User:John Z/drafts/discuss

talk israel, reply to adam

Some nuances -The Syrian border is in some dispute, strong enough to prevent agreement, although the area involved is very small, basically the 10 meter strip. The pre-67 lines were (basically) armistice lines, not just cease-fire lines. That is a misuse of the term "terra nullius". Israel's "annexation" of East Jerusalem is a disputable and complex matter, it explicitly said it was not annexing EJ in 1967. The pre-67 line does have standing in the negotiations, based on the armistice, SC 242 and international acceptance. The only official basis - really the only possible basis - by which Israel has ever made territorial claims beyond them is security, citing and interpreting SC 242.

talk 6day

Here are my main problems with the removals. First a wikipedia article should present a bare or not so bare skeleton of (nice dull) facts that everyone can agree on, that prevents it from degenerating into chaos. This article definitely needs more work here, there is much missing. Second, where there is a genuine scholarly dispute, it must present this dispute fairly. Third, one should not remove things from an article or from Wikipedia entirely if one merely thinks they are badly placed - e.g. arguably not belonging in background. I strongly disagree that any of the quoted people or opinions belong to the fringes, who should have no place in this article a priori. One problem with this article - that I pointed to before the current disputes - is that the first and second points are getting mixed up, and the flow is very confusing. The article is in danger of becoming a pastiche. Agreed-on facts are (perhaps imperfectly) presented with citations that may raise red flags with people who oppose the POV of the cited source. In this case, policy frowns on removal, but prefers neutralization of what is stated, and common sense suggests less controversial sourcing. I'll just concentrate on the Finkelstein citation for now. It is not the case that "His justification of the Syrian shelling does nothing to contribute to the factual information provided in the article." It did, which is why I reverted to the version with it. It was the only place in the article that mentioned the Israeli activities in the DMZ's - an accepted historical fact, which all agree is relevant to the Syrian activity of shelling, and part of the complex story leading to the war. Getting rid of it got rid of part of the skeleton of the article. Take a look at the statements in the Golan Heights article by Moshe Dayan, which are if anything stronger than Finkelstein's.

The currently controversial statement is Rubenberg's: there is possible ambiguity in the meaning, which should be corrected, is she or Egypt stating that "Israel favored war..."? When she says Egypt believed that is also important; if Nasser really believed that strongly at first, he might have acted differently. It is a bit confusing too, for I think the scholarly consensus would be that "Israel favored war from the outset" is too strong; not even Finkelstein says just that. Replacing some of what she says with what Oren etc say, or eliminating duplications of what is already in the article, basically the first sentence, might be a good first step. BTW, the State department history FRUS volume on the period is now online with good relevant, authoritative and instantly accessible stuff on US positions. Those who do not want it in the article should say more specifically what is wrong with it. What is more important would be to balance this Egyptian view with more description of Israeli efforts, like Amit's trip to Washington. Right now I find a lot of the article nearly unreadable, with too much direct quoting from Oren, and everywhere things like Gelpi saying the cabinet met ....- instead of just the cabinet met. His account is not really consistent with Shlaim's or Morris's say, and I think should be fixed. Aiden, I would like to know why you don't like the reference to the 1957 Israeli casus belli statement, (Meir's UN speech) which did not use the word blockade (or casus belli) by the way.

arist log

I don't think this is too good an idea, though I don't know too much about logic. As of right now, Wiki seems to be using "Aristotelian logic" for anything before modern logic. The identification of logics of terms with traditional logic in the introduction seems false. While Aristotle's own logic was a logic of terms, later logics, like Stoic logic cf[1][2], were logics of propositions, and medievals like Ockham distinguished the two clearly, perhaps more clearly than later thinkers, cf. [3][4] - probably the (latin) phrase "logic of terms" goes back to him at least. John Z 03:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

chaos in control

Some points which may help resolve things - or not: It is not at all clear who the terminological dispute is with. As far as I understand, the official position of the government of Israel is now and always has been that these territories are (belligerently) occupied - (maybe not Gaza now). I admit that the (relatively recent) statement on the Israeli government website seems to contradict this, but note that it just says the territories should not be called occupied, not flatly that they "are not occupied." Of course this would be silly if that were all there were to it, but there is much more to say. More precisely, since the Elon Moreh decision of the late 70's at least, the government in its submissions to the Israeli supreme court and the court have agreed on the following position - that the territories are what one might call "Hague-occupied" but not "Geneva-occupied" i.e. that the 1907 Hague conventions apply de jure, and are binding on Israel internationally and as customary international law are part of Israeli municipal law, and that the presence is a belligerent occupation as defined in Hague, but that the 4th Geneva convention does not apply de jure, although the court and government claim to be following the (unspecified) humanitarian parts of it. The main argument used by the government and court is a type of the "no sovereign reversioner" argument used by Stone and Shamgar etc, that article 2 of 4GC limits applicability to occupations where the territory is recognized sovereign territory of another High Contracting Party. (So since the 4th GC is being used to eliminate the applicability of the body of the 4th GC, it seems logically necessary that the territory be considered (Hague) "occupied" in the first place to use article 2). The recent wall decisions in the Israeli court just seem to reconfirm these old positions. Of course, SC 242 uses the word "occupied" for these territories, and Israel has long accepted it; in international law the word has always been considered to be a de facto term, not a de jure one - it just means that these are lands conquered in a war, synonymous with capture or control. I have never seen any statement of equally official character from Israel that implies these territories are or were "not occupied" - of course if someone could find one, it should be in the article. ( I just looked at Israel's written submission to the ICJ and could not find anything at all relevant - it seems to avoid this point entirely, just quoting the many UN usages of the word without comment.) A perhaps even more forgotten point is that the order(s) which set up Israel's military court system in the West Bank etc, Military Order 3, explicitly insisted on the rigorous application of the 4th Geneva convention to the territories, although it was revoked 5 months later. (The ICJ refers to this order in paragraph 93 of their decision.) (By the way, afaik, and I think I've seen some reference implying it, this order was the first time any government anywhere had said such a thing, so I think Israel should be given credit for trying be very scrupulous about the rules with it. In any case, I think it is hard to see, based on this, how the ICJ can be criticized by anyone for this aspect of its ruling; although estoppel is not decisive in international law, it is a strong principle.) Anyway, I will try to dig up some links to this military order and to an analysis of the Israeli decisions and positions that I tried to summarize above.

It is not correct, by the way, that the Egyptian occupation of Gaza was not considered a military occupation, as it manifestly was. The US officially considered it one, and considered "the Armistice Agreement ..gives Egypt the right and responsibility of occupation" (from the February 11, 1957 aide-memoire from Dulles to Eban) (somewhat similar, it appears to me, to Israel, SC 242 and the currently occupied territories). I don't think there's any doubt that the rest of the world, except for the UK, and particularly the US, officially considered the control of Jordan over the West Bank an occupation; there are some very old relevant US statements during the 48 war at least, although until 1967 everybody seemed to be happy enough with the Jordanian "annexation" in practice, and not actively denouncing or even mentioning it in any way.

John Z 17:08, 30 September 2005 (UTC)