Talk:The People's Voice

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Please explain to me why the principles listed on the peoples voice web site should be included in the wiki page but not the priciples on the elon peace plan site. we should not be editorializing in this way. rather we should treat all the peace proposals similarly. not give preference to one over another. such action is inherently a POV. OneVoice 16:39, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC) (copied from Talk:Viajero)

Sorry, don't understand your problem. The information you had in the first version was useful; it described what the initiative proposed. This can hardly be considered controversial. Viajero 17:22, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Please do not delete the comparision signature count collected by Women in Green. It provides an context for the number of signatures collected by The People's Voice. Is 156,000 a lot or not? Hard to say? How many people could sign if they choose to? The 300,000 number provides that context.

Again, we should not have the principles here, they are linked to in the external links section. OneVoice 17:26, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

OneVoice, I don't understand what you are trying to acheive here. What do you mean by principles? In this -- just as any article -- we need above all to describe what something is. Like with the Elon proposal, we need to provide the reader with some basic information as to how these initiatives plan to solve the problem -- this seems to such a truism that I am irritated by having to take the trouble to state it here. This basic, non-controversial information was in your first version, but for reasons completely beyond me you deleted it. We have already had this discussion with the Elon proposal. Why are squeamish about stating basic facts? Are you afraid people will draw conclusions which you are not in favor of? In closing, I am more than willing to discuss meaningful issues such here on these Talk pages, but if you simply delete basic factual information for some perverse motive beyond my comprehension than I will continue to revert you without bothering to explain. -- Viajero 10:47, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Let us state the basic facts of each proposal as stipulated in the proposal. That information, the list of principles, was removed from the Elon Peace Plan ( see edit 22:06, 9 Jan 2004 . . Viajero. So, lets treat all peace plans the same.....neutral. Either we should include their statements of princples or we shouldnt. I believe that we should. Do you agree? OneVoice 12:15, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Make that 156,001 :-). Danny 12:21, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It looks to me like the comparison is between two rather different issues. Here's what was removed from Elon Peace Plan : [1]; here's what was removed from this article : [2]. The list removed from the first laid out the problems that the Elon Peace Plan was designed to solve, with the solution given elsewhere; the list removed from the second explained the proposed solutions to the problems. Compare this (from Elon Peace Plan):

These fundamental issues are:

• The Palestinian demand for the right of return of refugees to areas within the State of Israel.
• The rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees.
• The status of Jerusalem.
• The nature of the Palestinian state and its borders.

to this (from this article):

The key points of the initiative are

• Two states for two peoples,
• Borders based upon the June 4th, 1967 lines.
• Jerusalem will be an open city, the capital of two states.
• Palestinian refugees will return only to the State of Palestine.
• Palestine will be demilitarized.

The only similarity seems to be in the unordered list format. — No-One Jones (talk) 12:34, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The key principles of the Elon Peace Plan are available to be included in the page. These correspond to the "key points of the initiative" (listed immediately above), in that both lists steps to be taken to resolve the conflict. The Elon Peace Plan lists its view of the underlying causes of the conflict. The Geneva Accords, unfortunately, does not provide its view of the underlying causes. Both pages (Geneva Accords and Elon Peace Plan) should contain either or both the lists of steps to be implemented (as is the case in the Road Map). It is also desireable that both page and the Road Map page contain each ones view of the underlying causes. OneVoice 14:02, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

That's fine: I agree that both articles should include at least the basic outline of the plan -- that is, they should describe what each plans to do in order to end the conflict. However, the edit war over Elon Peace Plan concerned the inclusion of Elon's views on the underlying issues, not the steps he laid out. The edit war on this article concerns the steps of the plan itself, and those are different things. Above, you made the explicit comparison between Viajero's reversion of your changes to Elon Peace Plan and your reversion of his changes here, but the two are simply not related. — No-One Jones (talk) 15:41, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

No-One Jones, I am trying to get the same information into all peace proposal pages, that information includes: who proposed, what is proposed, what is their (self-declared basis/reasons), what is their implementation plan, who is sponsoring, who is funding (if not obvious, its obvious that the US govt is funding the Road Map), etc. Please add to this list any addition items that you believe are important and should exist on all peace plan pages. This will allow folks to compare the plans more easily. Unfortunately, not all plans or their websites contain all of these elements. Your thoughts, please. OneVoice 16:05, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Viajero, selectively presenting facts to bolster a particular point of view is something with which everyone working on Wikipedia should have issues. Please read what No-One Jones and I have written here and respond to those comments. OneVoice 20:52, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

If your intent is to get all the relevant information into articles, then this hostage game of reversion -- either Viajero agrees to add the information you want into Elon Peace Plan, or you delete information from this article -- is not the way to go about it. How about, instead, working up a template for all these peace proposal articles (this one, Elon Peace Plan, the Road Map, the Geneva Accord, any others?) on which both of you can agree? — No-One Jones (talk) 20:02, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

No-One Jones: does not sound like a bad idea....perhaps we can get Viajero to respond on the talk page with his thoughts on your idea. OneVoice 20:52, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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I protected the page for a brief cooling off period - the reversions were not getting anywhere.... better to carry on discussing here for now. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:08, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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Hi Mirv, thanks for your note. Your analysis above is correct. The information OneVoice wants to add to the Elon article, which you included in your message above, is background information regarding the conflict, and IMO belongs in the main article on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or one of its offspring. The text which OneVoice wants to remove here are a list of specific elements of the proposal to resolve the issue, which is a completely different matter. As you may have noticed if you reviewed the history of this page, OneVoice actually included this in his first version, but for some unclear reason removed it shortly thereafter. IMO, an article on such a proposal which doesn't include a brief summary of the key elements is ridiculous. Now, if you look at this edit [3] you will see that OneVoice keeps trying delete a similar text on the Elon proposal, namely

Elon and the Molodet propose that the Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories be declared Jordanian citizens and then "Israel, the United States and the international community will allocate resources for the completion of the exchange of populations that began in 1948 and the full rehabilitation of the refugees and their absorption and naturalization in various countries".

and replace it with that generic text above. As you have seen, the issue is not simply one of formatting but is indeed more substantial. It would appear that OneVoice does not trust readers with the actual facts for fear that they will come to the wrong conclusions, hence he or she would prefer that the details of the respective proposals are not listed in our articles. Having pursued this debate with OneVoice for some time now, I have come to the conclusion that negotiating these matters with him is futile; he is not interested in an objective representation of these issues; he only wants to promote his ultra-reactionary Zionist population transfer (a.k.a ethnic cleansing) ideas in Wikipedia. As far as I am concerned, these articles can stay protected until OneVoice gets tired with this game and goes off to some other corner of the Internet to spread his anti-Palestine propaganda. -- Viajero 09:21, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Viajero, the extent of you personal attack is remarkable. We have never negoiated regarding the content of pages. The pages have been editted and reeditted without meaningful dialog. What I object to in the section that you quote above, is that it takes in single piece from the Elon Peace Plan without the rest of the plan.

The peace plans do not agree on the background information regarding the conflict. This is another item that should be in the pages. Indeed, some of the plans do not stipulate what the background information regarding the conflict is.

What do you say to Mirv's proposal that I provide a proposed rewrite of all three pages (The People's Voice, Road Map, Elon Peace Plan) making sure that each contains the sections listed above and use that as the format and guide to content for all three pages? OneVoice 14:53, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

1. I oppose the idea of tackling all three articles simultaneously. Let's deal with them one by one.

2. If you want to propose an alternative version to the current one, feel free to do so here in the Talk space, either on a separate article (ie Talk:The People's Voice/draft ) or better yet, given that the text is short, simply on this Talk page. When you are done, those of us who are interested in the topic (myself, Mirv, Danny, Zero and others) can evaluate it.

3. However, given that the issue is the following text:

The key points of the initiative are

• Two states for two peoples,
• Borders based upon the June 4th, 1967 lines.
• Jerusalem will be an open city, the capital of two states.
• Palestinian refugees will return only to the State of Palestine.
• Palestine will be demilitarized.

which you yourself had orginally supplied and is based on a statement on the group's website, it would be most useful if once and for all you go through it line by line and state in clear and concrete terms exactly what you object to and why you insist it be removed, providing references to substantiate your arguments. This is "meaningful dialog", not your vague chatter about "stating principles" and simply deleting factual information which doesn't fit into your activist agenda. -- Viajero 13:00, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for responding, Viajero.

"The key points of the initiative" as stated on the web site (and I presume quoted accurately above) should be INCLUDED in the web site. That applies to all the peace plans. In addition each one page should include:

• who proposed the plan
• who supports it
• who is funding it (if not known, note that)
• in the case of signatures the number of signers and comparable number of other initiatives
• when it was proposed
• a link to the web site
• the plan's understanding of the fundamental issues
• the plan's goals/targets for addressing those issues
• the implementation steps
• the issues left unresolved or deferred to another time
• the outcome should the plan be implemented...for example will there be a border between Palestine and Israel, will that border pierced only by authorized border crossings with passports and visa requirements....will Palestine be demilitarized, nuclear or at what level in between.

Not all plans provide information that answers these questions...unanswered questions should be noted as such. Hopefully we can use the list above as the skeleton for each plan, once we have agreed on which of the above list should be included, any others that I missed, the order etc.

Your comments please. OneVoice 16:16, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I have finished the first draft of the Saudi peace plan/initiative which I chose because it has been ignored in Wikipedia. The HTML comments contain the page outline that I will be using to create all the pages. More to come. OneVoice 16:20, 3 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Women in Green

I removed the following paragraph:

By way of contrast as of 25 January 2004, a petition, opposing concessions to the Palestinian Authority and/or the creation of a Palestinian state, sponsored by the Women in Green has collected over 350,000 signatures.[4]

This is irrelevant. The People's Voice is a full plan. The WiG petition is specific, so it's much easier to collect votes for it. Basically, that's just like saying "500 signed a petition for justice to Mr. John Doe junior in his quarral against his neighbor. In contrast 1000000 signed a petition for World Peace". That's just comparing apples and oranges. Gadykozma 20:32, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)