[OSM-talk] Jerusalem name tag - Mediation

[dimka israeli]

> Arabic *and* Hebrew are the official languages of Israel. You can see 
> that also the Jerusalem Municipality website is in Arabic and Hebrew (& 
> English) [1].

Hebrew is locally considered to be the primary language. While Arabic is also an official one, Hebrew clearly takes precedence.

The Jerusalem emblem contains the name only in Hebrew.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emblem_of_Jerusalem



> You didn't explicitely state it but: Do you oppose having 
> "יְרוּשָׁלַיִם - القُدس" used as the name?

Yes, I oppose to have a double name because I would like the node to represent the de-facto capital of Israel which is a Jewish state, whose primary language is Hebrew. 

I believe that the current dispute can easily be solved with 
introduction of appropriate tags which will clarify any disambiguity. Please consider my proposal outlined below.

I think what is really missing from current OSM rules is the precise meaning of the tag "capital".

The dictionary definition is "seat of government", which doesn't consider recognition but is rather a property attached to a city by a state. Still, the issue of recognition is important to many people so OSM should reflect that.
Capitals  can be de-facto (when the city physically contains the seats of government) or only proclaimed (which is a necessary condition for a city to be called capital in the first place).

Our situation is as follows:

1) Jerusalem is a de-facto, not recognized capital of Israel.
2) Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) is not de-facto, not recognized capital of Palestine (but capital nevertheless because it was proclaimed so by the PLO). Please note that they explicitly talk about East Jerusalem.

My proposal therefore includes the introduction of the tags
1) "capital:recognized", type:binary, default value: "yes".
2) "capital:de-facto", type:binary, default value: "yes". 

There will be two nodes:

Node 1:
------------
name=ירושלים
name:en=Jerusalem
....
place=city
capital=yes
is_in=Israel
capital:recognized=no
capital:de-facto=yes

The node will be placed west of the 1949 armistice line and west of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Node 2:
------------
name=القُدس
name:en=East Jerusalem
place=city
capital=yes
is_in=Palestine?(will be chosen by the local community there)
capital:recognized=no
capital:de-facto=no

The node will be placed east of the 1949 armistice line and east of the  Old City of Jerusalem.

Please note that this will be in accordance with Wikipedia articles on Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, and Israel. I think Wikipedia in this case represents an important source because they are driven by consensus, similar to OSM. In fact, they had lengthy discussions about the topic[1,2]:


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jerusalem/capital
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Israel_Palestine_Collaboration/Discussion_archive/Jerusalem_as_capital


 		 	   		  
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