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April 04, 2004
This report is a good account of the way the western media currently represents the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It highlights the difficulties of reporting from the Palestinian side, and it says that most of the critical insights rely on the critical voices in the Israeli media.
We need to distinquish critical insights or criticism from anti-Semitism. As Dershowitz says in his book, The Case for Israel, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. As Dershowitz points out there "is a difference between mere criticism of Israel and signaling it out for unique sanctions such as divestitture or boycott." To say otherwise, he says, is to engage in the big lie.
Given the difference between criticisms of the Israeli state and a singling out the Jewish people based on ancient sterotypes and bigotry, we can outline the above report. It says that there seems to be:
..."three major paradigms that appear in the opinion pages or programmes of the western media with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:
a) Israelis have the right to security and Palestinian violence against Israel is illegitimate;
b) the conflict represents a vicious circle of violence that has to be broken down through negotiations and mediation;
c) the conflict is essentially one between an unlawful occupation and an occupied, unprotected people. "
The reports says that "most western opinion...can be placed, with fluctuations, within the continuum between a and b, whereas opinions on the continuum between b and c are less available, especially in the US."
Public opinion is located on the bc continuum. At the moment it does not hold much chance of success for b. Hence the polarization of a & c, and the erosion of the common ground of the two state solution. Yet a Palestinian state does need to be established to preserve a Jewish majority in Israel.
The media prism makes this report by Helena Cobban important. After a visit to the occupied territories she says the outlook for Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking over the next twelve months is extremely grim, and that this does not bode well for Palestinian independence.
Helena comments on Ariel Sharon's withdrawal strategy as follows:
"I think his main goals have been to destroy all of the PA's capabilities; and beyond that, to stamp out both any possibility of the emergence of governance institutions for the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza that are independent in any way from the will of Israel, and any hope the Palestinians might have that they could ever have such institutions. Obviously what he does not want to do is to stamp out the PA, only to have it replaced by a far better organized, far better motivated Islamist leadership. I think he probably now feels that he has Yasser Arafat where he wants him, holed up and becoming increasingly isolated and delusional inside the muqata. So he may well feel it is time to move on to battling the Islamists-and the place to do that is in Gaza."
This is not a strategy designed to bring about a two state solution or Palestinian self-governance. Why?
Helena says that Sharon's strategy keeps open the possibility that once the Gaza settlers have been removed to "safety" elsewhere, then Sharon might well hope to be able to treat Gaza in 2004-2005 like Beirut in 1982.
Maybe Helena has got this wrong? Maybe Ariel Sharon is genuine about pulling the Jewish settlements out and not treating the West Bank and Gaza as he did Beirut. We can only watch and see and listen to critical Israeli voices.
And maybe the Palestinans will be able to rebuild their civil institutions that would support the re-emergence of citizen-based, mass nonviolent actions and help build a genuine coalition between the secular and Islamic wings of the national movement? It is a tough ask.
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Helena has got it absolutely right, I wish I could read the entire article but the server is very busy at the moment. And thanks for that other link, the article is very enlightening with regard to how we come to think the way we do.
As for Sharon... he's not about to give the occupied territories away. He's up to something. Unfortunately we won't know what it is until after it happens, and whatever it is, its going to look like the PA started it.