Wikipedia:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration

Our goals
Known as the "world's most intractable conflict", much of the fighting has been over historical narratives. The two sides' histories hardly intertwine and respected scholars and journalists often disagree.

As the world's primary open source publication on the topic, our encyclopedia has the opportunity to become the subject's most balanced reference point, with a truly bilateral narrative.

We encourage anyone with an interest in the Middle East and a passion for neutrality to help. We can't guarantee that no one will bite; long memories, deeply ingrained emotions and a Mediterranean climate mean things can get hotheaded.

A persistent focus on clarity, neutrality and verifiability will leave contributors with the satisfaction of helping remove barriers between two peoples fact by fact, one at a time, perhaps equivalent to a "truth and reconciliation commission".

Help us build a single encyclopaedic narrative, and mutual understanding and trust.

Scholarly precedents of collaboration
Below is a chronological list of precedent scholarly collaboration projects in the Israel Palestine arena. These works compare the Israeli and Palestinian narratives with respect to the conflict and the broader history of the region. For the avoidance of doubt, our goal in wikipedia is different – rather than showing both narratives side-by-side, we are working to produce a single narrative combining both viewpoints. However, the list below is intended to provide guidance and inspiration to members of our wikiproject.


 * Rafi Nets-Zehngut (2013), Palestinians and Israelis Collaborate in Addressing the Historical Narratives of their Conflict, in "Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC"
 * The Israel Palestine Project (2013), Israel and Palestine: A Common Historical Narrative
 * . Also summarised here
 * Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) (2003), Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative
 * Deborah L. Flick (2002), Toward Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom (2002), Truth Against Truth: A Completely Different Look at the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * . Also summarised here
 * Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) (2003), Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative
 * Deborah L. Flick (2002), Toward Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom (2002), Truth Against Truth: A Completely Different Look at the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * . Also summarised here
 * Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME) (2003), Learning Each Other's Historical Narrative
 * Deborah L. Flick (2002), Toward Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom (2002), Truth Against Truth: A Completely Different Look at the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * Deborah L. Flick (2002), Toward Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
 * Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom (2002), Truth Against Truth: A Completely Different Look at the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Collaboration and Monitoring
This Wikiproject's talk page is the primary area used for discussing how to improve the project and discussing issues for discussion at specific articles. New editors are encouraged to review the archives linked on the right hand side of the talk page to gain familiarity with past discussions.

Articles within scope
All articles covered by the Palestine-Israel Arbitration at WP:ARBPIA are in the scope of this project. ARBPIA is described in more detail in the section below.

Watchlist Recent changes on articles within the scope of this project can be found using this | external watchlist.

Scale  Below is a scale of the five articles in our ambit with the most multiple edits.

Article alerts Below is listing of the relevant articles undergoing formal Wikipedia discussion processes:

Adding articles in scope
Adding either WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration or ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement on talk pages of articles where project editors are active will add the article to Category:WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration articles making it eligible to be added to the various monitoring tools above.

IRC channel
In Wikipedia we try to keep our collaborations transparent and try to minimize private emails and email lists, instead relying on more open forums like the talk pages of this project and the facilities available through through dispute resolution, including the various Wikipedia notice boards. We have created a public IRC channel for discussions at on the freenode server. To arrange a specific discussion drop a note on this project's talk page to arrange time and date. For more information see the Wikipedia IRC page.

ARBPIA sanctions
All editors in this area are advised to be aware of the editing sanctions in force.

Disputes regards Israel Palestine articles had become so frequent a problem that a Wikipedia arbitration process was begun in 2008. Further arbitration processes took place in 2009 and 2015. These processes included user descriptions of the problems and arbitrators' final decisions regarding the conflict: remedies (discretionary sanctions of blocks, bans, etc. by uninvolved administrators, a working group and reminding and counseling editors) and enforcement (logging of notifications, blocks and bans on users who have engaged in problematic editing on Israel-Palestine issues).

The primary sanctions which resulted from these arbitrations are summarized in the table below.

Multi-article consensus
Some discussions have reached consensus on matters which apply widely across a number of articles:
 * WP:WESTBANK naming convention (per ARBPIA2 above)

Dealing with disputes and incidents
A key purpose of this collaboration project is to create a more hospitable editing environment for Category:Israeli–Palestinian conflict related topics, including through a) actively seeking the cooperation of people who are uninvolved or hold strong and differing points of views as specified under membership and b) preventing and resolving disputes about the application of Wikipedia policies to these articles. We provide various tools below to facilitate the project.

The following advice should be considered in the first instance:
 * WP:TALK: Content disputes at specific articles, or similar problems with Israeli-Palestinian issues, typically deserve a thorough discussion on an article's talk page and are best resolved in consensus among all participants.
 * WP:COOL: Despite strong emotions, there are several ways to get your point across while making it easy for people to stay cool. See Staying cool when the editing gets hot.
 * WP:DISCFAIL: If other editors are not engaging in discussion, see the guidance at Responding to a failure to discuss.
 * WP:DR: If this does not resolve the issue, see the list of other remedies at WP:Dispute Resolution. Seeking outside help from neutral editors often is the best way to resolve disputes. One of the Dispute Resolution remedies is to refer issues to noticeboards and there are a number on issues like reliable sources, point of views, biographies, etc. See See Noticeboard list. There is also a notice board on Ethnic and cultural conflicts. Notice boards on Palestine-related topics and Israel-related topics also exist.

If you need help in a case of alleged serious incidents (name calling or harassment) or violations of policy regarding Palestine-Israel editing issues, including possible implementation of sanctions against editors, you may go to Wikipedia Arbitration Enforcement because this issue already was dealt with under the 2008 Palestine-Israel articles arbitration. See that page's Notification log and  Log of Blocks and Bans for examples of successfully mounted complaints. Remember blocks and other sanctions against other editors are intended to discourage or stop disruption; they are not intended to be punitive. If you are not quite ready to report incidents to Arbitration Enforcement, the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents lists places to report persistent vandalism or spamming, impolite or uncivil communications with other editors, edit warring and other incidents. When citing or reporting alleged incidents or violations of policy, please keep the following in mind:
 * When criticising particular edits, comment on the content and not identity of the contributor. Aside from the fact that attempting to challenge a particular argument by challenging the person who offered the argument constitutes a logical fallacy, it is likely to be a violation of WP:NPA.
 * Before making accusations that an editor has violated a certain policy or guideline, be sure that you are familiar with the policy or guideline, and are aware of how particular terms are defined and applied. If you have doubts, please contact another editor or an administrator for clarification.
 * Avoid speculating about the intent of editors and try to assume good faith. The latter part of a sentence that starts with "His/her additions violate WP:NOR and WP:NPOV because ..." should explain how the additions violate WP:NOR and WP:NPOV, not why you believe the editor made a policy-violating addition.
 * Do not make allegations of harassment (including stalking) unless you have fairly strong proof of such.
 * Remember that editors who repeatedly violate these principles, especially if they've been previously cautioned for doing so, will be blocked.

Membership
The group welcomes editors with differing points of view, as well as uninvolved folks. Members should support the project's goals and be willing to engage in non-combative conversation. Otherwise, there are no specific criteria for membership at this time.

Members should feel free to put the User WP IPCOLL or User WP IPCOLL 2 templates on their User Page and sign on below. See longer member statements in archives here. One can also add Category:Wikipedians interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to one's user page.

Membership agreement. Membership is open to all comers, including new editors. We ask only that members observe the following membership expectations:
 * 1) members commit, to the best of their ability, to always comply with Wikipedia policies such as assuming good faith of all editors including those on the other side of the real-world dispute, writing with a neutral point of view, remaining civil and avoiding personal attacks, utilizing reliable sources for contentious or disputed assertions, and resorting to dispute resolution where necessary;
 * 2) representation from editors/admins not involved in Israel-Palestine POV disputes should be actively encouraged, as well as roughly balanced representation from both "sides" of the battleground;
 * 3) decisions for the WikiProject will primarily be based on the consensus of members, however, non-members are dearly welcome to participate in all our collaborations and discussions.

Members
(Instructions: Add yourself to the table by copying the last two lines of the table and replacing YourUserNameHere with your UserName.)

Inviting potential members
Variations on this message can be put on article or user talk pages.
 * Dear _______: As a member of the WikiProject Israel Palestine Collaboration I encourage you to consider joining our project. (Note any relevant specifics of individual or article situation.) The purpose of this collaboration project is to create a more hospitable editing environment for Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict related topics and preventing and resolving disputes about the application of Wikipedia policies to these articles. We provide various tools to facilitate the project. Please check out the main page and talk page and contact me if you have any questions.

Or you can insert this template   into their talk page. This results in the following welcome message:

Templates for Users

 * Template:Falafel is a WikiLove template designed with this WikiProject in mind, and intended to be left on User talk pages. For example, to promote WikiLove in this project, the Falafel template can be left on the Talk pages of new users who join.
 * Category:Israeli-Palestinian peace user templates contains a range of additional user boxes

Gallery
A selection of images signifying Israel Palestine collaboration.

Tools

 * Main tool page: toolserver.org


 * Dab solver – Quickly resolve ambiguous links.
 * Reflinks – Edits bare references – adds title/dates etc. to bare references
 * Checklinks – Edit and repair external links
 * Peer reviewer – Provides hints and suggestion to improving articles.

Related projects

 * WikiProject Israel
 * WikiProject Palestine
 * WikiProject Military history/Middle Eastern military history task force
 * Working group on ethnic and cultural edit wars (Inactive)
 * WikiProject Dispute Resolution (Inactive)