Talk:Palestine

Dispute

So it comes to this. Like everything called Palestine this page is under dispute.

On one side: If there is a state of Palestine it does not nor has ever had, have any control over any places that have had successful documented geohash expeditions. In the Territory of Judea and Samaria there has only been up until now one geohasher: Yosef (talk) 10:13, 15 August 2018 (UTC). Yosef will not call these areas Palestine because of the previous sentence.

On the other side: Some people really want to trust Palestinians.

Yosef (talk) 10:13, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Independently of the issue, I think it's a bit childish to make a proposal (which should be made on the Discussion page, anyway) and 35 minutes later editing it so it becomes a definition without any other geohasher's input. Please, think your edits before doing them and discuss them. I won't undo your last edits, but I hope you do so we can reach any kind of agreement on the topic before changing the page. Gormaz (talk) 11:14, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

I was waiting to see how the discussion developed before saying anything more, but Yosef has asked me to weight in.

I don't know much about the issue, but it seems that most of the world recognizes the State of Palestine (except, mostly, NATO members and, obviously, Israel [1]) and in regards to the UN it's a non-member observant state, that is, a state. Therefore, it sure makes sense to have a page for it in the wiki.

Regarding what should be considered Palestine, it seems that the State of Palestine and all the countries that recognize it consider Palestine to be the whole West Bank and Gaza, if I'm not mistaken.

Lastly, I don't think not having controlled over some territory is enough reason not to consider that territory part of the country. Gormaz (talk) 14:43, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

"So it comes to this." - Do not make this more dramatic than it is, please. Nobody is taking anything away from you or from Israel.

The purpose of this page is to help geohashers to keep track of the regional geohashing achievement. You are pretty close to achieving this one, it seems, but the last graticule 32,34 is going to be tricky. If you achieve this, I really do not care if you call it Palestine or Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

The page name however stays Palestine since that is what the world calls it. I know that as an Israeli citizen, you feel like you have to protest this, but keep in mind that this is not the United Nations. Unlike governments, categories for graticule pages can coexist, and so can the wiki pages Israel and Palestine. Crimea's graticules are in Category:Ukraine and Category:Russia. Kosovo's graticules are in Category:Kosovo and Category:Serbia. Palestine's graticules are in Category:Israel and Category:Palestine.

And yes, you were geohashing on land that Israel controls and Palestine claims. At File:Screenshot 2018-07-10-19-27-14.png, you are literally standing just west of the Green Line. Congradulations, you made progress on your regional geohashing achievement for both Israel and Palestine.

I am going to restore the old version of the page. Please do not undo this unless you have the support of the majority. If you really really need to, add a comment to the page along the lines of "Israeli geohashers living in this area, such as Yosef, do not recognize this area as Palestine, but as the Israeli district of Judea and Samaria" --Fippe (talk) 15:19, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in on this Fippe, I likewise agree that it is not the place of Geohashing to support one worldview on the territorial status of a location or the other —I think putting disputed locations in both categories is the best solution to this problem and represents the best non-commital middle-ground approach to what could otherwise be a cause of great division among our already tiny community. Thank you also for explaining the purpose of these pages within the context of Geohashing —i.e. the Regional hash achievement. Geohashing should I think be a non-partisan and inclusive sport and as such we should not look to hold our community to an official opinion on the status of any disputed territory, be it Palestine, Taiwan, Northern Cyprus, Crimea or anywhere else, so I support the status quo of this page as I feel this serves our community best. Saxbophone (talk) 17:52, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Understood Saxbophone. However if you are doing anything geohashing related in the West Bank, you will either do it through an Israeli channel in Area C or a Palestinian channel in Areas A and B. That means that if you are going to call anything Palestine, you can call Areas A and B because that is what was set out by the Oslo Accords. Area C has been defined by the Oslo Accords as Israel. That is actually a non-partisan approach. I can dispute Jordan and call it the "State of Ruben and Gad," but the true ruler is the King of Jordan. Again my approach is based on who runs the institutions in that location in practice, not just political. Yosef (talk) 20:10, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

"Area C has been defined by the Oslo Accords as Israel" —could you cite that please, I am not clear on which part of Oslo II you are referring to —I would like to understand where you're coming from R.E. that point (appreciate that I am an outsider to this part of the world unlike yourself). I'm still unclear why this matters for the purpose of Geohashing, as we have already discussed the current provision of coexisting Palestine and Israel pages on this wiki which should cater to your desire to refer to Area C as being part of Israel.

"Again my approach is based on who runs the institutions in that location in practice, not just political." —I believe this is known as the difference between de jure (by law) and de facto (by practice) sovereignty. Another example of such is Northern Cyprus which I have briefly mentioned before, which is de jure part of Cyrpus, but de facto the entire territory of Northern Cyprus (Turkey invaded and later set up the separate state of Northern Cyprus starting 1973, but only Turkey recognises this country, noöne else). Likewise, Taiwan is de jure part of the People's Republic of China, but de facto controlled by the Republic of China (referred to by the rest of the world as Taiwan (although in this case though the UN doesn't recognise Taiwan, most countries of the world have de facto recognition of this de facto state). These are two differing examples where the majority opinion (that is, the opinion of the international community at large) flits between de jure and de facto. If you wish to apply a purely de facto interpretation to territorial sovereignty worldwide, I applaud your consistency and pragmatism and will not seek to block or hinder you from exercising this interpretation as far as it remains in the proper places, but I think it is wholly inappropriate for such an interpretation to become that which the wiki promotes solely —IMHO this would be divisive and uninclusive. You wish to consider Area C of the West Bank as part of Israel —would the Israel page not be a better place to state this? I think the point of region pages (particularly where there are ongoing territory disputes within the regions concerned) is to define what areas a region includes (not those that it excludes) —otherwise what's the point? (in the case of the Hala'ib Triangle, which both Egypt and Sudan claim, it would be unfair for the wiki to support one side's claim to the disputed territory by stating for example that "Egypt includes all territory that Egypt claims except the Hala'ib Triangle"). In the simplest sense, as I understand it the approach that the wiki has currently is to consider the disputed territories as the overlap part of a two-series venn diagram, where the two (err, venns) are the territories concerned. Saxbophone (talk) 11:25, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

I think the first part is how it pertains to geohashing. Israelis and Palestinians can geohash in Area C under the authority of the Israeli government. Only Palestinians can geohash in Areas A and B under the authority of the Palestinian Authority. That closes off to me about one third of the territory. Before Oslo, this was all done under the authority of the Israeli government. The timeline however shows that at no point was Area C under the Palestinian Authority. It can only be called Palestine because people wish to trust the Palestinian Authority. In the meantime, a geohasher's safety and access has been determined by the Israeli government for fifty-one years.

Oslo text: The territorial jurisdiction of the Council shall encompass Gaza Strip

territory, except for the Settlements and the Military Installation Area shown on map No. 2, and West Bank territory, except for Area C which, except for the issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations, will be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction in three phases, each to take place after an interval of six months, to be completed 18 months after the inauguration of the Council. At this time, the jurisdiction of the Council will cover West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for the issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations. Territorial jurisdiction includes land, subsoil and territorial waters, in accordance with the provisions of this Agreement.

I appreciate you making me dig. I've just been going by law for the whole time. As more parts of the agreement were put in place, there was supposed to be a transfer. The agreement moved a little bit in places like local rule and Gaza but for the West Bank Area C everything stayed put. Yosef (talk) 15:41, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

"I appreciate you making me dig." —No problem, thank you for clarifying this. Would it be correct to presume that the permanent status negotiations mentioned in the text never came about, and if that is the case would it also be fair to say that Area C's de jure status is unresolved (currently under Israeli administration (de facto) as per the text you quoted)?

I now see what you mean regarding impact on geohashing —I know you've mentioned the security concerns elsewhere before, and the practical concerns about restricted or denied access to certain territories.

I wonder if it would be useful to have a map on this page (possibly also on the Israel page if you'd consider it useful and appropriate) annotated with the graticule boundaries and annotating these territories according to both their de jure and de facto status (the latter would be most useful for your use case of identifying where you're allowed to go according to who currently controls it and who they allow to enter it). I know this map is out of date (2011), but perhaps something of a similar form, with the grid lines added and explanations of what the hashing limitations are of each area would fit this purpose?

I think the best approach regarding disputed territories in general is to detail which regions are de facto and de jure territory, of which states or parties (including regions of joint control and those of which the legal status is unresolved), ensuring that the controller of each region is documented properly (and what implications this has for Geohashing).

We probably should do this or something similar for all disputed regions on this wiki, to illustrate the extent of any overlapping territorial claims.

Ultimately I think it's of paramount importance that the Wiki provides all of this information in order to support Geohashers such as yourself in these regions, I'm just mindful of how the territorial status of the regions concerned are communicated on the Wiki to make sure the Wiki does not come across as regarding one claim more or less legitimate than another. Saxbophone (talk) 16:52, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

Saxbophone, you seem to understand what is going on. There would be basically be no de jure status, because the agreement did not move forward, but the de facto status (which is how the law is enforced making it somewhat de jure) is Israeli. Your wikipedia map looks just fine, but it isn't very detailed. The best map I can find is here: https://www.btselem.org/map. If you're an excellent programmer, you can figure out how to cross it with another map, but what I usually do is just find the closest Jewish and Muslim settlements to the hashpoint and use my judgment from there.

On a side note, I find it disappointing that my map comes from a left wing organization. Right wingers seem more concerned with fighting than building alliances.

Concerning other disputed territories, a good rule is to do some research, but let the locals tell what they saw and how they handled it. We can stereotype areas all we want, but the locals on the ground generally know a lot more than the news does. As an example of this, Israelis are told not to go the Egypt, but there are resort towns like Sharm-El-Sheikh which are considered perfectly safe.

In other news, the tabbing on this page is terrible. Feel free to move the Oslo text to it's own thread. Yosef (talk) 06:09, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

A Short Timeline of the Disputed Territories

1517: Ottoman Empire Rule

1918: British Empire Rule

1948: Jordanian Rule

1967: Israeli Rule

1994: Area A: Palestinian; Area B: Joint; Area C: Israeli;

Please note that Area C has never been under the rule of any entity that could be considered a modern State of Palestine.

Yosef (talk) 10:47, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Note from Yosef

This page is disputed. There has not yet been a single geohashing expedition which has been actually under Palestinian rule. All of the hashes have been in Area C. That means that the security forces were Israeli soldiers and police officers, drinks and bus tickets were paid for in New Israeli Shekels, and no borders or fences were crossed that required permits provided by the Palestinian Authority. No conversations were held in Arabic as it was not needed. I am willing to concede that there are areas that can be called Palestine which are under the Palestinian Authority (Areas A and B), but as an Israeli citizen it would be illegal for me to go there. The definitions of Area A, B, and C are set by the Oslo Accords which are the most comprehensive peace agreement signed by both sides. I encourage users to remove my name from the Palestinian markers which contradicts the Oslo Accords. --Yosef (talk) 21:59, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

With the clarifications added to the page, this dispute is hopefully now settled in the context of geohashing. --Fippe (talk) 16:18, 26 February 2020 (UTC)