are reports of settler attacks on Palestinians, here are some examples: Palestinian: Soldiers looked on as settlers assaulted me (July 6), Israeli police have arrested two Jewish settlers suspected of involvement in the beating of a Palestinian man (July 7), Settlers launch third round of homemade rockets at Palestinian villages (July 7), Israeli settlers fire crude rockets into West Bank Palestinian villages (July 9), Israeli settlers and army invade Ush Ghrab camp in Beit Sahour (July 11), Jewish settler arrested for firing rocket (July 13), Israeli settlers invade park in Beit Sahour, assault IMEMC Staff (July 14), Israeli settlers fire homemade rocket at West Bank villages (July 21), Jewish settlers fire rockets at Palestinian villages (July 21), Israeli settlers attack a house in Nablus City (July 23), Palestinian house set ablaze by settlers (July 28), Israeli settlers attack Burin village southern Nablus (July 28), Settlers attack, wound, two Palestinian workers near Jerusalem (July 28), The Israeli army and settlers attack a house in Jerusalem (July 30), Israeli settlers invade Osh Ghrab Public Park in Beit Sahour (July 30). You see these guys are even fireing rockets into Palestinian villages just like Hamas does to Sderot! As you see every day there are reports about settler attacks on Palestinians, eithe beating them up or actually killing them, cause as we know since the beginning of the war nearly 50 Palestinians have been murdered by the settlers. These settlers have violently expelled Palestinians from their lands and their homes to build their settlements there and eventhough not all the settlers actually take part in this "combat" (the Palestinians attacked and whose lands are stolen are civilians, they can't put up much of a fight), they are more or less responsable for it as they are the ones living on these stolen lands. Now what do you expect the Palestinians to do to these people who have violently taken their land away from them? Ofcourse they will attack them. Also I hear from other Israelis (other is not a reference to me but to settlers, I am Iranian) tha the settlers are all extremists and not like normal Israelis. Putting these in the same class as other civilians gives a wrong impression to people who see the figures and also I assume that those 236 killed includes many settlers who have been involved in these attacks. Kermanshahi (talk) 19:16, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What these individuals did is horrible, and I am glad they are being prosecuted for these crimes. That does not mean, however, that their actions are representative of the "settler" population as a whole. It would be no more accurate to say that all or even a majority of Palestinians are terrorists, than it would be to say that all or even the majority of "settlers" engage in this reprehensible behavior. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 06:01, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Since this discussion page is not a forum and since this discussion is bordering on soapboxing (both my comments and your comments), I am now ending this discussion. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 06:01, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

I would just like to question if some of the sources used in Kermanshahi's list are all considered reliable sources? My reasoning is that there is a lot of propaganda in the Arab press in relation to these things and quite a bit of evidence that some such episodes are not actually factual. Perhaps there should be (if there isn't already) a list of sources within the I/P conflict area that are essentially "certified" as being factual -- or I should rather say -- reliable? Tundrabuggy (talk) 13:59, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if that is really an issue here? Some of the reports are from sites like ynetnews.com and BBC news and if we copy and paste the article titles into google we can find the same (or very similar) reports on Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post and a number of International non Arab news sources. For example:Israeli settlers attack a house in Nablus City site:jpost.com. --Xagent86 (Talk | contribs) 08:38, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * So let's get back to subject, we have to mention in the infobox that of the 723 Israeli civilians killed, 236 are settlers. Kermanshahi (talk) 13:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No, we do not. Firstly, you have failed to provide ample evidence to support these numbers. Secondly, you have failed to prove the relevance of these individuals being "settlers." Please note that anecdotal "evidence" is not sufficient. Please keep in mind that those who were killed while in combat -- whether they were presently in the military or not -- were excluded from the list of civilians. Furthermore, please keep in mind that some of these so-called "settlers" who were violently murdered in terrorist attacks include women and young children. It is disgusting that you are suggesting that a pregnant woman and her four young children, a five year-old girl, and a nine month-old girl -- all of them murdered in Palestinian terror attacks -- be dismissed as "settlers" and treated as perpetrators rather than victims. I am very deeply offended by what you have said. More than I can express. Again, please give greater consideration to your words and how they can affect others. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 15:35, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) I don't have a problem with listing "236 Israeli settlers killed" as part of the "civilian" Israelis killed. The number is from our current source for casualty numbers http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp

As for classifying all settlers as combatants, then we would have to classify all Palestinians as combatants. People already do that anyway in their own minds. We don't need to slant the article either way. We have to respect WP:NPOV by putting out the info on both viewpoints in the form of X says Y. From reliable sources of course. See WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration/Links to reliable sources discussions.

As for the individual attacks by various settlers, they can, of course be written about in the article just as the various attacks by Palestinians are. We let people make up their own minds. We discuss the rocket attacks by Israeli settlers along with those by Palestinians. Wikipedia does not take sides. We describe the carnage done by both sides. That is the nature of war. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * You wrote that the "number is from our current source for casualty numbers"; however, nowhere does the term "settler" appear on the page. In fact, the way this is indicated on the page, it seems that the number of "236" indicates Israeli civilians who were killed, while in the West Bank or Gaza, by Palestinians. This figure could include Israelis passing through these areas who do not live there. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 19:02, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. If someone wants to go through all the individual listings there and count the number, then we could have a number for settlers. Or we could just list it the way B'Tselem does. We could break it down as 487 Israeli civilians killed in Israel, and 236 Israeli civilians killed in the Palestinian territories. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:33, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The figure might include a few Israelis killed while in the West Bank or Gaza but majority of them are most definetly settlers. As a matter of fact all these people are known by name and how they were killed so we can count exactly how many of them were settlers (a number that undoubtedly exceeds 200). Also you must note that there is not a single part of the article that even mentions the violence by settlers against Palestinians. Not to forget the rocket attacks, OK it's true they are on much smaller amounths than the rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel but they are still worth mentioning considering they are being done and with intent to kill civilians. Kermanshahi (talk) 20:46, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Here is some sourced info:
 * Israeli settlement - There can be found some info on violence that occurred before and during the Second Intifada. Violence (both from and against the settlers) during the Second Intifada could be summarized in the article here. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:48, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Let's not forget what they say: "Auschwitz teaches us that we cannot remain indifferent, that we cannot look the other way when atrocities take place, that we must always be ready to speak out against evil no matter where it takes place and no matter who the victims are." - Miles Lerman, Chairperson, United States Holocaust Memorial Council (1995) PRtalk 21:14, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Why would we remember that particular quote here? IronDuke  23:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Kermanshahi, if you want to add a section about attacks, carried out without permission of the military, by Israelis living in the West Bank and Gaza on Palestinian civilians, you may do so. Provided, of course, that the section cites reliable sources (that would, therefore, exclude Maan News and IMEMC which are partisan Palestinian sources. Preferably, Xinhua would be avoided, as well, in favor of BBC, CNN, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Reuters, Haaretz, YNet, etc. ). I object, however, to categorizing the victims of Palestinian terrorism as "settler" and "not settler" on the grounds that this categorization attempts to generalize the behavior of so-called "settlers" as a whole and attempts to demonize an entire population so that it seems that they deserved to be murdered. How would you like it if the Palestinian casualties were broken down to "sympathizes with terrorists" vs. "not sympathizes with terrorists"? According to polls conducted by the Pew Research Center, 70% of Palestinians "believe that suicide bombings against civilians can be often or sometimes justified". That said, it would be both insensitive and unencyclopedic to divide the casualty figures according to how they answered the poll question, even if sufficient data were available for such a breakdown. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 00:58, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Military history articles on Wikipedia break down the combatants by all kinds of characteristics. See the military history project. It is common to break down the casualties by all kinds of characteristics too. It is also common to analyze the degree of "collateral damage" and the attitudes of the combatants towards it. The Israelis have killed more civilians than the Palestinians. Those are the facts. Wikipedia just puts out the facts without slanting it. See WP:NPOV. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Military history articles break down combatants by all kinds of characteristics; however, these characteristics are deemed relevant. One would not see, for example, a breakdown of casualty figures by the color of their hair. Also, I would like to remind you that it is possible to introduce bias, even with just "the facts". For example, Israel has killed more civilians in total but fewer by percentage; that is the number of Palestinian civilian casualties divided by the total number of Palestinian casualties is smaller than the number of Israeli civilian casualties divided by the total number of Israeli casualties. The mentioning of some facts and not others, in addition to the way facts are presented, can bias the presentation. Applying this to the current discusion,... there are numerous ways to interpret the information; "Israelis living in settlements bear the brunt of Palestinian terror attacks" (the settlements isolate the rest of Israeli society from much of these brutal attacks) or "Palestinian militants target Israeli settlers, not ordinary Israelis" (these "militants" have made an ethical choice to target this "guilty" population while sparing the innocent, and there would be fewer attacks without the presence of this "guilty" population). Do you see how this can be presented in multiple ways? I suppose the exact way the information is presented on the B'Tselem page is ok; however, I fail to see how the added complexity would benefit the article or the reader experience. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 02:20, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Demonising an entire population? Well it isn't as if these people had no choice. They themsefles went there and violently took land away from defenceless Palestinians building their houses on it, it's not like they're innocent or something... When they do this Palestinian fighters will ofcourse retaliate by trying to kill them and get the land back for their people. There is a difference between innocent people who were just killed in their houses or in a bus, ect. by suicide bombers and people who have forcefully stolen land and were killed occupying it. Kermanshahi (talk) 09:37, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Al Durra "supposedly killed"
User:Benjil has been changing the caption to the Muhammad al Durrah photo, claiming in their edit summaries that the addition of the qualification "supposedly" is justified in the light of the latest verdict in an ongoing French libel case brought by France 2 against Philippe Karsenty. This is a) a simplistic interpretation of the court verdict; b) original research in that it is one editor's interpretation of the court ruling; and c) hardly proper language for an encyclopedia, in that "supposedly" is usually said with a knowing wink to the effect that "it's not true, you know". Please note there has been a huge debate about this at the main Al Durra talk page, and editors might be better off reviewing that (if they can cope with it) before spreading the dispute elsewhere. Thanks. --Nickhh (talk) 15:20, 29 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with Nickhh that edit-warring about this is not the right way to proceed. I have cautioned Benjil, and ask all editors to cease reverts, and instead engage in discussion about this issue, either here or at Talk:Muhammad al-Durrah. Everyone is welcome to change the text of other editors, but no more reverts. Thanks, Elonka 01:47, 30 June 2008 (UTC)


 * The verdict of the court says that Karsenty presented a "coherent body of evidence," although the hoax could not be definitively proven. There is no "original research" here, but maybe you don't understand French. This just means that the hoax theory is legitimate. It could be wrong, I have no idea about what really happened there. Some talks of an investigation commission to clear this issue out once and for all. So, the article should indicate the view that the Al Durra incident could be a hoax like there has been many others staged by the Palestinians during the Second Intifada. Benjil (talk) 06:33, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * There are a number of ways that a compromise change could be made. For example, everything following "12-year-old Palestinian Muhammad al-Durrah [who] became an icon of the Palestinian uprising in 2000" could be dropped. Or "controversies continue" without a description, could be added - since the controversies include more than merely whether he was killed in the crossfire or not. Another compromise could include that he was "reported killed." Tundrabuggy (talk) 12:32, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, and have implemented this suggestion, to match the one in the Muhammad al Durrah article. NoCal100 (talk) 17:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Could we please restore some balance to this page?
When I came across this page, there was not a single photo of a suicide bombing, which - in terms of the infliction of casualties - was the number one tactic used by Palestinian combatants. However, for some reason, there were TWO photos of Israeli bulldozers - which (although iconic) account for a very small fraction of casualties on the Palestinian side. I therefore included a photo of a suicide bombing outside Hadera, in Israel.

The photos of this article (or lack thereof) give the impression that this article is being used to bring weight to one side's position against another's, and therefore violate the NPOV. Can we please change this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Finlaggen (talk • contribs) 18:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * What a coincidence, I came here to say the exact same thing. Finlaggen, I completely agree. There are serious issues of balance with regard to the images in this article. The images of Israeli weaponry should be balanced with images of Palestinian weaponry. Similarly, the image of Al-Durrah, a Palestinian victim, should be balanced with an image of an Israeli victim. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 05:12, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would also like to ask, where are the articles that declare Saddam Hussein was paying up to $25K to the families of Palastenian martyrs (Suicide bombers)? There isn't even a mention of this in the entire article.  Is that because it's not considered a truth or what?  Just asking! (Crisales (talk) 03:19, 10 September 2008 (UTC))
 * There are serious issues of balance with regard to every written section.
 * One could start by eliminating
 * 'On September 27, Sgt. David Biri was killed;[14] some Israeli sources view this as the start of the Intifada.[15]'


 * 'Some sources', turn out to be a private opinion of Michael Bard, for which there appears to be no independent backing (though he is not fringe, this is an extreme fringe viewpoint of one). It is patently ridiculous, as is patently POV the framing of the initial outbreak by citing two Israeli victims, Biri the day before Sharon's walk, and concluding the paragraph with the shooting of Yosef Tabeja. Message, unintended nor not: 'Over a week, 1900 odd Palestinians, none with identifiable names, an anonymous mob of folks, were wounded or killed, but 'they' started it with killing David Biri, and finished the period by murdering Yosef Tabeja.Nishidani (talk) 14:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Unless this can be justified, I'll remove both within a few days.Nishidani (talk) 14:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It already is justified. The killing of the Israeli soldier the day before Sharon's visit -- as well as the killing of the Israeli policeman by the Palestinian policeman the day of the visit, which isn't even mentioned in the article -- are relevant regardless of whether they are viewed as actually being "part" of the intifada.  This definitely should not be removed, and should in fact be expanded to include a better description of the killing of Biri and to include the other incident.  As for viewing these incidents as "the start of the intifada", the statement is appropriately qualified with the words "some Israeli sources say", and it is sourced.  It is an opinion and is sourced as such.  Personally I wouldn't have a problem if you want to change "say" to "claim", although some others might disagree and it might "violate" some "guideline" somewhere.  But the material in question definitely should not be removed.  6SJ7 (talk) 16:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Nishidani, this viewpoint is indeed notable. One should keep in mind that as Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Mitchell Bard's statements represent far more than his own opinion. Furthermore, you will find statements to the same effect on the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) website. Hence this viewpoint is the "official" Israeli viewpoint. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 16:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Neither of you has addressed the problem. Young people speak of weasel words, 'some' referenced by a single remark by Mitchel Bard, an economist with a Phd in polscience employed in advocacy, is not adequate for justifying what is a fringe view. The academic literature that has seriously analysed this phenomenon does not cite with any frequency this kind of personal judgement by Bard. Michael tells me I'll find 'statements to the same effect' at the MFa website. Well, it's not my job, Michael, to do your homework and justify 'some'. Produce these references from MFA that back Bard's remark, and we'll see.


 * A statement by the Israeli Ambassador to the UN to the UN Security Council, found on the MFA website, explicitly mentions the Sept 27th slaying in connection with the start of the Second Intifada. In addition to mentioning the September 27th killing, the statement offers September 13th as an alternative start date to the violence of the Second Intifada :
 * "...The events of last few days represent the latest and most severe developments in a wave of violence that has been building in recent weeks. Though some are inclined to assign exclusive responsibility to Israel for these acts of provocation, the present Palestinian escalation dates back to well before the Temple Mount disturbances, when, on 13 September, stones and Molotov cocktails were thrown at Israeli positions in the vicinity of the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. This was followed by a number of increasingly violent incidents, including the killing of an Israeli soldier by a roadside bomb near Netzarim on September 27..."


 * Another excerpt from the MFA website agrees with Mitchell Bard's characterization of the Second Intifada as having started when Yassir Arafat walked out on peace negotiations at Camp David :
 * "'The wave of terrorism that began in September 2000 is the direct result of a strategic Palestinian decision to use violence - rather than negotiation - as the primary means to advance their agenda. Despite Palestinian claims to the contrary, Israel's so-called 'occupation' of the territories is not the true cause of the terrorism, as negotiations could have peacefully resolved all aspects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict well before the violence started.'"
 * "'When the wave of violence and terrorism began in September 2000, the Palestinians originally claimed that it was a spontaneous reaction to the visit of then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount. However, later statements by Palestinian leaders in the Arab-language media contradicted this assertion. Neither did the report issued by the Mitchell Committee, composed of American and European leaders, give support to the earlier Palestinian claim. Consequently, Palestinian spokespersons changed their tactics and instead began to assert that the violence was a response to Israel's 'occupation' of the West Bank and Gaza.'"
 * "'This claim ignores events both before and after 1967 (when Israel came into control of the territories during a war of self-defense) that prove that the 'occupation' is not the true cause of Palestinian terrorism. Not only did Palestinian terrorism precede Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza; it has often hit brutally at those moments, as in 1994-1996, when the peace process was making the greatest progress. The history of Palestinian terrorism makes it abundantly clear that the terrorists are not opposing Israel's presence in the territories they are opposed to making any kind of peace with Israel.'"
 * "Indeed, the current wave of terrorism began shortly after intense high-level negotiations were conducted to find a permanent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In July 2000, a Middle East peace summit was held at Camp David, hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton and attended by Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak. During the summit, Israel expressed its willingness to make far-reaching and unprecedented compromises in order to arrive at a workable, enduring agreement. However, Yasser Arafat chose to break off the negotiations without even offering any proposals of his own. Consequently, the summit adjourned with President Clinton placing the blame for its failure squarely at Arafat's feet."


 * Both Mitchell G. Bard and the MFA agree that the Second Intifada began when Yassir Arafat walked out on the peace negotiations at Camp David. Indeed, this is the "official" Israeli position (indeed the publication "The Second Intifada: Background and Causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" by Jeremy Pressman confirms that this is indeed the Israeli "Conventional Wisdom"). Both offer alternative start dates for the violence of the Second Intifada (not necessarily the same as the start date for the Second Intifada), and both mention the Sept 27th murder of Sgt. Biri (although neither mention Sgt. Biri by name) as one such start date. Since Sgt. David Biri is the only victim of the Second Intifada listed on Sept 27th, though, it is safe to assume that he is the one being referenced. Having now "done my homework", I reiterate that the viewpoint has been expressed by official Israeli sources and conclude that this viewpoint is, indeed, notable. QED. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 22:36, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * 6SJ7. If you think an article on an historical phenomenon of this complexity requires that we expand on Biri's death, then you lack perspective. That is an open invitation to cram in details of innumerable Palestinian casualties, giving names, referring to village monuments to many groups of people killed among that people in the leadup etc.


 * Generally, if you wish to write a quality article, you should work with books. These official statements, and points of view by government-connected officials or spokesmen of both sides have scant relevance to historical judgement, which has more of an investment in the principles underwriting Wiki, NPOV. There are polemical or sided accounts even there, but serious scholars would not accept that a Biri or whoever is a factor in this, any more than one or two people killed on the eve of the 1948 war were significant for the precipitation of events. If Biri is in, then any one of a number of Palestinians killed before Sharon's visit are also in, which would be inappropriate.


 * Neither of you can explain to me why the 1900 dead and wounded Palestinians are anonymous statistics bracketed strategically between the names of two specific Israelis who also died. One used to learn to sight this kind of elementary poving of a representation of 'facts' in the first semester of any University course in history. It is just not on.Nishidani (talk) 17:12, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Nishidani, you are entitled to your opinion, but you should not remove the material in question. 6SJ7 (talk) 20:42, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * We are all entitled to our opinions, entitled to edit as we see fit. Unlike many I prefer to discuss my proposals at length, where they are forseeably 'controversial' (this one is commonsensical), on the talk page before proceeding. If I cannot obtain an intelligent reply based on wiki criteria, and general standards of quality composition, I proceed to edit with the same liberty that guided whoever, without consensus, made the poor edit I perceive, and object to. Remember this is a B-grade article, and it is not a comfortable feeling to fiddle around with mediocre pages. One is obliged to make an effort to bring it at least up to GA snuff Nishidani (talk) 20:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the fact that you are discussing your proposals before editing the article. That being said, you received a lengthy, detailed and intelligent reply from at least 2 editors who oppose your proposal. You may disagree with them, but please don't insult them by suggesting, or insinuating, that their well thought-out response is not an "intelligent reply", or using condescending language. It is clear that your proposed change has no consensus. Please work on this page to obtain such a consensus, and be reminded that this page is within the scope of the ArbCom I-P sanctions. Canadian Monkey (talk) 23:41, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Nishidani, please respect WP:NPOV, which allows for multiple opinions. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 00:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I am still waiting for someone to supply me, not with multiple 'opinions' but multiple Reliable Sources, on an event which has been intensively studied, which says Sergeant Biri's death marked the beginning of the Second Intifada.Nishidani (talk) 17:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

June 19, 2008 Gaza Truce
Maybe someone could email B'Tselem and ask them to post a page of casualties through June 19, 2008. I think that the Intifada may be over with the Gaza Truce. I don't know. Maybe someone can tell me what other reliable sources think of this, and cite that info in the article.

Here are some useful links:
 * http://www.google.com/search?q=Gaza+Truce
 * http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/994774.html --Timeshifter (talk) 14:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Image caption for Image:AlDurrah2.jpg
User:NoCal100 is changing the longterm stable image caption for Muhammad al-Durrah - Image:AlDurrah2.jpg without getting requested consensus. See: and

One of his edit summaries is "make caption consistent with the one at Muhammad al-Durrah - it is disputed if he is dead at all". --Timeshifter (talk) 17:46, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You are refereed to the most recent discussion on this topic, where the latest contributors were in favor of shortening the caption, dropping everything after that statement that says this is an iconic scene. See and . It seems the consensus is the opposite of what you claim. NoCal100 (talk) 18:07, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Not everything is discussed on this talk page. The image caption was stable for a long time before you changed it. The talk section that you refer to was ignored by most people after the image caption stabilized. Are you aware of this?: WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration. It is up to you to convince others before insisting on controversial changes. Anybody can make minor changes. Be bold. But once reverted you should discuss things here, instead of putting back controversial info. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:25, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I am discussing things here. I am pointing you to the most recent discussion in this page, which indicates a preference for the shorter caption, which is also used for this image elsewhere on Wikipedia. If you want to make a case for your version, let's hear it. NoCal100 (talk) 19:39, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

The text runs:

"'12-year-old Palestinian Muhammad al-Durrah became an icon of the Palestinian uprising in 2000 when he was killed on September 30, 2008 after being caught in a crossfire. Controversies continue over whether Palestinians or the Israeli Defense Forces killed him.'"

Some suggestions have been made for shortening it. Thje date 2008 is a mistake, I will correct it. The name is linked, and the curious reader can use this to go to the details on that page. Nishidani (talk) 21:26, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest

"'Muhammad al-Durrah, a Palestinian boy, became an icon of the uprising when he died after being caught in crossfire on September 30, 2000.'"

The controversies and language of the other page should not be repeated here. The link in the name will clarify the controversy and its details. It is not controversial to say he died, unless some extraordinary case of him being hidden for eight years becomes part of the hoax hypothesis. Nishidani (talk) 21:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The hoax hypothesis, in some versions of it, does hold that he was not killed. The recent French trial explicitly stated (what has been obvious for all for quite some time), that the iconic scene does not show him being killed. Thus, a better caption would be the one currently in the Al Durrah article, which states this is an iconic scene, who shot it, but refrains from stating that he is dead, which is not an uncontroversial fact. NoCal100 (talk) 21:42, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately NoCal is right - some versions of this bizarre claim do indeed suggest that, like Elvis, he has been alive all these years. And, as you say Nishidani, therefore kept hidden from the world somehow, while 101 people from the Palestinian territories to Jordan, including all his relatives and various medical personnel (and possibly even the King of Jordan) have kept quiet about the role they played in all this and what they know about this cover-up. NoCal is on less sure ground when they endeavour to explain for the rest of us what the French court ruled. As for the text suggested, I'd be fine with it, although think it should more explicitly say he "was killed" rather than simply died. Someone shot him, even if it's not clear who it was. --Nickhh (talk) 22:05, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If NoCal wants to source the Mohammad al-Durrah page, an edit to leave in the air any innuendo that he may not have died, he'd better start by rereading line 1, i.e. Mohammad al-Durrah (1988-2000). Nishidani (talk) 22:27, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah. You may not be aware that one editor tried to remove the date of death a couple of months ago, precisely because of their belief in the hoax theory. I kid you not. --Nickhh (talk) 22:42, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * About that page as opposed to what is on it, I can believe anything! It has 'iconic' status for what can happen in wiki when commonsense editing is overrun by the hermeneutics of suspicion.Nishidani (talk) 22:45, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

To say that he wasn't killed is ridiculous. From Muhammad al-Durrah:


 * An ambulance took the boy and his father to the nearby Shifa hospital in Gaza, where Muhammad was pronounced dead on arrival.[42] There were conflicting reports on the injuries sustained by the two. Muhammad was reported to have been shot four times,[43] though other reports stated that the pathologist had identified three injuries: two lethal wounds to the chest and a "relatively harmless" leg injury.[44] His father spoke of Muhammad being struck in the knee and back.[39] Although no autopsy was performed, doctors who examined the boy's body said that he had been shot from the front in the upper abdomen and the injury to his back that his father had seen was in fact an exit wound.[45] The deaths of al-Durrah, an ambulance driver and a Palestinian policeman were first reported by Shifa hospital;[26] a further thirty people, including six Palestinian policemen, were reported injured in the gun battle at the junction.[46] Muhammad was buried before sundown, in accordance with Muslim tradition, in an emotional public funeral at the Bureij camp in which his body was displayed wrapped in a Palestinian flag.[19] The funeral was attended by thousands of mourners and was televised to millions more.[44]

As long as the image caption does not specify who killed him, then it is an accurate image caption. "Crossfire" and "killed" are the accurate terms to use in the image caption. Those are the key terms that have long been in this image caption. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think one need refer in the caption to the controversies, but only because I don't think the average reader is stupid, clicks on links, and, in general, in articles, as opposed to talk pages where I garrule, I prefer terseness.Nishidani (talk) 22:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * How about this: 12-year-old Palestinian Muhammad al-Durrah became an icon of the Palestinian uprising in 2000 when he was killed on September 30, 2000 in a crossfire between Palestinians and the Israeli Defense Forces. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

More Unbalance - This Article is Disgustingly POV
Now the lead paragraph states that the Second Intifada was triggered by Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, using an Israeli government source to support it, despite the fact that other Israeli government sources (e.g. ) contradict this claim. The source which was introduced belongs in the section on Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, and the narrative that the Second Intifada began with Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount should certainly be mentioned; however, it does not belong in the lead paragraph, and it should not be mentioned to the exclusion of other narratives. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 20:49, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Michael, until you show some interest in reading the substantial academic literature, as opposed to internet-googled pages by partisans in a propaganda war, making remarks like this is pointless. I agree that the page is hopelessly POV, precisely however because poor sourcing threads its way through much of it. Government documents are political primary documents, and not, as Wikipedia requests, quality secondary sources by qualified analysts or researchers. Nishidani (talk) 20:53, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * "Government documents are political primary documents, and not, as Wikipedia requests, quality secondary sources by qualified analysts or researchers." Precisely. Which is why neither document ought to appear in the lead. At the very least, if this statement is to remain, it should be alternatively sourced. However, either way, there should be some sort of qualification which indicates that there are dissenting points-of-view which do not agree that Ariel Sharon's visit triggered the Second Intifada. As it stands, the lead is misleading in that it implies that there is 100% agreement that Ariel Sharon's visit was responsible for the Second Intifada and that even the Israeli government agrees with this view. ← Michael Safyan (talk) 22:48, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you will find 20 academic sources to 1 for Sharon's walk as the key incident triggering or precipitating the second uprising. I can find, after looking for several months, only one tiny note in one respectable book, remarking on Sergeant Biri, and that merely notes his death, and not that as a key event in the intifada's outbreak. One must distinguish the walk, after which 1900 Palestinians were shot dead or wounded in 5 days, from any isolated event preceding that walk which may or may not have suggested an uprising was in the air, but there is no shadow of a doubt that after the walk and the mass shootings, the Intifada or uprising as we know it broke out into a chronic state of bitter revolt and repression. Perhaps you should get some book sources (they exist) that specifically challenge the Sharon walk as trigger consensus? That would facilitate a discussion useful for clarifying our differences.Nishidani (talk) 23:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * As far as I am aware, the Sharon visit is cited as a primary cause of the Intifada in most analysis. Of course it is not possible to state that it definitively was the trigger (no chain of causation is ever that simple, nor would it be possible to ever extract sufficient evidence even if it were the case), but I'd be opposed to cutting that out of the lead altogether simply because a government website says it's not the case. --Nickhh (talk) 22:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The intro uses the word "triggered". I think that is accurate. It does not say "caused" the Intifada. I think the cause of the continuation of the violence for years was the failure of the Taba Summit in January 2001. There are reliable sources for this, I believe. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:29, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Every major source I know of agrees that the visit triggered the uprising. The causes were manifold, but that was the tipping point. Government declarations are not of much use except in understanding a political position. Secondary sources should everywhere be the main sources for any wiki historical narration, and by this I mean preferably books. Nishidani (talk) 22:36, 30 October 2008 (UTC)


 * My language was a little sloppy in my first sentence. In saying "primary cause" I was trying to suggest "immediate cause", ie the trigger/catalyst, rather than "main cause". The causes go much deeper of course than one man taking a stroll, even if to a problematic and symbolic place. As I said, in my view, the current "triggered" wording is more or less OK, and seems to be the standard analysis. --Nickhh (talk) 22:38, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Please review the findings of the Mitchell report: "The Sharon visit did not cause the 'Al-Aqsa Intifada.' But it was poorly timed and the provocative effect should have been foreseen; indeed it was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited." Please also review the December 2000 statement by Imad Falouji, the PA Communications Minister at the time, where he states that the Intifada "was carefully planned since the return of the President (Yasser Arafat) from Camp David negotiations.('PA: Intifada Was Planned', The Jewish Week, (2000-12-20).)" Please also review WP:NPOV. Whether or not the Sharon visit triggered the 2nd intifada is disputed, therefore we don't state one viewpoint as fact, and particular not in the first paragraph. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 01:27, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, one cannot correct a statement that fundamentally violates WP:NPOV by adding another source. Since the cause of the intifada is disputed, one cannot simply put one POV in the lede. The discussion of cause will have to wait for a more nuanced discussion in the article itself. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 02:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank the Lord that you've finally understood this principle. It could have saved us all a lot of time over at the Hamas page when everyone was discussing the "best known for suicide bombings .." phrasing in the lead a while back, and I and others were having to point out that there was no consensus for this among the sources, even among those being posted supposedly in support of it. Although as it happens here there seems to be more of a consensus - the argument is not that the visit caused the intifada, but that it provided a trigger or spark. Even Mitchell acknowledges this when it says "the provocative effect should have been foreseen", equally the fact that there may have been some pre-planning (and I make no judgement here on the accuracy of those reports) does not mean that the visit, and perhaps more significantly the Palestinian casualties that followed in the surrounding protests, was not the final trigger. Having said all that, it probably would be better to simply say the Intifada followed the visit, and then note that most analysis treats it as a key factor in triggering the violence. Which is kind of where the text is now by the look of it.--Nickhh (talk) 09:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, except for the fact that you weren't actually able to find sources that said they were best known for anything else, despite repeated requests you do so. Please make more accurate statements and analogies in the future. Thanks. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 03:46, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I seem to recall finding plenty of sources that said for example that Hamas used to be best known, or was only best known in the West for suicide bombings, mostly among the very sources that were being used to supposedly back the misleading and unqualified text that was in the lead. That's all that was needed to show that the wording was taking more out of the sources than was there. But never mind, that was a different debate of course, even if the problem of triumphalist but misleading source-stacking and cherry-picking crops up with alarming regularity on I-P pages. I'll continue to make wholly accurate analogies when I see it happening. Thanks. --Nickhh (talk) 10:54, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Do you recall finding any sources saying they were best known for anything else? As for making wholly accurate analogies, I welcome them, and eagerly look forward to your first. Let me know when you make it. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 22:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually no, but that was never the point, as I've tried to point out twice now. As for your second and third sentences, please comment on content not contributors (copyright, surely). And make some sense while you're doing it, surely more important? --Nickhh (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Except that that actually was the point, as was pointed out then, and now. There were no sources explicitly contradicting the claim that Hamas was best known for suicide bombings, but there are sources explicitly contradicting the claim that the Second Intifada was caused by the Sharon visit; thus the analogy fails, and quite badly. Regarding the rest of your statement, Comment on content, not on the contributor. Jayjg <small style="color:darkgreen;">(talk) 00:35, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I think what Nickhh is getting at is that "contradiction" needn't take the form "Hamas is best known for X" (where X is something other than suicide bombings), and that sources (including those used for that article) indeed provide contradiction of another, equally valid sort. Regarding this article, the debate as I understand it was never over whether the Sharon visit "caused" the second intifada, which is a strawman, but rather whether it "triggered" it, or in Michael Safyan's synonymous formulation, "precipitated" it, which is not seriously disputed.--G-Dett (talk) 01:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "The Sharon visit did not cause the "Al-Aqsa Intifada." From the Mitchell Report. Can't really get any clearer than that. Also not sure what Hamas has to do with this, or why someone would bring up an argument that failed badly there as some sort of "analogy" here. <Shrug.>  IronDuke  04:11, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * IronDuke, who are you arguing with? Did you read the comment of mine that you're "responding" to?  Which editor(s) on this page, and which real-life reliable source(s), argue that the Sharon visit caused the second Intifada?  For the life of me, I don't know who you're talking to or what you're trying to tell them.--G-Dett (talk) 04:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought we'd all been rather clear about the point, never mind. Maybe people really don't read what their interlocutors say here before posting their own observations and body gestures. Nor for example was I trying to bring in a "failed" argument from the Hamas page - in fact I was merely asserting the simple policy requirement which says that WP text should match up with what sources say and avoid going beyond whatever consensus might be in those sources, or giving undue weight to some interpretations over others. I was actually agreeing with what Jayjg was saying about that as a matter of basic principle (it's hard to disagree with it of course). I did however then make the point that in my view that general principle had not been followed or applied properly on the Hamas page, that's all. I acknowledged it was a separate debate, but I thought the comparison was fair, and raised legitimate, broader issues about consistency. Nowhere did I try to suggest that the details of that debate were relevant to this issue. --Nickhh (talk) 16:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh G-d, it appears IronDuke has gone ahead and inserted this strawman into the article. Here is the fuller context of what he's quoting from the Mitchell Report, the bolded part representing what he's elided: The Sharon visit did not cause the "Al-Aqsa Intifada." '''But it was poorly timed and the provocative effect should have been foreseen; indeed it was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited. More significant were the events that followed: the decision of the Israeli police on September 29 to use lethal means against the Palestinian demonstrators; and the subsequent failure, as noted above, of either party to exercise restraint.''' And this is indeed the overwhelming consensus. The Sharon visit was a provocation that triggered (not "caused") the second intifada; it was the "match that lit the powder keg" as a million journalists would go on to write.

Duke, I'm happy you're no longer writing that the Mitchell Report found that the PA had "planned" the second intifada, since the report explicitly says it found no "persuasive evidence" of that. But if your previous edit was simply false, your current selective presentation is still misleading, addressing itself to what is in 2008 a strawman argument. If the lead is going to cite the Mitchell Report saying the Sharon visit wasn't the cause – and I don't know why it should, since no one thinks or says this – then it's going to have to also cite it saying it was a relevant provocation, since that is the main point, on which there is virtually universal consensus.--G-Dett (talk) 05:06, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Ditto that thought; if the ref is used, it should be the whole thought expressed. CasualObserver&#39;48 (talk) 07:28, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * And now the para just reads slightly oddly. It now has text suggesting that the visit was not the cause, with no preceding text ever having asserted that it was (naturally, as per various comments above). --Nickhh (talk) 16:55, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah OK. While we've all been wittering away, others have gone and done some tidying up. Hopefully all sorted. I'm sure it's better to simply say that the first major clashes followed the visit, and we can leave any detailed debate about triggers and causes until later on. --Nickhh (talk) 10:24, 4 November 2008 (UTC)