Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Occupied Palestinian Territories

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Since it seemed like I would be able to execute the vote, I took the liberty to tally myself even though I'm not an adminstrator. Below are not real votes, of course, just copies of signatures. Gadykozma 02:03, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Redirect to where?

I cannot resist adding a personal note. I think this VfD went much better than the previous, much less bad blood was spilt and the reduction in Wikilove was smaller. Thanks everybody. Gadykozma 02:03, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was - redirected

Occupied Palestinian Territories[edit]

An attempt to get around various disputes on Occupation of Palestine , Palestinian Territories pages. As it stands its just a POV dictionary definition, and Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Any additional information belongs in the aforementioned articles. It should be Deleted or Re-directed. Jayjg 00:57, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also, as French Tourist points out, an Occupied Palestinian territories article already exists, as a re-direct to Palestinian territories, and has existed here for 2 years now. It's hard to see how this article, with simply one capitalization difference, should exist on its own. Jayjg 21:35, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Also see Definitions of Palestinian occupation BACbKA 14:04, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ensuing discussion on that article moved over to Talk:Definitions of Palestinian occupation BACbKA 21:23, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Yes, Delete; the existing articles are surprisingly good, this adds nothing. — Bill 01:11, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Zionism, because I'm in a pithy mood. Snowspinner 02:26, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep and build an NPOV page; The term "Occupied Territories" is used generically in the media and by the UN and can be found in textbooks to refer to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. When Wikipedia users search for the term Occupied territories, they find it has been neutered and redirected. There is a concerted effort to eliminate reference to the Occupied Territories because the Israeli position is that the phrase "disputed territories" should be used instead of Occupied. [1]. The reasons are political. Israelis want to deny that there is an occupation so that they can deny that resistance to the occupation is legitimate [2] Alberuni 03:21, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • Having read the above, I don't find a reason why you need a separate article given the Occupied territories. I agree that in the modern day world when someone reads "Occupied territories" as a media term, there's an overwhelming chance that it's Israel whose occupation is implied. If I understand correctly your statement on that article being "neutered", you feel that a disambiguation type entry stating that should be placed near the top of the Occupied territories. That's actually a pretty good idea (as long as it is done in an NPOV way, i.e. referring to it in the present-day politics and media context, minimizing the disambiguation entry and pointing down into that article, where a more elaborate description, along with the "Occupied territories"/"disputed territories" term dispute is already given). Once you do it, you'll find yourself that a delete or a redirect of the Occupied Palestinian Territories is the most logical thing to do, and also will gain satisfaction from improving the quality of the Occupied territories. As it is, your statement can be understood as "having given up on the Occupied territories, why don't we keep this article instead", which is precisely what the nominator was trying to prevent. BACbKA 11:07, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
The nominator has a political agenda that goes far beyond keeping clutter out of Wikipedia. Alberuni 17:08, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
As Improv has noted already, your beef with him and his agenda has nothing to do with the VfD per se. Don't be insulted by the VfD vote being posed by someone you don't like – try to read the others' reasons supporting the nominator. If you feel insulted by the nominator's language, address the epithets you find insulting, maybe you'll even get someone's excuses (if you do it, you might try to edit your own emotional remarks to more calm language and towards being more to the point). Please *answer* the questions above when you can, because, I'm afraid, that your current wording serves your "Keep" point not the very best, frightening people that would otherwise want to support your 'Keep' ideas. BACbKA 19:54, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Occupation of Palestine. — Gwalla | Talk 03:24, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Alberuni is not serious about contributing a NPOV to this page. He created a duplicate article to avoid working towards agreement on other pages. --Viriditas 10:40, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Duplicate article. "Occupied" is POV. Please don't let VfD turn into a battle over Israel-Palestine history/politics. This goes out to you, Alberuni. --Improv 03:42, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ensuing discussion with Alberuni moved over to the Improv's talk page BACbKA 21:42, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect to occupation of Palestine. -Sean Curtin 04:03, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • #REDIRECT Palestinian territories. Discuss the occupation there. —No-One Jones (m) 04:10, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete I agree with the VfD nomination annotation completely, and I doubt the sincerity in creating an NPOV encyclopaedia of anyone trying to work on this article while the other two exist. To Alberuni: before going and labeling others (Jayjg and those who vote delete) and their actions and trying to make the VfD nominator guilty by association, if you really want to make a point try explaining why this article should exist in addition to both Occupation of Palestine and Palestinian Territories existing. If this were the 1st article on the topic, you would have enjoyed much stronger support, although even then the title is POV (just hold your breath and imagine somebody else starting a new article now, "Disputed Territories under Israeli control" – wouldn't you try to VfD it ASAP? Mind you, I'd support that VfD as well.) BACbKA 06:57, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • To prevent the vote-counting dispute that happened on the Occupation of Palestine VfD tally, I explicitly state that one can count my vote as either Delete or Redirect. BACbKA 07:02, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Israeli-Palestinian conflictPalestinian territories. Of course there will be another POV fork next week. Gazpacho 04:31, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. This information is stated many times over in other articles and in the media. Evolver of Borg 18:20, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect anywhere, or delete. The more redirects we make to that, the fewer parallel/pov articles can be made. —siroχo 08:31, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect. How long is this POV forking phenomenon going to continue for?!? Ambi 08:45, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • I am very dissatisfied as well. I believe that the fray of those younger articles written by those who proved unable to reach a consensus using the regular Wikipedia means – either because of a lack of patience or because of a lack of arguments to work towards an NPOV – should really belong in one's sandbox and then suggested for inclusion into the corresponding main articles, maybe as a standalone more-POV-ish sections, counterbalanced by the other side's POV-ish sections. BACbKA 16:40, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
It's not for lack of patience. It's because every effort to add balance to Misdeast articles is thwarted by a gang of stubborn propagandists who revert anything that doesn't fit their pro-Israeli perspective. Alberuni 17:22, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Then what makes you think your new article would be any different? I am disturbed too, when I see User:Uriyan people on Wikipedia who admit that the entire reason they're there is to "present the Israeli perspective", or "present the Arab perspective", or similar, because when they take that tack, they almost never understand NPOV. People care so deeply about these issues (and I should know -- I have lots of Jewish friends, and was dating one for a few years) that it is very difficult for even very bright people to *see* the other side. I can see that you and Jayjg both seem, to varying degrees, to be unable to see the other side, nor accept POV. Please try harder, and listen to what people are telling you -- there are people on here who put effort into being very fair, and they can help you both in battling people who arn't, and in helping you learn to be so. --Improv 19:48, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for your note. You are right. I know that my efforts won't make any difference on Wikipedia's pro-Israeli bias because the pro-Israeli perspective is well-entrenched and dominates this media outlet, just like most others in the US. I am only one person trying to bring a few NPOV edits to a contentious area controlled by a large group of heavily biased partisans. I have no chance of making a dent in the worldview they are promoting full time. I believe that this one-sided domination of the issue and lack of access to objective information about the Mideast in almost all US media contributes to Americans remaining largely uninformed and misinformed about Mideast issues - and this is why people bewilderingly asked, "Why do they hate us?" when the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated. Thanks to the open source records here on Wikipedia, we can actually trace the edits and watch this insidious process of censorship and information manipulation as it occurs. I enjoy writing Wiki articles in general and I am quite capable of making NPOV edits to Mideast articles despite my strong convictions. Even Jayjg has admitted this (although he automatically reverts them anyway about 90% of the time). I understand Mideast history and the current controversies from all sides. I am not trying to push a simplistic one-sided POV but I also dislike seeing injustice and unfairness and I think Wikipedia's pages about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are very biased and unfair. Alberuni 20:11, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Further personal comments by User:Jayjg and my attempt to calm it all down moved over to User talk:Alberuni BACbKA 22:08, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • As for your question proper (How long...), it seems to me that one limiting factor would be to have the ones who oppose it to vote consistently with each other. Remember when you were bashed for interpreting the VfD outcome on Occupation of Palestine as a redirect (BTW, even that my vote was "Redirect and protect" there, I believe that you making a good admin decision there, and, at least in interpreting my vote, you were 100% correct)? Unless the voters with the anti-POV-fork feelings unite and cast an accomodating vote each (such as "redirect to whatever other article on the topic or delete"), in the end we'll have trouble reaching formal consensus again, and the fork will remain (to the delight of the forking minority! (because technically they might not be in a significant minority if you consider all the various options to redirect as a separate vote) May I thus suggest to expand your vote to "Delete or Redirect"? BACbKA 16:40, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Merge and Redirect Delete or Redirect — For the sake of Wikipedia as a whole, NPOV needs to be maintained even for difficult issues, if necessary with a drastic reduction in size. Susvolans 12:15, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
NPOV needs to be maintained? Where can I find it? Alberuni 17:22, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In articles on less controversial subjects. Susvolans 14:51, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
    • What are you proposing to merge? and what to reduce in size? the article right now is looking like a stub... May I suggest changing your vote to "Delete or Redirect"? BACbKA 13:05, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
      • Accepted. Susvolans 15:22, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
        • Thanks for the understanding! BACbKA 16:40, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect JFW | T@lk 17:49, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Palestinian Territories, which precisely contains the phrase occupied Palestinian territories written in boldface in its second paragraph. --French Tourist 20:34, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect to either Palestinian territories or Occupation of Palestine as this "article" is just a repetitious paragraph created by User:Alberuni seeking to score ideological points (see his diatribe/s above) without adding anything new. IZAK 04:26, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ensuing personal discussion with User:Alberuni moved over to User talk:IZAK BACbKA 21:42, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete, the 2nd choice is Redirect. Side notes: please keep personal attacks and hate-speech out of WP. BTW, "Hasbara" and "Zionism" are not cusswords and there is nothing wrong with being pro-Israel and at the same time wishing peace and prosperity to the Palestinians. ←Humus sapiens←Talk 05:58, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Here was a heated personal discussion between User:Alberuni and User:Humus sapiens which was moved over to the latter's talk page. BACbKA 21:51, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Both of you, can we please keep the insult wars elsewhere?--Josiah 12:52, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep and improve. There are already million articles in this area, so short of a major cleanup action, 1 more or less won't noticably change the clutter; and, who knows, it might even add something useful. HistoryBuffEr 06:25, 2004 Oct 13 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Palestinian Territories. I agree with those above who have said that "occupied" is a loaded term. Contested would be better for a NPOV policy. --Josiah 12:52, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • First option: Redirect to Palestinian territories and protect if necessary. If the majority decides to redirect to another page, count my vote towards that. Second option: make into a disambiguation page (pointing to Palestinian territories and Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and protect if necessary. If no consensus on either, just delete. Gadykozma 13:55, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete - First, we don't need yet another article regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. Second, if we were to have such an article, Occupation of the West Bank or Occupation of the Gaza Strip might work, but an article title of Occupied Palestinian Territories is no more appropriate than Occupied Israeli Territories - either way Wikipedia is POV in that it is taking a side in the conflict and saying which side has rights to the land. Third, this article really doesn't have very much in it, in fact most of the article is just a list of links to other articles. Why not put this list of links in an article with at least a neutral title, like Israel-Palestine conflict? Oh wait, that article already has a comprehensive list of related articles without links to a bunch of POV articles (e.g. Palestinian Territories and Occupation of Palestine). --Chessphoon 16:17, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Redirect to Palestinian territories. These territories are currently occupied by Israel but in the future this may change. Der Eberswalder 00:18, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete page overlaps several others with no additional content. Lance6Wins 17:18, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep and improve. --style 07:24, 2004 Oct 16 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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