Maybe it is time to enforce the no Israel/Palestine Rule?

[EarlG]

9. That's not what the rule was intended for

The Israel/Palestine rule was originally put into place because, very early on in the history of DU, the General Discussion forum filled up with too many general debates about the decades-long conflict, and they were crowding out other discussions. So we decided to create a separate forum specifically for those debates and told people to post in there instead of in GD.

But that rule was not intended to block discussion of anything related to Israel/Palestine whenever big news is occurring. If you visit the About page in General Discussion and check out the Statement of Purpose, it says that "Posts about Israel/Palestine, religion, guns, showbiz, or sports are restricted in this forum," but it also provides a link to more information. At that link you will find this:

Threads about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are not permitted under normal circumstances and should be posted in the Israel/Palestine Group.

Open discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is permitted during very high-profile news events which are heavily covered across all newsmedia.

The "very high-profile news events" clause is in effect right now.

EDITED TO ADD: The page I've linked to is pretty old, and some of the information on it is outdated; I will be revising some Statements of Purpose to bring them up to date when we move to DU4. But as of right now, my current position is that the I/P the "very high-profile news events" clause is the way to go, and so posts about the Israel/Palestine situation are currently okay in GD.