Talk:Struggle over Palestine

For a September 2004 deletion debate over this page see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Occupation of Palestine

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I disagree with the vote to delete this page. I do not understand the reasoning.

Policy is that info should be preserved.

This deletion smacks of censorship.

The occupation of Palestine and Israeli occupation of Palestine articles are as accurate and neutral as I can make them. If anyone can point out any sections which are inaccurate or biased, please do so. That would be better than simply eliminating the articles.

The info in those articles has not, AFAIK, been moved into Arab-Israeli conflict or any other suitable article. Until it has been, a summary REDIRECT is out of line. --Uncle Ed 14:53, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ed, there is nothing stopping you from moving this contents yourself, definitely not the fact that the page is now a redirect. Please clean after your own mess. Gadykozma 15:40, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

1. I don't see why this page should be a redirect. That option got only 29% of the votes - far less than a consensus.
2. The usual practice is: move the info first, then replace the old article with a redirect.

If you're trying to impose your will and disregard the vote, I may have to report this to the, er, authorities here. Please don't make me do this; I'd rather work with you then see you get admonished, or worse, banned. --Uncle Ed 15:48, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The consensus was quite clear Ed; get rid of the content, either by pure delete or by re-direct (see Cecropia's comments on the Vote to Delete talk page). You've gone off on your own tangent here with an entirely new article (make that pair of articles), and now appear to be abusing your admin status in order to enforce your preferred solution. It is you who is imposing your will and disregarding the vote, and any consequences which devolve from that might well be applied to you as a result. Jayjg 15:54, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Your points are well taken, Jay, and I will withdraw from any article edits whatsoever for the indefinite future. I consider myself chastened. --Uncle Ed 16:31, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Excuse me, there was not a clear consensus to "get rid of the content":

• Delete (18)
• Redirect (4)
• Redirect or Delete (1)
• Keep (13)
• and Ed's vote to move.

That's 23-14, and a good number of the people who said "redirect" were objecting to the title and the separation, not to what it said, and were explicitly suggesting that Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the right place to take this up. -- Jmabel 17:48, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Jmabel, you somehow missed 8 votes for "redirect and protect", which makes 31-14. That's almost 70%, which is considered a consensus for this purpose. Gadykozma 19:42, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

By "get rid of the content" I meant there would be no independent "Occupation of Palestine" page; i.e., the "Occupation of Palestine" page itself would have no content, whether it was simply deleted or whether it was a re-direct. There was a large majority in favour of this; in fact, the consensus was quite clear, as I stated. Incorporating the content back into the original Israeli-Palestinian conflict was of course, always an option; indeed, as a person who voted delete, I suggested doing so several times, on the very day I put up the VfD notice. Anyone can contribute content to any page, whenever they like. However, this is not relevant to the vote itself, which is really about what happens to Occupation of Palestine as an independent page, and not about the ultimate fate of the content in it. Attempts to characterize this vote in a narrowly legalistic sense ("delete" vs. all other options) are disingenuous at best; I encourage all editors to re-read Cecropia's comments under Consensus demonstrated in Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Occupation_of_Palestine on the topic. Jayjg 18:03, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's helpful to have this page. The issues being described are either about the Arab-Israeli conflict, about the Palestinian Authority, or about some other number of issues. The term "occupation" is inherently problematic as a location of an article, and the issues being described here don't naturally all fit together, IMO. --Delirium 18:10, Sep 23, 2004 (UTC)

Proposal

The current redirect is POV and unhelpful. It equates Occupation of Palestine to the current conflict, which is inaccurate. I propose that it should become instead a disambiguation page, pointing to both History of Palestine for previous occupations and Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the current positions. The page is currently protected, and I believe it would be an abuse of sysop powers for me to edit it. As soon as it can be unprotected let's give this a try. Andrewa 09:51, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm fine with that but you really should ask the other side. BTW, see my "special disambig" text on Hebrew Bible, maybe you can use it here too. Gadykozma 09:56, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with this in principle. However, I agree only on the basis that this stays a disambiguation page. I don't want to have to have this discussion every time another POV warrior comes along and wants to make this a rant page. Ambi 10:01, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with all three of you :-) --Uncle Ed

You guys can do whatever you want with the page, but leave it alone until saturday PST. Thanks for understanding. Christopher Mahan 16:07, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm under Martha Stewart-style house arrest until Monday, confined to my lovely estate in the Hamptons. Me only haunt talk pages till then. --Uncle Ed 17:36, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Because Ed's been so conciliatory, I'm happy to leave the article as it is. However, I strongly disapprove of Chris' unwanted and unrequested attempt at playing arbitrator. Ambi 01:27, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I actually did ask him to arbitrate, though he said he wouldn't, so I am not sure how he defines his current activities. Gadykozma 01:54, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Another compromise attempt

How about putting discussions on the term occupation under the title Occupation (Israeli-Palestinian discourse)? Gadykozma 02:53, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We're an encyclopedia, not a discussion forum. Ambi 05:03, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ambi, relax. I meant an article describing how the term occupation is used by Israeli and Palestinians, which is what Pir, Node and Ed wanted, if I understood them correctly. Gadykozma 12:49, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pir, Node and Ed, in opposition to myself and thirty other Wikipedians. Sometimes the consensus goes against you. Tough. I don't think the disambiguation idea was too objectionable, however. Ambi 12:52, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ambi, those 30 Wikipedians (including myself, if you remember) objected to the text as it stood with that title. Not to the very idea of discussing occupation on Wikipedia. Gadykozma 12:56, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Fine. Create the thing, and we'll have another vote. Happy? Ambi 12:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ambi, threatening should come after an attempt to negotiate. Please state your objections to such an article so we can refer to them (and see also my reply to pir below). Thanks. Gadykozma 13:45, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a good attempt, but we should agree on some guidelines first, so that everybody's concerns are addressed. I suggest the following principles:

• the article is not to be an alternative account of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It may include a brief summary of the conflict and should refer to that article ;
• the different meanings and definitions (as far as they are relevant to the article) of "occupation" and "Palestine" should be explicitly stated ;
• all the main different views of the concept of "Occupation of Palestine" should be described (NPOV), attributed to named people/political movements/organisations/institutions, and sources provided ;
• criticisms/responses addressed at these views by opponents should also be described, attributed and sourced.

Feel free to criticise and improve these. - pir 13:07, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Pir, your 3rd & 4th points make this quite similar to the Occupation of Palestine. I had in mind a more discourse analysis page than a political one. It's difficult for me to explain exactly because I'm not a humanist myself. However, one thing for sure, the last thing we want is something similar to the "views" section of the Arab-Israeli conflict. That might be a solution for POV wars (and it might formally comply with Wikipedia NPOV policy) but it is disasterous for the reader. It conveys the information in a way which is almost impossible to read, and adds no insight to what you could get from the five o'clock news.

So, pir, do you like this views section? Gadykozma 13:45, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, I think the problem with the Arab-Israeli conflict article is the organisation, it is just split in two halves. But the content itself is important and not that bad. I think for that particular page, it would have been much better to contrast the two views item by item (e.g. by chronology of historic events). I don't really understand what you mean by "discourse analysis", but note that analysis itself cannot be NPOV because you can only analyse something based on a certain world view and certain political assumptions. MAybe you could explain how you envisage this? - pir 13:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, about the views section, yes it would be much better arranged by topics. Maybe we can get to it after a vacation of 2-3 months.

About this paper, what I don't want is discussion whether or not Israel occupies and what. Not even as an exchange of quotes. Not because its POV - because it is just plain boring. Spreading this kind of material over endless pages will make the reader leave Wikipedia. It should be concentrated on a few select pages, like the Arab-Israeli conflict. Smaller pages (not in the sense of length, Deir Yassin massacre is not short, just specific) should concentrate on bringing to the reader information he does not have.

So, I am only really familiar with the discourse of the Israeli left, but here the term occupation is used in many interesting ways (like the link I sent you ;-)) and I think that it can be expanded to an interesting section. Could you find interesting uses of the term occupation on the Palestinian side? Gadykozma 14:11, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)