Steve Vertigum wrote:
69 municipalities, 141 local councils, and 53 regional councils, for a total of 263 articles. The local councils and regional councils contain smaller towns within them, but I don't have data on them, so at present any information about them will have to be added manually.
I see-- and what treatment are you giving to towns which exist in violation of the various UN and US-Israel agreements over the years?
Its only been the past couple months that Israel has bent to international pressure to dismantle a settlement -- how are you treating these? Are these registered as non-existent? Are you adding the former Arabic names of towns, recently and not-so recently incorporated into Israel?
First of all, he's already mentioned that data on the territories (West Bank, Gaza Strip) is not included, which is where most of these issues would arise. The remaining disputed areas are the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem; in both cases the issues could be solved simply by linking to those two articles, which explain the disputed situation.
As for former names, I'd say add them if you have them; if not, they can be added later. Most of the cities and towns in Turkey have former Greek names (as well as many former Greek residents, who have since been made into refugees), and I don't see anyone objecting that we're including data biased towards the occupying Turkish government in Wikipedia. (In fact, I think there are lots of Greece/Turkey and Palestine/Israel parallels, but that's another matter).
-Mark