Wikipedia and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Occupied Palestinian Territories.jpg,, per the United Nations OCHA.

See here for a more detailed and updated map.]]

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been covered extensively on Wikipedia. External groups have initiated editing campaigns, and the Israel–Hamas war intensified editing in the topic-area. Wikipedia coverage on the conflict differs significantly between the encyclopedia's language-versions.

History
In September 2006, WikiProject Israel was established to improve coverage of Israel-related topics. WikiProject Palestine was created two months later. In 2008, the WikiProject Israel Palestine Cooperation was set up to reconcile the Israel and Palestine WikiProjects, with the project page stating, "In a subject plagued by conflicting historical narratives, we are working to make Wikipedia the conflict's most balanced reference point. Help us build bridges and break down barriers in the world's most intractable conflict."

In 2008, after issues on the Second Intifada article and other articles related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached a fever pitch, Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee decided on a set of rules of conduct for editors when editing articles related to the conflict. Editors are required to have made over 500 edits for at least 30 days to edit articles related to the conflict, can only make one revert per day across the entire field, and can be banned from editing related articles. The ruling was reaffirmed and expanded in 2009 and 2015.

In December 2017, after American president Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would be recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Wikipedia followed suit, which sparked a debate between editors. As of that time, the English and Hebrew articles said that Jerusalem was Israel's capital, while the Arabic article said that Israel claimed it as its capital, but it was located in occupied Palestine.

In November 2020, Haaretz reported that the "West Bank bantustans" article comparing Israel's control of the West Bank to the Black-only enclaves in apartheid-era South Africa indicated a possible shift for Wikipedia's consensus on likening Israel to an apartheid regime. Editors noted the fact that the article survived a deletion proposal indicated that events such as the Trump peace plan and Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge to annex parts of the West Bank undermined Israel's talking point that it supported a two-state solution and strived to establish a Palestinian state.

In February 2021, the Hebrew Wikipedia renamed its version of the article on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, changing "occupation" to "rule".

Israel–Hamas war
The Israel–Hamas war was extensively covered on Wikipedia and other related projects in various languages. This included articles about the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel starting from October 7, 2023, as well as the subsequent Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and the Israeli invasion by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in the following weeks. Articles related to the war experienced edit warring due to the diversity of narratives from both sides of the conflict.

On December 4, 2023, the Wikimedia Foundation issued a statement titled "Wikimedia updates on the crisis in Gaza Strip and Israel", and another statement the next day calling for "an end to measures preventing access to the internet in the Gaza Strip".

On December 23, 2023, the Arabic Wikipedia changed its logo to the colors of the Palestinian flag and suspended editing articles for one day to protest the ongoing attacks against the Palestinian people and the bias of many Western governments, especially the United States, towards one side of the conflict and the adoption of double standards. The step was taken to express solidarity and rejection of misinformation, according to what was published on the Arabic Wikipedia's main page, which added a logo expressing that. This solidarity was widely welcomed by a large number of Arab users and supporters of the Palestinian cause, while it was criticized by some Israeli users.

In June 2024, an edit war involving the articles for the 2024 Nuseirat rescue operation and the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre occurred, resulting in editing access to the articles being restricted.

Reliability of sources
The Wikipedia community has assessed the reliability of several Jewish sources. For instance, The Jewish Chronicle, a British newspaper, was declared a generally reliable source in 2021 despite concerns of bias. Editors debated the newspaper's coverage of left-wing and Muslim groups.

Also in 2021, a consensus was reached to prohibit the use of the Jewish Virtual Library, an online encyclopedia, as a source for most cases due to concern about its accuracy and bias towards Israel. In 2024, the pro-Israel advocacy group NGO Monitor was also prohibited as a source.

Anti-Defamation League
In June 2024, the English Wikipedia community declared the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) a generally unreliable source about the conflict. An English Wikipedia administrator who evaluated the community's consensus for this discussion cited the existence of substantial evidence of the ADL acting as a "pro-Israeli advocacy group" that has published unretracted misinformation "to the point that it taints their reputation for accuracy and fact checking regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict", as well as a "habit on the ADL's part of conflating criticism of the Israeli government's actions with antisemitism". Later that month, the English Wikipedia community concluded the ADL's lack of reliability extended to "the intersection of antisemitism and the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, such as labeling pro-Palestinian activists as antisemitic", but "the ADL can roughly be taken as reliable on the topic of antisemitism when Israel and Zionism are not concerned".

The ADL criticized the decision, saying that it was part of a "campaign to delegitimize the ADL." James Loeffler of Johns Hopkins University, a professor of modern Jewish history, commented that the Wikipedia editors were "heavily influenced by the ADL leadership's comments", which took "a much more aggressive stance than most academic researchers in blurring the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism".

Editing campaigns
In 2008, leaked emails from the pro-Israel watchdog Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) that purported to reveal an organised influence campaign on Wikipedia were published by The Electronic Intifada, a pro-Palestinian organisation. The leaked emails resulted in at least five editors receiving lifetime bans on Wikipedia.

In August 2010, two Israeli right-wing groups, the Yesha Council and My Israel, ran a course about Zionist editing on Wikipedia. Yesha Council director Naftali Bennett said, "We don't want to change Wikipedia or turn it into a propaganda arm. We just want to show the other side. People think that Israelis are mean, evil people who only want to hurt Arabs all day." In response, Abed A-Nassar, the chairman of the Association of Palestinian Journalists, called on Palestinian institutions to make Wikipedia articles more pro-Palestinian and counter what he called Israel's "public relations war".

In 2013, Haaretz reported the indefinite block of an editor who had concealed the fact that he was an employee of right-wing media group NGO Monitor. The editor was reported to have edited English Wikipedia articles on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict "in an allegedly biased manner".

In 2018, Philip Cross, a pro-Israel editor, was accused of targeting members of the British far-left and critics of Israel in his activity. The case was amplified by Russian media.

Euro-Med Monitor's WikiRights project
According to Euro-Med Monitor, there was a "dominance of the official government-issued narrative" in Wikipedia articles and "an almost complete absence of the narrative of victims of violations in different regions". Since 2015, Euro-Med Monitor has been training college students and recent graduates in conflict zones, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, to make improvements to Wikipedia articles with the victim narratives from different conflict areas. The training includes workshops on techniques and evidence to modify Wikipedia articles written in Arabic and English. Project beneficiaries are informed of Wikipedia's standards and policies to safeguard appropriate use of the encyclopedia. Euro-Med Monitor had analyzed Wikipedia's human rights content during armed conflicts in the MENA region and found the content to be weak. Director of WikiRights Anas Aljerjawi stated, "The WikiRights project believes in the value and urgency of promoting and documenting the narrative of the victims and keeping it present."

Responses
Haaretz journalist Omer Benjakob noted in 2021 that articles on the conflict are very different between the English, Hebrew and Arabic Wikipedias, and that the conflict is one of the three most regulated areas on English Wikipedia. In 2023, Stephen Harrison of Slate wrote, "It shouldn't come as a surprise that Wikipedia is a better place to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than X, TikTok, and other social media platforms are."

The World Jewish Congress (WJC) stated in a March 2024 report that "the state of the articles dealing with the conflict is alarming in its lack of neutrality." The WJC also stated that Wikipedia's comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany article "normalizes the unacceptable comparison" due to terms such as "occupation" and "military actions". The WJC also reported that "deletion attacks" occurred on Wikipedia, which resulted in the simultaneous deletion nominations of the articles for the Netiv HaAsara, Nir Yitzhak and Holit massacres, as well as Inbal Rabin-Lieberman. A columnist in The Forward called the WJC's cited examples of bias against Israel "less than convincing".

A June 2024 Jerusalem Post opinion piece said that the English version of the Israel–Hamas war article was arguably more neutral than the Arabic and Hebrew versions.

Wikipedia
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has said the topic is debated often but the site strives to be neutral.

As of 2023, English Wikipedia articles on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have "extended confirmed protection", meaning that only registered editor accounts with a certain age and number of edits can edit them. The WJC commented that this "leaves many Israelis unable to edit articles about which they have great knowledge."