> 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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