Talk:House demolition

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July 31, 2007 Featured article candidate Not promoted
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Contents


[edit] Rewritten and expanded article

I've completely rewritten and expanded this article, while preserving some of the original content. The original article was a fair start, but I felt that its scope was far too narrow, being almost exclusively focused on the Israeli-Palestine conflict when house demolitions have been a much bigger issue elsewhere (in the former Yugoslavia, for instance). The subject needs to be approach from a broad perspective of military utility rather than focusing on a particular conflict where a particular set of circumstances apply. I've therefore attempted to cast the article as a general survey of the use of house demolition, dividing its usages into three distinct areas. Please add any comments below! -- ChrisO 00:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I should add that I've purposefully trimmed the content on the use and legality of house demolition in the Palestine territories. While it's certainly an interesting subject and I'm sure there's more that can be said about it, it's a bit too narrowly focused for a general overview article. If need be, I would suggest spinning this topic off into a separate article, say House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. -- ChrisO 00:16, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I think you've done an great job and, once this article settles down, should consider nominating it for FA status. Raul654 00:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
ChrisO -> congratulations on a great piece of work. I've taken the liberty of excising "House Razings" as being of very limited application - the hated google test gets only 3,900 hits for it, whereas even "House Demolitions" + Israel gets 50,000. Also deleting "Historically, it has also been used as a civil penalty against certain policy violators" which I fear is both confusing and duplicating. Hope that is alright. PalestineRemembered 08:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! Just one note - I selected the image of a house demolition in Iraq to go with the lead for its dramatic value; it immediately grabs the reader's attention and highlights the subject of the article. IMO, the demolished Palestinian house works better alongside the para about the use of house demolition in the Palestinian territories; it doesn't stand out compared to the other images of demolished houses. Accordingly, I've restored the original order of these images. -- ChrisO 09:19, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm concerned about that picture. We make it seem that "house demolitions" as "military necessity" (eg Iraq, even Jenin) are the concern, when in many cases such things are uncontentious and legal. Showing a moment of explosive destructon also risks treating the problem as part of a video game. By all means use pictures from somewhere other than the IP situation - do we not have anything for the atrocities committed by Saddam, entire Kurdish villages demolished? Bull-dozers in Chechnya? Are there tumbled temples in Tibet? PalestineRemembered 10:01, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German housing stock in 1945

The article currently says:

Following the Second World War, for instance, the United States occupation authorities in Germany found that 81 percent of all houses in the American Zone had been destroyed or damaged in the fighting (Jennifer Leaning, "War and the Environment", in Michael McCally, Life Support: Environment Human Health, p. 276. MIT Press, 2002. ISBN 0262632578)

This to me suggests that it was a result of ground fighting and that RAF Bomber Command (see the dehousing paper) and the contribution of the USAAF Eighth Air Force were not responsible for a large percentage of those destroyed houses.

The US strategic bombing survey summary reports states:

According to these, 485,000 residential buildings were totally destroyed by air attack and 415,000 were heavily damaged, making a total of 20 percent of all dwelling units in Germany. In some 50 cities that were primary targets of the air attack, the proportion of destroyed or heavily damaged dwelling units is about 40 percent. The result of all these attacks was to render homeless some 7,500,000 German civilians.

The strategic bombing survey quotes a number of 20% "totally destroyed ... heavily damaged" and according to the numbers from Dresden 80% of the city’s housing units had undergone some degree of damage and 50% the dwellings had been demolished or seriously damaged. In the case of Colone after the first 1,000 bomber raid by the RAF, the numbers were 13,010 destroyed, 6,360 seriously damaged, 22,270 lightly damaged. It is likely that the percentage of the housing stock damaged in north Germany (The US zone was in the south) was higher as those houses were closer to the Allied airbases in England, so places like the Ruhr were more inensivly bombed than the south (with some notable exceptions). Therefor probably at least half or more of the damage to the West German housing stock was the result of the strategic bombing campaign carried out by the Allies, not through ground fighting. (Of course in the east a where the Soviets fought some very large ground battles the ratio would be different).

If the sentence means during the war and not during the occupation, then that would be a more accurate summation. --Philip Baird Shearer 10:20, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Why doesn't the article mention that houses were destroyed during The Blitz? // Liftarn

[edit] Margalit quote

I've removed the following quote to Talk:

"The thinking is that a national threat calls for a national response, invariably aggressive. Accordingly, a Jewish house without a permit is an urban problem; but a Palestinian home without a permit is a strategic threat. A Jew building without a permit is ‘cocking a snook at the law’; a Palestinian doing the same is defying Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem."[1]

The material appears to have nothing to do with the material that preceded it, nor followed it, nor anything to do with the section itself that it was placed in. Please explain the relevance. Jayjg (talk) 18:32, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this material could be put in the civil uses section, but, as has already been made clear, it would mean expanding the article in totally new directions and redefining its limits. Since it's now relatively well-formed, I suggest instead that a more general civil uses article be started for this kind of stuff. We can form a "House demolition" series of articles (There are already two articles to put in it). nadav (talk) 07:28, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

It is relevant both to this article (it is about the core issue of the article, house demolitions as military strategy, and to the section it is in (since it deals with house demolitions as a way to promote a specific ethnicity). // Liftarn
I have to agree with Jay that it's out of place in this article. As I wrote above, I would suggest spinning off the specific Israel-Palestinian aspects into House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. -- ChrisO 08:11, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like an idea. // Liftarn
Only some of our good friends here would get House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict deleted as a POV fork. ابو علي (Abu Ali) 11:04, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Nah, try to assume good faith, but I wouldn't sink too much work into it since it may be deleted on a whim. It may bee a good idea to keep a backup of the article handy. // Liftarn
Is it really a good idea to include a partisan's projection of the reasoning etc.? This is very different than just including their testimony on how bad it is and such. TewfikTalk 06:16, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV problems in the intro

I think that it is POV to list two categories, "counter-insurgency" and "ethnic cleansing," and then to say matter-of-factly that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict belongs in the former category, particularly when the article later presents evidence to the contrary. I am adjusting the language acordingly. --Marvin Diode 14:28, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Your edits introduced significant bias into the intro, and I have reverted. Raul654 14:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I disagree, and I make my specific reasons clear above. The intro which you prefer simply states that the Israeli practices are "counter-insurgency," whereas the practices in the Balkans and Darfur are "ethnic cleansing." This is POV editing taken to an extreme. I am sure that you can find proponents of the strategy in the Balkans and Darfur that will claim they are engaged in "counter-insurgency." The correct way to approach this under NPOV is to acknowledge that there are varying points of view in all these cases, rather than baldly asserting that "these guys here are the good guys, and those fellows over there are the bad guys." So, before you revert my edit again, I would respectfully ask that you provide a more specific explanation than your claim that I "introduced of bias." --Marvin Diode 21:15, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. The Benny Morris quote under "Ethnic cleansing" suggests that Israel did in fact engage in this in the 1948 war. The more recent house demolition activity is more directly related to counter-insurgency operations - as far as I understand it, it's mostly related to retaliation against suicide bombers. But as I've already made clear, I think it's too much detail to go into in a general overview article. I'd suggest exploring the issue in more detail in a spinoff House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict article. -- ChrisO 00:17, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
I hope that my objection was clear enough. I'm happy with the present compromise version. --Marvin Diode 14:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
No, the house demolitons done by Israel are mainly due to ethnic balancing, strategy et.c. and only a few are done as colective punishment. There is a report (PDF) available[1] with all the figures. // Liftarn
What is "ethnic balancing?" --Marvin Diode 14:22, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
They want to keep Israel (and notably Jerusalem) Jewish so they aim for an at least 70% Jewish majority. It can not be called cleansing since they don't aim for 100%. // Liftarn

[edit] Legal Issues

The "Legal Issues" section currently includes the following paragraph, sourced to an AI report:

Israeli use of house demolitions has been particularly controversial. However, Israel, which is a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, asserts that the terms of the Convention are not applicable to the Palestinian territories on the grounds that it does not exercise sovereignty in the territories and is thus under no obligation to apply the treaty in those areas. This position is rejected by human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, which notes that "it is a basic principle of human rights law that international human rights treaties are applicable in all areas in which states parties exercise effective control, regardless of whether or not they exercise sovereignty in that area.

I believe this is an incorrect description of what the cited AI document cliams, which is that Israel asserts that "UN human rights treaties to which it is a State Party", such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (but not the Fourth Geneva Convention), are not applicable to the Palestinian territories on the grounds that it does not exercise sovereignty. The claim with regards to the non-applicability of the 4GC rests on differnt grounds - the claim that the West Bank and Gaza are not the territories of any "High Contracting Party" to the 4GC, and are thus excluded by the convention's own language in article 2. Isarig 22:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict

As I predicted [2] some editors are keen to whitewash Israeli actions from this article. This is in contradiction to the weight of the arguments presented in the RFC section above. ابو علي (Abu Ali) 23:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

You made your comments before I rewrote the article, at a point when the article was largely focused on the I-P conflict. I can assure you that I at least have no intention of whitewashing Israeli actions, and I've already suggested that the specific I-P issues be spun off into House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's an issue well worth documenting. This article, though, is intended to be a generic overview, so it's not appropriate to categorise it under any specific conflict. -- ChrisO 00:09, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, but would you be prepared to defend House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict against deletion as a POV fork? ابو علي (Abu Ali) 07:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
It wouldn't be a POV fork - it'd be a legitimate spinout of a topic that's too big to be covered in this general article. There's certainly a huge amount of literature on it - books, media reports, papers etc - so the topic is undeniably notable and capable of being reliably sourced. I don't think there would be any legitimate reason to delete it as long as it's NPOV and well sourced. I'd say go ahead, create the article and see what we can make of it. -- ChrisO 08:23, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, that wouldn't be the first time legitimate content/articles get deleted to promote a POV. // Liftarn
Obviously, house demolition in Israel Palestine has to be discussed at length in some article. Would this article mention the Negev Bedouin demolition orders also? nadav (talk) 08:32, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
OK, I have created House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict using material from old versions of this article. It still needs a lot of work. Lets see how long it takes till our Zionist friends put it up for deletion. ابو علي (Abu Ali) 07:58, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I support the removal of this article.
eternalsleeper

The deletion of the category is inappropriate. In terms of notability, house demolition is a well known controversy with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and conversely, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the best know example of the policy of house demolition. --Marvin Diode 02:29, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested image

Image:MyLai Haeberle P33 BodiesNearBurningHouse.jpg might be suitable for inclusion in the article. "Burning hooches" in Vietnam is a pretty prominent example of the subject.--Father Goose 22:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] punitive civil / primarily a military tactic

in regards to this disputed edit as to the words "civil" and "primarily":

[edit] punitive civil

"punitive civil" - is an oximoron considering the article centers about a military punitive action rather than a civil one. it is indeed a sometimes generalizing punitive action, but it is emloyed in a military fashion. Jaakobou 09:51, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] primarily a military tactic

"primarily" - for starters, there is no source for this and it is under dispute. secondly, this illustrates better tha most edits how the atricle's title is problematic since "house demolishion" has many different applications and certainly, the most dominant "primary" one is demolishion of old construction to make room for new one and not the house demolishion which is a military activity. Jaakobou 09:51, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

First of all, "house demolition" as part of normal housing development isn't even on the radar screen for this article, and is a distraction. We're talking about the demolition of homes where people live, as a hostile act. Having said that, I think the assertion that it is "primarily a military tactic" is POV. The utility of house demolitions as a military tactic is certainly debatable -- this has been discussed here before. It seems clear that there is a punitive aspect, which is not a military matter. Advocates of "ethnic cleansing" will often claim that it is an "anti-terrorism" tactic, since everyone knows that all [name of demonized ethnic group here] are terrorists. Therefore I think that we should avoid allowing this article to become an apology for the practice of house demolition, and the way to avoid that would be to acknowledge all points of view. --Marvin Diode 15:00, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
(1) i'm fairly pleased with the current rephrasing made by User:Father Goose here.
(2) i think you generalize too much to the pro-israel people who defend the tactic. there's plenty of situations where house demolishion is used, and best i'm aware non of them has been proven to be linked specifically to a "hate crime" racist sentiment. talk is cheep, and upset people will almost allways make claims of persecution if they are a minority in society.
(3) there's many situations that can be interpreted in many ways, and i agree that all views should be given proper citation. Jaakobou 21:06, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
I added "for punitive civil purposes" because house demolition has been used as a civil penalty in non-conflict situations; likewise I added "primarily" a military tactic because its use isn't confined to armed forces. See House demolition#Civil uses. -- ChrisO 23:40, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
Do you think the article should be making reference to this kind of house demolition? Jayjg (talk) 00:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I think it is worthy of mention. --Marvin Diode 00:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
No. I'm referring specifically to instances where house demolition was specifically prescribed by law or custom as a punishment for certain offences. I've added many more examples to the article. The Zimbabwean situation appears to have been ostensibly an administrative action ("slum clearance") although I rather suspect it didn't have any legal backing - the Zim government isn't exactly concerned with legality these days. As far as I know Zim law doesn't prescribe home demolition as a punishment. I can't actually think of any state which does prescribe it. -- ChrisO 00:59, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the Zimbabwe government has been doing these "slum clearances" because it suspects the inhabitants oppose the Mugabe regime. Jayjg (talk) 01:03, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Here's a New York Times article from 2005. Hundreds of thousands left homeless, in actions that dwarf by orders of magnitude anything demolitions being done by the Israeli government. Israel has legions of critics for its policy, and lots of volunteers to create topics about it on Wikipedia; yet no-one seems to care much about this, or think it belongs in this article. What could explain this? Jayjg (talk) 01:14, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
With the expansion of the "Civil Uses" section, my suggested wording no longer works. However, I think the wording of the disambig line could still use some tweaking, especially given some classes of house demolition that may yet be included in the article. Surely there has been some non-military "ethnic cleansing" that involved house destruction, plus the Zimbabwe example above: hostile acts by non-military groups and extrajudicial governmental acts.--Father Goose 02:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Oh, but I do want to say, nice work so far.--Father Goose 02:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
It is good to be reminded that Zimbabwe is carrying out atrocities currently much bigger than those in Israel. If supporters of the Mugabe government came in here and attempted to conceal what was going on and delete good information, we'd be outraged and make sure the encyclopaedia did indeed document their crimes. In the future, we may see such people coming here apparently seeking to conceal (and/or justify) the actions of thugs like this - I trust that editors will be robust in meeting this challenge to good articles. PalestineRemembered 08:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
User:PalestineRemembered, please refrain from spreading libel via analogies same way as you would not appreciate those analogies in a reverse direction. see also: WP:SOAP. Jaakobou 13:49, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry about that, some of us are a bit uneasy about ethnic cleansing. But I'm probably doing Mugabe a dis-service implying that he carries it out, or that anyone would seek to defend him or Zimbabwe if he were doing it. PalestineRemembered 19:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
PalestineRemembered is slyly implying that house demolition in general and Israeli house demolition in particular is a form of ethnic cleansing and that the Wikipedia editors who deny this are immoral. PalestineRemembered has a history of making unreferenced, libelous accusations of Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing campaigns that make it very difficult for me and others to assume good faith such as when he compared supporters of Israel to Nazis[3] and made the inexplicable claim that David Ben Gurion and other prominent Jewish leaders during Israel's War of Independence were actively planning an ethnic cleansing campaign against Lebanese Muslims.[4] Its a shame this is occuring again because PalestineRemembered has been warned and almost banned for making these kinds of statements in the past. --GHcool 05:25, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
I do not believe that it is good wiki-etiquette to reference an unrelated debate in order to "prove your point" about an editor. Furthermore, the first comment you cited does not say what you believe it does; if anything, it says the opposite. The second comment may or may not be factually true but it's not as unreasonable as you make it out to be, after all, the same leaders "actively planned", and then actually conducted, a cleansing campaign in the territory of the former Mandate of Palestine. I do not see any "sly implications", P.R. is being pretty direct here. All he said was that some editors are "apparantly seeking to conceal the actions of thugs" which is not exactly a bannable offense. Eleland 18:33, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
It's worth pointing out that the third and last comment, that PR "has been warned and almost banned for making these kinds of statements in the past," is categorically false. That this sort of thing is still believed by some editors troublingly demonstrates the lingering power of even the most discredited smear.--G-Dett 18:41, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arab-Israeli conflict

I redirected the page on house demolitions in the Arab-Israeli conflict to this page, because it looks as though it was created as a POV fork to attack Israel. The history and context of house demolitions is important and interesting, and we do it no justice by pretending that only Israel does it. The material on that page should be woven into this article, if it hasn't been already. SlimVirgin (talk) 01:28, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

This is a controversial move that should have been discussed first. There was some support here for branching off that topic, and I don't recall anyone saying the idea of a subarticle on the house demolitions involving Israel is a POV fork. nadav (talk) 01:40, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I do. Also, which specific section of this article is the Israeli one a sub-article of? I don't see any "Main" heading using that article. Jayjg (talk) 01:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
We could create country sections in this article, or else weave the material into the other sections. I've not been editing it, so it's not immediately clear what would be better or what's been tried already. Nadav, it's clearly a POV fork. Neither this nor the other article is long enough to require a separate page. SlimVirgin (talk) 02:02, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I was the biggest proponent of keeping a global perspective in this article and making sure there is no undue weight given to Israel since are much more historically noteworthy uses of house demolition. I don't see how we would be able to expand coverage of uses of house demolition in Israel Palestine while at the same time keeping out WP:UNDUE here. Even fringe theories like Flat Earth get their own articles (with accompanying small mention in the main article), and there is no reason we cannot do the same here. The only criterion is whether the subject has received extensive discussion in the literature, and this one has beyond a doubt. WP is not paper, and there is no reason that subjects for which a verifiable article can be written should not get an article. (Jayjg: you're right. I was thinking of talk page discussions. The idea of creating a separate article for Israel Palestine was supported by ChrisO and some others on this talk page prior to its creation) nadav (talk) 07:45, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Devoting an entire section in this article to the Israel Palestine issue would be undue weight in my opinion. A few lines mentioning it as part of another section is more than enough. nadav (talk) 07:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
That was a very inadvisable move on your part. There's absolutely no doubt that the topic is notable and far bigger than can be accommodated in this article. In researching this article, I came across literally hundreds of works - including entire books - specifically on the topic of house demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a topic which we deal with in only a couple of paragraphs in this article. There simply isn't room in this article to provide any more than a summary of a very complex and controversial issue; dealing with it in a separate spinout article is standard practice (per Wikipedia:Content forking#Article spinouts - "Summary style" articles). The current House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict article certainly needs a lot more work but that isn't by itself a reason to delete it. It's also very improper to unilaterally delete and redirect an active article without any prior discussion, particularly as you don't seem to have been involved with it before. If you believe it should be deleted, you should nominate it for deletion through the normal AfD process. -- ChrisO 08:04, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, if and when it gets to be too big, it can be moved if there's an agreement to do so, but it currently isn't too big. And I didn't — as you know — delete anything; I redirected. It's the same old, same old, Chris. I don't see you creating a separate page about Zimbabwe. It's always Israel, it's always as negative as possible, and that's why it gets tiresome. SlimVirgin (talk) 08:35, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
(There is an article on the Zimbabwe case: Operation Murambatsvina) nadav (talk) 08:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
We are getting into a vicious circle here. We have to decide: Are we going to write about the loads of Israel Palestine material in this article (argued against by some at [the RfC] and throughout talk) or in a separate article? Pick a place, but whatever place is chosen, we should be free to include as much (verifiable NPOV) detail as possible. We should not return to the previous situation where attempts to expand coverage of demolitions in the Israel Palestine context were continually reverted. As I said at the RfC, I think it would be excellent if we could proceed in our article creation in the order of most significant demolitions to least significant. Unfortunately, we are bound by our fields of expertise and interest. We already have the Zimbabwe article, and since we all know something about the (very often discussed) Israel situation, we should be free to write about it somewhere. nadav (talk) 09:19, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't see how you can get away from the fact that in terms of notability, the Israeli-Palestinian case of house demolition is far and away the most significant in the eyes of the world. I agree with SlimVirgin's redirect because I do think the extra article was a POV fork intended to deflect criticism from Israel (this is apparently not her reasoning.) --Marvin Diode 14:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
In the eyes of some, it will deflect criticism, and in the eyes of others will concentrate it, but how different people view it shouldn't be our concern. What should concern us is that the material about Israel was moved for effect, rather than for encyclopedic reasons, and that's what happens when editors care more about effect than about just telling the story. This page would be much more interesting with a range of descriptions of house demolitions by different regimes, but we don't care about interesting; we care only about politics, which is why these articles often end up reading so badly. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:29, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
The world's peculiar obsession with demonizing Israel should not be reflected in Wikipedia articles, which ideally operate according to Wikipedia's policies (though in practice also display much of that obsessive demonization of Israel (see, for example this and this). Jayjg (talk) 21:56, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
Jayjg, I think that was uncalled for. In circumstances where there are serious, documented charges of human rights violations, including coming from Statesmen like Jimmy Carter, I don't think you can write it all off as "the world's peculiar obsession with demonizing Israel." Some recognition of prevailing opinion has got to be used as a standard when writing an encyclopedia article on controversial current events. --Marvin Diode 00:11, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
The issue is not that Israel commits human rights violations; all countries do, in fact, including Israel. The issue is the obsessive focus on Israel's actions, while the actions of much more habitual and egregious violators are ignored; indeed, some of those habitual and egregious violators line up to piously condemn Israel while committing vastly greater horrors of their own. Wikipedia editors who obsessively abet this activity are violating Wikipedia policy. Jayjg (talk) 02:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Marvin, your words are wasted. Jay is pretty compulsive about smearing editors who dare to challenge his whitewashing, and he's well-connected enough to get away with it. He almost succeeded in having PalestineRemembered permabanned on the strength of one such tactical smear; revelations about it led to a minor mutiny as well as an Arbcom case (still outstanding, last I checked), but allies of his have effectively circled the wagons.--G-Dett 02:33, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
G-Dett, please do not turn this Talk: page into yet another forum for your personal attacks on me. Focus on article content, not other editors. Jayjg (talk) 02:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Jay, the editors of this page have raised content issues, and you've responded with personal smears against them; my response is to this latter. Your advice to me to "focus on article on article content, not other editors" is therefore not only hypocritical but also entirely off the mark. It is appropriate to focus on other editors when the issue at hand is persistent trolling and the deployment of tactical smears as a means of gaining leverage in content disputes. It is inappropriate to focus on other editors when they are merely discussing content, as is happening now with your attacks on Abu Ali, and as has happened from day one of your eight-month campaign against PalestineRemembered. "Focus on article content, not other editors" is a great general guideline and should be everyone's goal for their own editing and talk page interactions. Try to get straight its underlying logic, and stop using it merely as a weapon. Thanks.--G-Dett 10:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Please focus on article content, not other editors. Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 06:52, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Your strategic smearing of other editors, followed as it is by bad-faith and hypocritical admonitions to "focus on article content, not other editors," represents a persistent behavioral problem of yours and a trolling issue, not a content issue, and that of course is how it ought to be addressed.--G-Dett 07:38, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
This talk page is not the right forum for listing problems you see with others. It won't help us resolve the question of where to put the Israel Palestine content, and it can only antagonize. Take your issues to a DR process. nadav (talk) 08:50, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
I hope you will at least agree that personal attacks can only hinder any progress on this article. nadav (talk) 06:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Note that House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was created on Jayjg's suggestion. Having removed content on the Israeli Palestinian conflict from this article and having suggested that the content is moved to House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is inconsistent to say the least to blank the contents that article out and redirect here. ابو علي (Abu Ali) 06:18, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
Please do not misrepresent my comments. You had created the House_demolition_in_the_Israeli-Palestinian_conflict POV-fork four days before I made that comment. Jayjg (talk) 02:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I stand corrected regarding the dates. This was an honest mistake, and I concider your accusation of lieing uncivil. Still could you explain why you are suggested in the comment to this edit [5] that the material on the Israeli Palestinian conflict should be moved to the article you want deleted? ابو علي (Abu Ali) 08:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I was subsequently convinced that the article was an unhelpful POV-fork, based on argumentation from others, and a review of the article history. Now, please focus on article content, not other editors. Jayjg (talk) 04:14, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Nadav -> I fear our mutual hope that this matter can be discussed without personal attack will not be possible. PalestineRemembered 11:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

(Outdenting). IDONTLIKEIT has never been a valid reason to remove content. The two of you seem to have lost sight of WP:NPOV, in that you seem to be attempting to eliminate a topic that you don't like because of your personal POV (thank you, Jay, for making this so clear). It's particularly deplorable that you're attempting to remove the article by blanking and redirecting it without any prior discussion or consensus, and without attempting to go through the proper channel of AfD. I've therefore had the article AfD'd at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so that we can obtain the views of the wider community. -- ChrisO 23:43, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's deplorable that you would create such an obvious straw man version of my arguments. Have you no shame, ChrisO? The issue here is entirely about policy, particularly WP:UNDUE. Stop focusing so much on me, please, it's unseemly. Jayjg (talk) 02:56, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree. We almost certainly need articles for military/punitive House demolition in Zimbabwe, in Darfur/Sudan and probably Tibet and other places. But the process of building the encyclopaedia is done one step at a time, and this article is part of that very process. PalestineRemembered 11:30, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rachel Corrie

It seems odd to me that this article has no mention of Rachel Corrie, whose death was chiefly responsible for bringing the issue of house demolition to public attention. IMO it would be appropriate to acknowledge this in the lead. --Marvin Diode 21:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

It's extremely odd. However, there is a WP policy by which articles should not become too long. That's why some editors here have created a "House demolition in the Israel-Palestine conflict" section and those editors are so irritated that it's been deleted. Go to this link[6] where I've created a new page that I'm sure would satisfy all parties. (And it does mention Rachel Corrie!) PalestineRemembered 21:53, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
This article is nowhere near the "too-long" length for Wikipedia articles, the reason for creating the "Israel demolitions" article had nothing to do with article length, and the "Israel demolitions" article was not "deleted". Please make more truthful Talk: comments. Thanks. Jayjg (talk) 02:46, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
You're absolutely wrong on your second assertion and evading the point on the third assertion. I'll reiterate something I thought I'd already made clear. When I rewrote this article, I deliberately cast it as an overview, not going into great detail about subtopics but summarising each and linking out to main articles. You can see those links at the top of sections 1.1.1, 1.1.2 and 1.1.3. The previous version of the article dealt in depth with one specific conflict and was therefore not suitable for an overview article. When Abu ali challenged my removal of the previous content (at #Deletion of Category:Israeli-Palestinian conflict above) I suggested that it would be more appropriate to use the removed content in a spinout article. It was made clear from the start that that was why it was created, and you went along with it until SlimVirgin brought her circus to town. As for your third assertion, the content was deleted without consensus or even any prior discussion, while my requests that you follow normal AfD procedures were ignored. You don't get to unilaterally blank and redirect articles, Jay. How about following the advice of Wikipedia:Consensus for once? -- ChrisO 09:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
According to whom was Rachel Corrie's death chiefly responsible for bringing the issue of house demolition to public attention? Jayjg (talk) 02:44, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't aware it did, the issue has certainly been the topic of controversy long before that incident. -- ChrisO 09:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
The bulldozing of Rachel Corrie was certainly a factor in popularizing the issue of house demolition, but I'm not sure if it was chiefly responsible or not. In either case, it would be totally appropriate to mention Rachel Corrie, even in an overview article, as she is a very well-known victim of a bulldozing in the I/P conflict. Organ123 17:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I disagree - it's one incident in one conflict, and I doubt it was even the most significant episode in the I/P house demolition saga. It's too fine a level of detail for an overview article. If anything, we already have too much detail and too much weight on the I/P conflict in this article - there's more on I/P than World War II, which is pretty disproportionate considering the relative scales of the conflicts. -- ChrisO 17:26, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it was the most significant episode either, inasmuch as one bulldozing death is no more significant than any other. I do think that it was much more discussed in the Western media than other specific deaths, probably for racist reasons, but there's also a play written about her, and a song, and whatnot. I don't think it's too fine of a detail to mention her in an overview article, but I don't feel that passionately about it. However, it's hard to have this discussion at all in light of the deletion activities of the new I/P-related article. If editors aren't allowed to have a space to discuss the issue in some more detail, then I would feel more strongly about including Corrie in this article. Organ123 18:06, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of article "House demolition in the I-P conflict"

As predicted by some people above, the creation of a spin-off article was cut short by its blanking as a POV-Fork. See here for the on-going discussion. With the article itself no longer present, you can only see an archived copy of it, see here. PalestineRemembered 15:31, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

But if the article ends up bieng deleted, all of its sourced content will have to be merged here.Bless sins 18:23, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
The article is already 35K, so it's over the first touch-wire at which splitting should be considered. Merge another article that is already either 9K or 17K and you're approaching the level (60K) at which splitting becomes urgent. One of the people calling for merge/redirect of this article is at Kiryat Gat calling for a 6.5K (or perhaps 10K) article to be split. I think it's high time we edited to policy - splitting is over-due and the time of good-faith editors is being wasted. PalestineRemembered 19:37, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
And as I said in the AfD discussion, this will result in the I-P issue being given grossly disproportionate prominence. It's already too prominent IMO - it has more coverage than World War II, which is ridiculous. We need less I-P content in this article, not more. That's the whole point of an overview article. -- ChrisO 19:52, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Strange edit-warring

Isarig, can you state here why you think this material is "off-topic"? [7] I'm puzzled.--G-Dett 16:53, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Me too. --Marvin Diode 17:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm puzzled as to why you are puzzled. I have given my reasons nearly a month ago, as a direct response to you, when you first proposed to add this material to the article (even before the re-write). Check the archive. In a nutshell, you are conflating demolitions of buildings without permit, which is a civil procedure that has nothing to do with fighting terrorism, punishment or military tactics, with the topic of the article, which is stated very clearly in the first line "This article is about the demolition of houses for military or punitive civil purposes".. Please do not add this material again until you have consensus for it. Isarig 17:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
But part of what you are deleting is a useful section which explains that building permits are denied, also as a punitive measure. It winds up being the same thing. --Marvin Diode 17:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
It is (a) not what the source citied claims, (b) even if the source were to claim it, it would not be the same thing and (c) it would be an unproven, POV allegation by a partisan group, denied by government sources and debunked by other advocacy groups. Isarig 17:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Maybe we should have a (gasp) poll, or another RFC. --Marvin Diode 17:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
WP is not run by voting or polls, but by consensus. Get consensus for this if you want it included. Isarig 17:59, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm still puzzled. The article covers demolitions in military contexts with a range of goals, including ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, and a range of pretexts, including as punishment for "various legal offenses." The overwhelming majority of reliable sources treat the systemic demolition of Palestinian homes "built without a permit" as part of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a great many within that majority ascribe demographic goals to the practice. Again, why aren't these demolitions relevant to this article?--G-Dett 18:33, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Some POV sources claim this is part of "the Israel-Palestine conflict", though none claim it is a military tactic, and others quite explicitly differentiate the two, and I have given you examples. Please get consensus for this first, thanks. Isarig 18:42, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
None claim it is a military tactic? The quote from Dr. Meir Margalit of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions that you've edit-warred out of the article described it as a military tactic, specifically an aggressive national response to a "strategic threat." You've raised this objection before, and I've given you other material as well:

Demolitions are executed suddenly, in an atmosphere of a major military operation with an accompaniment sometimes of several hundred armed soldiers. Bulldozers are most commonly used to carry out demolitions. House demolition often results in serious damage to neighboring houses. Once the house is demolished, families are not provided with alternate accommodation. Not surprisingly, rather than being rendered homeless or living in a tent, many of the evicted families return to the original site of their homes to rebuild and, as a result,risk being forcibly evicted again. Building or renovating a house without an Israeli government-issued permit is the primary reason Palestinian houses are demolished in East Jerusalem. These building permits (required for dwellers living on the southern outskirts of Ramallah to the northern edge of Bethlehem) are impossible for Palestinians to obtain. Giving Meaning to Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, p.162.

Do peer-reviewed academic books published by prestigious university presses have nothing on a CAMERA press release or a MEMRI report?--G-Dett 18:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Maraglit, a shrill advocate belonging an extreme partisan organization is welcome to his POV, but even he does not claim this is a military tactic. he alleges that this is used to counter a "strategic threat", but as I've explained elsewhere, a "startegic threat" is not the same as a security threat and the means to combat strategic threats are not synonymous with "military tactics". To wit, the US faces a "strategic threat" of the Euro replacing the Dollar as the main currency for international commerce but steps that the Federal Reserve may take to remedy this would not be "military tactics", would not be considered an act of the US armed forces, etc.... Academic books are not beyond political polemics, nor above making statement easily proven false such as the allegations that 'building permits ... are impossible for Palestinians to obtain'. Isarig 19:37, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I know you don't like Maraglit, nor his "extreme partisan organization," but he does have some expertise, no? Perhaps more first-hand expertise than the extreme partisan organizations you do favor? At any rate, I'm not following your analogies. If the U.S. response to the "strategic threat" of the Euro were to surround the European Central Bank with hundreds of soldiers, and "in an atmosphere of a major military operation" demolish it, then I'd understand your point. But it isn't, and I don't. As for a Wikipedian's one-man ad hoc peer-review of academic studies, that is by the by. Though I'm tempted to call your bluff about the "easily proven false" statement about permits, I'm not sure it matters. If you have an equally good source (peer-reviewed specialist scholarship) countering it, then we could include both claim and counterclaim in the article, but it should be clear at this point that there is no basis in policy for removing the material from the article altogether.--G-Dett 19:55, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't know Margalit personally, and am in no position to like or dislike him. I disagree with his political agenda, yes. He is a politician, and has no more expertise on the topic than a CAMERA researcher, probably less. The analogy was meant to illustrate that not all "strategic threats" are military or security threats, I'm sorry if you don't get it. If the Federal reserve decided to implement some strategy to counter the strategic threat of the Euro, (e.g by providing kickbacks to oil producers who accept dollars as payment), and Margalit or some Saddam Hussein sympathizer claimed this action was part of the US war on Iraq, it would be a quaint statement, with some comic effect, but would be just as irrelevant to the article about the war in Iraq as Margalit's statement is to House demolitions. Isarig 20:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
These analogies are growing less intelligible, not more. The Israeli response we're talking about here isn't a kickback or some other Machiavellian subterfuge, but rather systematic demolitions enforced by hundreds of soldiers in an atmosphere of a major military operation. And the view that this policy of force forms part of the Israel-Palestine conflict isn't a quaint opinion held by some marginal and compromised party, but rather reflects the majority opinion of experts, scholars, and reliable sources. Perhaps it is time for an RFC, per Marvin. Any more Orwellian or Carrollian exchanges and I'm likely to lose my patience.--G-Dett 20:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Once again: Margalit does not claim this is a military tactic, nor punishment - you are making that claim, in order to force-fit it into an article which is about military tactics. Margalit merely alleges that this is a response to some "strategic threat". He's welcome to this quaint POV, but that's all it is, his POV, and even if true, would not belong in the article. "The Israeli response we're talking about" is, in itself, merely an allegation, namely that this is some "National response" to a "strategic treat", vs. being simply a common, normal civil procedure to undo illegal construction. If you lose your patience this easily, you are ill-suited to edit an encyclopedia that works by consensus. Go ahead an start an RfC - but please stop reinserting this non-consensus material over the objections of numerous editors. Isarig 20:37, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Isarig, there are very few reliable sources, and perhaps no experts at all, who claim that the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank constitutes "simply a common, normal civil procedure to undo illegal construction," as opposed to an integral part of the Israel-Palestine conflict. That is the quaint opinion here, a position most reliable sources barely deign to pause and laugh at. It's a fringe position, which through the alchemy of specious hypotheticals you're trying to convert into a piece of consensus wisdom, and thereby into an editorial assumption for this article. It doesn't makes sense.--G-Dett 20:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

(Outdent). You keep asserting this (that this is the majority opinion of experts), with no support for that claim at all. You have listed a few sources that treat these two separate things together (some of them extreme partisan groups) and I have shown you, previously, very reliable sources that explicitly create a distinction between the two and treat them seperately. This article is about "the demolition of houses for military or punitive civil purposes" - and covers such clear cut uses the world over. That there exist some partisans who allege that in this conflict, a civil procedure is "really" part of a military campaign is quaint, but has no place in a serious encyclopedia. I again urge you to start an RfC - but please stop reinserting this non-consensus material over the objections of numerous editors. Isarig 21:09, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

"Military or punitive civil purposes," exactly. Many sources describe the demolitions as military operations, yes; you weirdly claimed that none did, so I took a moment to direct you to a couple of them, but this is neither here nor there so try not to get fixated on it. The important thing for you to grasp is that the preponderance of sources (especially expert and scholarly sources) treat the Israeli policy of house demolition as (i) a single phenomenon comprising both permit-demolitions and security-demolitions (and hence give figures like the 12,000 which you keep deleting); (ii) attribute demographic and sometimes punitive goals to the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes built without permit; and (iii) see the policy as an integral, indeed central component of the Israel-Palestine conflict, rather than seconding your quaint, indeed cute, opinion that it represents "simply a common, normal civil procedure to undo illegal construction." Insofar as your quaint, indeed cute opinion has been seconded by somebody out there in the real world, it should be represented (with a watchful eye on WP:UNDUE), but for a serious encyclopedia to assume the truth of a marginal position is absurd.--G-Dett 21:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
One source has mentioned that the civil demolitions have an 'atmosphere' of a military operation to them , but did not call them a military operation, as they are not. Repeating the baseless claim that the 'preponderance of sources (especially expert and scholarly sources)' claim this is the same phenomena will not make it ring any truer, and I note the the "12,000" figure you quite in support of this does not come from an "expert and scholarly source" but rather from an extreme partisan source. Alleging "demographic goals" is a POV claim which, even if it were true, is not the same as a saying this is a military tactic, or a punitive civil measure similar to the examples used in the article (of destroying a home as a punishment for harboring an outlaw) . The policy may be an integral part of the I-P conflict, just like the policy of denying citizenship to Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens, but just as the latter does not become a "military tactic" or civil punitive measure for a crime (even if Margalit et. el were to claim so) just because it is part of the conflict, neither do civilian demolitions of homes built without permit. This POV warrants a mention in one of the (numerous) articles dedicated to the I-P conflict, but not in a generic article about house demolitions as a miliatry tactic.
The fact that numerous editors, from both sides of the ideological stance on the I-P conflict have opposed this disputed change should give you reason to pause and re-evaluate your position. Isarig 22:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
If you're counting me as being on one side of the ideological divide, I'm not. I genuinely don't have an ideological position here. I simply don't believe it's appropriate for an overview article. -- ChrisO 22:39, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions is an expert and partisan source on house demolitions, as are the major international human rights organizations who, to a one, concur with them. These expert sources are "partisan," that is, in the sense of being opposed to Israel's policy of house demolitions. They are "expert" in the sense of having acquired and disseminated a great deal of specialized knowledge and detailed statistics about house demolitions, in a way that MEMRI, CAMERA, et al have not. Similarly, Giving Meaning to Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights is an expert and scholarly and partisan source. In the archive of this page, I gave a series of search results from Google Scholar, Google Books, and Lexis-Nexis. Consult those if you wish to know how the preponderance of reliable sources, expert sources, scholars, etc., interpret the policy of house demolitions. Here's a hint, though: they don't see it as "simply a common, normal civil procedure to undo illegal construction."--G-Dett 23:30, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of causing Jayjg et al to keel over in shock when I say this, I have to say that I too don't think that content should be in this article. It's simply too lengthy and too detailed for this overview article. I intend to do some more work on this article over the next few days and will slim down the amount of Israeli-Palestinian content in the process - the coverage is already disproportionate even without this disputed content. -- ChrisO 21:18, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree that Israel-Palestine (in all its topicality) should not overwhelm this fascinating, nuanced, and informative overview of house demolition. Hence the need for the separate article (which is currently under attack by the same editors who don't want it here). I think the dispute here is not about the brevity and concision of I/P material in this article (everyone seems committed to that) but rather about whether "permit"-demolitions can be alluded to at all, no matter how briefly. That debate is absurd. Most sources on permit demolitions treat them squarely within the rubric of this article's subject matter. That's why the demolitions are notable, contraversial, etc., in the first place.--G-Dett 21:43, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The way forward

Now that the AfD on House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has closed with a substantial majority in favour of keeping the separate article, it's open for editing again. I'm not going to involve myself in developing it because it's not my area of expertise or interest, but I've posted a suggested outline at Talk:House demolition in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the hope that it will help editors to find a more productive way forward. I've simultaneously reduced the Israeli-Palestinian content in this article (see diff) to ensure that its coverage is consistent with maintaining this article as a broad-brush overview. I suggest that the removed content be repurposed in the spinout article. I highly recommend that the editors who've been disputing content on this article take their dispute elsewhere, as the disputed content is simply too specific and verbose for the brief coverage required of an overview article.

As for this article, Raul654 has suggested nominating it for FA status. Obviously this is something I'd like to achieve, but I think it requires a bit more work before it can be nominated successfully. I'll do some more tweaking and researching over the next few days, with the intention of starting the ball rolling on FAC shortly thereafter. If anyone has any suggestions for areas that need to be developed or modified, please post them below. Thanks in advance. :-) -- ChrisO 00:23, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] FAC and forward

I was sorry to oppose the article at FAC - it's great but the name was misleading for me. Can I propose moving the article to House demolition (punitive)? Punitive seems to sum up and dab the military or civil 'punishment' demolitions the article refers to. It was my only gripe with what is otherwise, a great article --Joopercoopers 11:15, 2 August 2007 (UTC)