Talk:إسرائيل

On the internet at least, the spelling "اسرائيل" can also be found, but there are very few hits for any spelling without the hamza on the yeh. I don't know Arabic spelling & orthography well enough to guess why only the hamza on the alif is optional.

Because of this I don't know whether "إسرائيل" should redirect to "اسرائيل", or whether "اسرائيل" should be shown under "Alternative spellings" on this page.

The usualy policy is to put the main article on page whose title has all optional letters, diacritics, etc removed. That page displays the word with all the optional bits in place. Other common spellings then redirect to this minimally-spelled page. &mdash; Hippietrail 23:33, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)