User talk:Jove Is Mad

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Sent to Elian August 3 2005: Comments on your Wikiproject approach to the Arab-Israel conflict.
I also put this on your German user page. Elian, I just visited your arab-israeli conflict wikiproject proposal in your user space, and I had some POV concerns with what you proposed. These are the criticisms I added at the bottom of your proposal:


 * I don't know if my comments are welcome as a non-project-member, but Elian, you suggest we "Never try in your article to charge up deads/injured/terrible actions of one side against the deads/injured/terrible actions of the other side" but in a conflict where the deaths are (overall) about 90% Palestinian and (since 2001) 75% Palestinian, (and in a conflict, moreover, where popular perception of those statistics is completely reversed) isn't that a profoundly POV principle to adopt? --joveis 20:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I would also argue that, far from being characterizable as a "loaded word extensively used in Palestinian P.R.-speak," "The Occupied Terriories" is both the standard terminology for the West Bank and Gaza used in UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, and it is also the most commonly used means in English to refer to the West Bank and Gaza. It's fair and necessary to repeatedly note that Israel disputes the term, but isn't it quite POV to pick an Israel-friendly term like "Palestinian territories" when it's almost never the term used in discussion, within the language or globally?  Besides, if you refer only to the Occupied Territories (and not all of historical Palestine) as the "Palestinian Territories," aren't you being deliberately POV on the question of Palestinian right of return to Israel, with the issues of reparations and repatriation which that involves? --joveis 20:33, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

West Bank article
Joe, on the West_bank talk page I told Jayjg:

The newer polls you cite (there would have been only one poll but two more were conducted, your source suggests, because the first was too high) do average to about 32%, but they were answers to an "either/or" question: Should Israel pull out of Gaza or expel the Palestinians? with some 30% choosing one approach and some 30% choosing the other and 40% giving no answer. The poll I cited from 2002 merely asked: would you approve of Palestinian transfer? with no other multiple choice options. Consequently, it's the more reliable figure. Also, it's the only one applicable to the West Bank, since the poll you cite concerned Gaza, not the Occupied Territories as a whole. But: I pick my battles. --joveis 21:18, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

But I really didn't get a response. Do you agree with me that the 2002 Jaffe center poll on Palestinian transfer, for reasons cited above, is more relevant than the two-polls-cherrypicked-from-three, dealing entirely with Gaza and NOT the West Bank, which Jayjg finds acceptable for the West Bank page? Would you support introduction of more inclusive, less POV language like "(differently-conducted polls from 2002 and 2005 (both still cited) returned totals of either 45% or 30% of Israelis favoring Palestinian transfer)." If so, would you as a more seasoned editor introduce such language? I'll back you up. Feel free to respond to me on my talk page. --joveis 22:02, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I personally didn't cite a poll: I just changed the text to more accurately reflect the content of a citation it already linked to. What you say sounds reasonable, but I bet there is a lot of good polling data on Israeli attitudes on this question. I think this may merit several citations, a statement of the range of numbers that have shown up in polls depending on wording, and perhaps a "note" near the bottom of the article (using Template:ref and Template:note) listing what each cited source says. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:23, August 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * I think it's sufficient to just link to the sites where we got the poll data. Brevity is important.  I'm going to introduce my change to the West Bank page.  We can edit from there as more or better data becomes available. I doubt there'll be much controversy, as it's an incredible stretch to include the very questionable Gaza Strip data from 2005 at in a West Bank article at all.  This is a compromise position and I don't forsee Jayjg starting an edit war. I'm going to quote this conversation on the West Bank talk page, and then make the change. --joveis 23:03, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

3.5 year old polls still not relevant. Jayjg (talk) 23:05, 5 August 2005 (UTC)