Talk:Ariel (Israeli settlement)

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Materials

Relevant sources:

• http://www.jpost.com/Metro/Article.aspx?id=199767

Requested move 6 August 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. Moved to Ariel (Israeli settlement) per existing consensus (closed by non-admin page mover) — DaxServer (t · m · e · c) 19:24, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

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Ariel (settlement) → Ariel (city)Ariel (city) – The article had been stable at the title Ariel (city) from its creation in 2004 to November 2022, when there was an undiscussed page move to Ariel (settlement) by @Dan Palraz:. I reverted said move thanks to the fact it had not been discussed or had any consensus behind it, and then @Nableezy: moved it back to Ariel (settlement) again with no rationale, so I'm starting an RM discussion to resolve the issue. My position is that both (city) and (settlement) are natural disambiguators and neither is incorrect, and that given a lack of a strong reason to favour one over the other, the article should remain at the title it has held for over 18 years: Ariel (city). It's worth also mentioning that in all other language wikipedias which use disambiguation for this article, the word for "city" is used rather than "settlement". Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 14:52, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - Ariel, as noted in the first sentence, is an Israeli settlement, not simply a city. Id support moving this to Ariel (Israeli settlement), as that is the primary descriptor in both this article and in reliable sources. Beyond that, the article had been stable at settlement for well over a year, making the revert a move and not a challenge to a then settled move. Beyond that, the move request is factually false, the Arabic article uses مستوطنة, settlement. German actually has two articles, de:Ariel (Siedlung) and de:Ariel (Stadt). Dutch has it as nl:Ariël_(Westelijke_Jordaanoever) which is Ariel (West Bank Jordan River). So no, the other languages do not all use city instead of settlement, that is just false. nableezy - 15:20, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose, Ariel is first and most importantly an Israeli settlement that is established on occupied land and its very existence is regarded as illegal by the international community. To have the article named "Ariel (city)" would be a normalization of its status and against how the entire world views it. Just because the article was inaccurately named for 18 years doesnt mean it should be switched back. But the article should be named: "Ariel (Israeli settlement)" and not just "settlement". --Supreme Deliciousness (talk) 06:09, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose for the same reasons as Nab and SD give. Also agree to "Ariel (Israeli settlement)". Zero^talk 07:21, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• Move to Ariel (Israeli settlement). Ariel, Washington is also a settlement (which means any inhabited place). -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:58, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
• Note - please see the multi-move of a number of settlements that had previously had different disambiguations. We have standardized disambiguations for Israeli settlements to (Israeli settlement). This, Immanuel (settlement), and Shilo (settlement) were apparently missed as they had been using settlement and not the regional council as the disambiguation, but the result there should inform the discussion here (and soon at Shilo). nableezy - 14:10, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Move: to Ariel (Israeli settlement) per Necrothesp, since there is ambiguity. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Given the recent moves of other Israeli towns in the West Bank that others have raised, rather than viewing this article in isolation, a move to Ariel (Israeli settlement) out of consistency reasons seems reasonable to me. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 17:01, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mr l

I'm not interested in the PLO flag being in the Israeli settlement of Ariel 2A01:73C0:56E:B9C8:68FB:2EFF:FE89:6B99 (talk) 01:51, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Restored content removed as “non-core”

I’m seeking clarification on the recent revert described as “restore single most important property of this location as per cross-topic area norm for all settlement articles”

The cited source does not mention this settlement by name, so it does not support a claim about this specific location. Wikipedia policy requires that sources be used accurately and with appropriate specificity (WP:V). Applying a general statement about settlements as a category to a named settlement risks being misleading (WP:SYNTH).

I’m not sure I understand the revert summary about restoring a “single most important property” - The removed sentence did not change what the settlement is or how it is described in general.

Lastly, an editorial “norm” is not a sufficient reason to retain content if the sourcing does not directly support the claim being made.

Thank you! ScottyNolan (talk) 18:09, 27 January 2026 (UTC)

Everyone knows that their legal status is the single most notable thing about the settlements as a whole, as defined by coverage in reliable sources. In the case of Ariel, here and here are clean statements of the world opinion with Ariel mentioned as an example. The ICJ ruling on the separation barrier also mentioned Ariel. There are plenty of others, but this is not even necessary, as a statement that obviously applies to Ariel doesn't need to mention Ariel explicitly. There is more to be said about this. Zero^talk 11:55, 3 February 2026 (UTC)

The precise sentence that you keep removing has a Wiki-purpose, namely to preempt a separate debate on each of the articles devoted to settlements. Without this agreement, some settlement articles will have nothing and some will have a protracted discussion when really the situation is the same for all of them. It's better that we spend our time writing about things that are distinct to each settlement and leave the general discussion of legality to the general articles. Zero^talk 01:07, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

"Only YOU can prevent forest fires!"

 As far as I can tell, having watched the set of Israeli settlement articles for many years, there is far more utility in having a simple, concise, STABLE, policy-compliant legality statement consistently applied across the approximately 200 settlement articles than potentially having countless individual unconnected discussions that generate inconsistency and pointless time-wasting conflict. It is beneficial to have a norm that reduces the risk of forest fires. The statement itself is the product of lengthy source and policy-based discussion involving a large number of editors. It produced a concise/minimalist, policy-compliant statement about the legality of a set of things suitable for inclusion in the lead of every member of the set. There is a good reason to retain the STABLE version when the norm unambiguously applies to all members of the set and describes the most notable property of each member. The risk of SYNTH is zero since this location is a settlement and the statement unambiguously applies to all settlements. This kind of argument is weak wiki-lawyering and entirely unpersuasive in my view. It is precisely the kind of unproductive argument that a simple multi-page standard renders unnecessary. Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:03, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

If there is consensus to include a standardized legality statement in the lead of all settlement articles, please link to that discussion. Thank you. ScottyNolan (talk) 21:08, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Already did, look up. Zero^talk 01:35, 6 February 2026 (UTC)